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Law & Disorder / Civilization & Discontents

OneDOJ: a new national law enforcement database project

Two discontinued law enforcement database projects get knocked for inadequate …

The Washington Post is reporting that the Justice Department plans to aggressively expand the size and reach of its little-known OneDOJ database program. The database, which currently enables information sharing among a small group of local law enforcement agencies that are participating in a pilot program, has recently begun a full-scale rollout that will see it used immediately in 15 new regions of the country. The DOJ also plans to promote the database's use to other law enforcement agencies as well, with the eventual result that all law enforcement agencies in the US, from the federal level on down to the local police, will be able to access one centralized database of case information, profiles of suspects and investigative targets, criminal records, etc.

Even though news of this particular national crime database program is fairly recent, privacy advocates are already voicing concerns. Among the most prominent objections raised to the program is the fact that the database will contain information not only on criminals, but on mere suspects—people who have not been formally accused of a crime. Furthermore, there will be no formal way for a citizen to know the nature and accuracy of the information that the database holds on him or her.

Note the use of the word "formal" in that previous sentence. Every local police department in the country will eventually be able to access this database to dig up dirt on anyone who has an entry in it, so if you'd like access to the federal government's entire file on you (or anyone else, for that matter) then all you have to do is bribe the right police officer. Those of us who don't personally know any crooked cops will be left to wonder what, if anything, the feds know about us.


The networked information problem I've described here is much more troubling to me than the accuracy-related objections raised by groups like the ACLU. I'm less worried about the government having inaccurate information about me than I am about bad guys having accurate information about me, you, and everyone else.

I realize that such a database would be a huge boon for law enforcement efforts, so I hate to be so negative about it. But any kind of widely used information-sharing mechanism, whether it's a database system, a computer network, an internal company switchboard, etc. will inevitably have its share of intruders, and the implications of unauthorized access must be factored into any decision to build such a system from scratch.

OneDOJ = MATRIX redivivus

OneDOJ is by no means the United States' first attempt at doing nationwide information sharing among state and federal law enforcement agencies. The now-defunct predecessor to OneDOJ was a distributed database project called the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX), and the Privacy Office of DHS has just released a report knocking the program for a lack of transparency and attention to privacy concerns.

This report was one of two released by the office right before Christmas, a time typically reserved for announcing bad news that a government or corporation wants to bury if possible.

The second report detailed the ways that the TSA's public statements about the privacy safeguards in its infamous Secure Flight program failed to match up to the program's reality. That's a topic for another post, however.

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