Last week the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) announced plans to create a new database to consolidate several smaller ones that would allow them identify possible terrorists or suspected criminals seeking access into the country. Information-sharing is en vogue. This story comes on the heels of a bevy of recent stories about federal, state and local law enforcement agencies looking to consolidate numerous databases and overhaul existing networks. The FBI hopes to create a the worlds largest biometrics database, the Department of Homeland Security wants to overhaul their existing Homeland Security Information Network and still yet another directive of the FBI is seeking to link up with similar agencies in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, among others. ICE’s new database is looking to be a sort of search engine for nine federal sources similar to those mentioned above. So what could possibly be wrong with that? Read on for the answer.
USA Today reported on January 24 that ICE is developing a database that “culls information from more than nine federal sources…” the data base is being called the ICE Pattern Analysis and Information Collection System, ICEPIC and the main purpose of the system is to “collect information from databases that track foreign students, visitors and immigrants as well as criminals and suspected terrorists.” I likened it to a search engine – but critics, like ACLU attorney Tim Sparapani, call that data mining. His problem with the system is rightly voced: “The difficulty is if you have bad data, then that bad data migrates from one database to another database.” Couple that with the fact that most, if not all, law enforcement databases are exempt from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate because, “it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete,” you have quite hairy situation.
The USA Today article points out that among the growing list of government databases, ICEPIC will search through the infamous terrorist watch list, speaking of which, “More than 15,000 people have appealed to have their names taken off.” Additionally, there are currently 20 “fusion centers” being set up and staffed by DHS officials, with plans for 13 more before the year’s end – there are some 58 centers nationwide, not necessarily with DHS personnel. “Since 2005, the Department of Homeland Security has given more than $380 million in grants to help start, train and staff the centers,” according to a Chicago Tribune story, on the newly launched Chicago Crime Prevention Information Center.
There is a massive, coordinated effort being made to consolidate and digitize information with concerns of national security. In my humble opinion, if Joe Law Dog can go to his computer and be able to search several databases when he pulled over one of the Bugle Brothers and find that the perp has robbed a few banks in his day and is known to consort with terrorists of all different creeds, than I am all for it. However, the level of diligence and oversight that is required to keep this information on the level with the facts is and will be an extremely daunting task. Congress needs to leverage itself to make sure that with each additional effort to consolidate and make the information-sharing more fluid there is an equal, if not increased, effort to make sure that information is accurate. And when there are improprieties and mistakes made, accountability is swift and full.
More on this story, as with them all, as it develops…
