[antimedia] antimedia: The ACLU has never seen....

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Posted by antimedia:
The ACLU has never seen....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1167435277.shtml


   ....a criminal [1]it didn't love, and it's willing to stoke irrational
   fears to promote its cause.

     A U.S. Department of Justice initiative that aims to standardize
     the data formats and means of accessing criminals records has
     worried some civil-rights groups, according to media reports.
     In a Washington Post article published on Tuesday, two privacy
     advocates criticized an integrated law enforcement database--called
     the OneDOJ system in the article--as a problem because it brings
     together reams of case file data, much of it containing errors,
     critics claimed. Furthermore, the system does not allow U.S.
     citizens a way to correct the government's data on them.
     "Raw police files or FBI reports can never be verified and can
     never be corrected," Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology
     and Liberty Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the
     Washington Post. "That is a problem with even more formal and
     controlled systems. The idea that they're creating another whole
     system that is going to be full of inaccurate information is just
     chilling."

   Here's an idea. Why don't we just put all the police records on the
   internet and let everybody "correct" them at will. That should help
   clear out the errors, right?
   Never mind that the ACLU has no way of knowing whether there are
   errors in police files nor precisely what those errors are, much less
   that what they consider errors might not even be errors. They're
   willing to propound the story that there are errors in order to create
   a visceral, emotional reaction from enough people to create a
   groundswell of reaction to this "intrusion" of privacy.
   Furthermore, the idea that standardizing data would somehow be
   "chilling" is simply ludicrous. Which would be worse? Having disparate
   data causing police to follow false leads? Or standardizing the format
   of the data leading to a system that makes it easier to notice errors
   or contradictions?
   Which you fear more? A government that keeps track of criminals? Or
   criminals who are free to roam and ravage innocent citizens because
   it's too "chilling" to keep data about them?
   The ACLU doesn't just have misplaced priorities. They are a threat to
   the freedom and liberty that we all enjoy.

References

   1. http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/396?ref=rss