Experience shows that privacy is never important to people who understand the benefit of giving it up. People will gladly part with all kinds of information to get a $0.25 discount on a 6-pack of Coke.

I'm kind of ambivalent about MATRIX because I think Scott McNeely was probably right when he said "you have zero privacy anyway---get over it." If you're concerned about MATRIX, you ought to be even more concerned about what private companies are doing with publicly available information. A company called Spoke Software has to limit the kinds of connections they make between people because in some cases, it constituents a national security risk. Give me $2 million and 6 months and I could build a system that would frighten the hell out of you, with no special access to any information.

The even greater issue is what the government is doing with all this personal information collected by MATRIX and other programs. They use it in various homeland security decision support systems. The one that scares me the most is CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Profiling System). At face value, it's a great idea...use personal information to determine who might be a possible terrorist, and then use "enhanced" security methods to screen them. If we had had CAPPS on 9/11, the attacks would have failed, right? Not necessarily. Nobody knows what the algorithm is that CAPPS uses, so how do we know it is right? I can tell you one thing from personal experience...it gives false-positives (e.g., I am ALWAYS selected for additional security whenever I fly now...and I am a 20-year veteran retired Army officer). This has nothing to do with setting off the metal alarm at the gate. My boarding pass is marked with an "S" for "Selectee" as soon as I surrender my luggage at the curbside check-in. So, if it falsely identifies me as an enhanced terrorist risk, how many actual ones do you think may be overlooked?

One other thing: MATRIX is based on an existing database of skip tracers called Accurint which is the product of a company called Seisint which was founded by a guy who admitted to flying cocaine into the country in the wild and wooly 80's (a la Miami Vice). Now THAT really gives me a warm, fuzzy about MATRIX.

Actually, Utah has never agreed to participate in MATRIX only in a MATRIX pilot that would allow the state to look at the technology and determine whether it is worthwhile. The State has not appropriated any money for MATRIX participation. However, it is important that anything that state government does like this be done in the open, otherwise you end up with the kind of situation that surrounds MATRIX participation currently. It is now less likely that any decision will be made on logic and a sound decision-making process. I do appreciate Governor Walker's decisiveness in dealing with this and other issues. The task force that will discuss MATRIX is scheduled to meet on Tuesday morning.