Utah Withdraws From Crime Database

Utah’s governor on Thursday halted the state’s participation in a federally funded crime database that the American Civil Liberties Union says poses a privacy threat.

Gov. Olene S. Walker promised to set up an oversight group after the ACLU on Wednesday said the program poses a more powerful threat to privacy than its organizers acknowledge. Utah’s withdrawal leaves six states in the program.

“We’ve got to review this ... to look at the benefits in comparison with privacy concerns,” Walker said.

Law enforcement officials and the private company that manages the database, known as Matrix, say it merely streamlines police access to information about suspects that authorities have long been able to get from disparate sources.

But the ACLU said it could also be used to sift through vast stores of Americans’ personal data -- some 20 billion records.

Combining state records with databases owned by Seisint Inc., Matrix details such information as people’s property and Internet domains, past and present addresses, even their utility connections and bankruptcies, an August report by the Georgia state Office of Homeland Security said.

The crime database was launched last year with $12 million in federal money.

Utah signed on to the program in December. Walker, who was Utah’s lieutenant governor at the time, said she wasn’t aware of former Gov. Mike Leavitt’s interest in the project and was not always part of discussions having to do with technology.

“We had a former governor very interested in homeland security,” she said. “I think it was viewed as an enhancement of the technology available.”

Still in the program are Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.