DOJ seeks to
Web-enable all crime info
But privacy advocates raise red flags
over quiet effort to centralize thicket of state, local and
federal information-gathering efforts.
By Doug
Brown, Inter@ctive
Week
UPDATED January 17, 2000 9:01 AM PT
Through the guidance of a federally sponsored
committee that has been quietly meeting since 1998, the U.S.
Department of Justice is leading a national push to integrate,
standardize and Web-enable all criminal justice information
that is harvested and stored by local, state, tribal and
federal governmental entities.
Some privacy advocates, however, are
raising warning flags.
The unprecedented centralized effort to
coordinate the Byzantine thicket of information-gathering arms
making up the U.S. criminal justice system is being overseen
by the department's Global Justice Information Network, which
failed to receive funding in the 2000 federal budget, and the
Global Advisory Committee, a group of representatives from 27
governmental bodies and nonprofit organizations that meets to
hash out issues swirling around the Network's goals.
The group plans to cobble existing resources
together from its members to keep the effort moving forward.
Justice officials and members of the
committee championed the fresh push to link criminal justice
systems under the same electronic roof, arguing that catching
and keeping criminals will be made exponentially easier and
more efficient with transparent bridges between disparate
pools of information. A Web-based system will also make it
easier for state and local agencies that may need criminal
justice information, such as social service and educational
institutions, to gain access to the data.
But while not categorically condemning the
broad push for linking systems and developing standards,
privacy advocates cautioned that such efforts may not be worth
the trouble and may invite security problems. Broadening
authorities' access to different pots of information may not
be in the public's best interest, they said. And Web-based
technologies, with their security flaws, may not be the best
method for collecting and storing criminal justice
information, they added.
Critic: Effort 'simplistic'
Jim Dempsey, senior staff counsel at the
Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based
privacy watchdog organization, questioned the motive behind
the Network's activity, calling the effort
"simplistic."
"The easy answer that they thought was
missed here is, 'If we were to share information among various
criminal justice agencies more efficiently, we would have less
crime,' " Dempsey said.
He added: "We think information
collected for one purpose should not be routinely shared. ...
I think [the coordinated effort] underestimates the powerful
reasons, both legitimate and illegitimate, for why we have so
many different criminal justice agencies and systems. And I
question whether the World Wide Web model can map onto
criminal justice information and, if it did, whether it would
leave anybody better off."
But Justice Department officials and others
involved in the Global initiative said information sharing is
the key to the future of criminal justice. In a synopsis of a
speech she delivered to a July 1999 meeting of the Global
Advisory Committee, Attorney General Janet Reno is quoted as
saying information sharing is "one of the most important
issues in justice" and as referring to the Global
initiative as the foundation of 21st-century criminal justice.
Reno again sounded the theme last week at a
meeting of state attorneys general at Stanford University. She
proposed a new 24-hour network, called LawNet, that would
connect federal, state and local law enforcers in the pursuit
of cybercriminals.
Where's the money?
"We want to create the ability to get
to where the cybercriminal is in real time," Reno told
the group. "The cybercriminal should get the message that
there is no place to hide in the world."
But again, the problem is funding. Reno
offered no additional budget money, and state attorneys
general are short of funds and resources to press ahead in the
fight.
"Funding is probably our No. 1
challenge," said Robert Mogester, California's deputy
attorney general.
There is also a dearth of Internet crime
investigators and forensic computer specialists able to pull
evidence out of PC hard drives.
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See
Law & Politics section
