After the September 11 attacks, an ugly reality came to light: US law-enforcement agencies couldn't share data when lives depended on it. The FBI couldn't talk the CIA. The NSA was clueless about the ATF. Six years later, the Justice Department is trying to fix the problem by building an unprecedented network of databases from the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the Bureau of Prisons, and the US Marshals Service.
Within the next few years, the system, called OneDOJ, is projected to hold 3 million records — obvious stuff like criminal convictions, plus tons of speculative material like investigative reports and interrogation summaries. So civil liberties advocates are ( predictably) worried. Such case files often include false or unproven allegations. If local cops have access, privacy activists worry, every routine investigation could become an opportunity for abuse.
Pilot projects are under way in several municipal police forces, and many more are expected to gain access. The Justice Department says it's not a problem. "OneDOJ contains no more information than that which is already legally obtained by law-enforcement agencies during the course of standard criminal investigations," an agency spokesperson says. But OneDOJ could offer one-stop shopping to hackers. Last year, a congressional committee graded the Justice Department a D in computer security, and another report found that in recent years, the FBI has simply lost 160 laptops, including at least 10 that were holding sensitive or classified information. That's not the kind of data-sharing anyone had in mind.
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