National Dragnet Is a Click Away

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

Authorities to Gain Fast and Expansive Access to Records

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 6, 2008; Page A01

Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots.

As federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues.

Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/05/AR2008030503656.html?hpid=topnews

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Now, people, let's be honest. When it comes to our new domestic spy agency's establishment and guaranteed exponential growth, do you really it makes a difference whether the next president is named Hillary, Obama, John, or (God help us) Ralph? He or she is going to use it. Count on it.