Reply #63: Last one LaLa: again look at the type of info they access

[TayTay]

and store:

BILL NELSON: You said last October that you bought a Florida company—Boca Raton—named Seisint. Seisint has a program called Matrix—it’s one of the most extensive tools that is used by law enforcement.

As a matter of fact, the officials of that company told me that within a few days after September 11th they could determine who were the hijackers, who were the perpetrators of September the 11th. How do you protect that information?

SANFORD: The Matrix program was a federally-funded pilot which has ceased. I believe it stopped last month, actually. Matrix was a search engine that allowed law enforcement to search our services for our public record information, and they could also at the same time search their own databases.
We did not maintain or manage that. That was managed, I believe, by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on behalf of the other states that participated in that.

BILL NELSON: And so that system wouldn’t have any biometric information, no DNA information, no medical information? SANFORD: Again, the Matrix program—our participation in it—is to share our technology and access to our data. What the state law enforcement organizations are searching, I believe, are things like sexual offender databases, correction records, arrest records, when they’re trying to locate a suspect. I’m not aware—I’ll be glad to check with my staff and get back to you—if there was any medical information accessed in that. I don’t believe there was.

BILL NELSON: Blood types, diseases, scars, identification marks, et cetera, et cetera.
SANFORD: I’ll have to get back to you, Senator.

BILL NELSON: I would appreciate it very much. Mr. Chairman, I think you see the concern welling up here of the extent to which, if these folks—which, thankfully, you all are very accommodating here to want to help us develop this legislation. But if we are not successful, you can see that no one in America is going to have any privacy left, if people can invade your databases. You say you want to prevent that. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Thank you very much.

KERRY: Could I just have one quick follow-up?

SMITH: Absolutely.

KERRY: Would either of you sell to a political committee? SANFORD: Senator, we have legal research business, news and business information services. There’s nothing that would stop them from having access. I don’t think they would qualify for permissive use under TLBA (ph) or the BPTA (ph), though. I mean, those are around fraud detection and prevention and law enforcement type of permissible use.

KERRY: But is there anything to stop a committee from—have you sold anything to a political committee?

SANFORD: Not that I’m aware of, no, Senator.

KERRY: But could they buy?

SANFORD: I don’t believe that’s a customer segment we serve.

KERRY: But could they?

SANFORD: I don’t believe they would get credentialed, but I can find out. It’s not a question I’ve heard before. But I don’t believe—
I’ve never heard—I’ve been around with the company since its inception, and...

KERRY: Well, do you have a means of checking, so that...

SANFORD: We have a business purpose criteria upon which we’ll enroll people as customers. I don’t believe political committees meet the business purpose; therefore, I don’t believe we would set up a customer account with them.

KERRY: What about a political consultant, who is doing sophisticated political analysis, polling analysis?

SANFORD: I don’t believe they’re customers of ours, nor do I believe we’d serve them.

KERRY: You “don’t believe,” but there’s no set of guidelines with respect to...

SANFORD: I’m trying to be very specific. There are very specific guidelines about who we serve as customers. I’ve never heard of this customer segment being anybody we serve. The preponderance of our customers are large insurance companies, large financial institutions, trying to process transactions so a consumer can get some kind of benefit—an insurance policy, a job—large retailers or large customers of ours. We don’t have very many customers that aren’t in the large commercial—space (ph) or government enterprises.

Sorry for the unfiltered info here, but you said you were in a hurry and that means I don't have time to do heavy edits.

Good luck!