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from the A.P. via USAToday
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-10-30-mn-cop-database_x.htm
from the A.P. via USAToday
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-10-30-mn-cop-database_x.htm
Growing use of private police network raises concerns
By Patrick Howe, Associated Press
ST. PAUL — Some see it as the sort of tool that just might give a cop a break the next time someone abducts a child.
Some see it as an assault on personal privacy, a Big Brother of a network operating outside the bounds of state regulation.
Most, though, have no way of knowing about it at all.
Since 2001, the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association has been quietly linking the case files of law enforcement agencies around the state to build a searchable system police can use to share information on people that their officers have had contact with.
More than 175 agencies that collectively police two-thirds of the state's population are now participating in the Multiple Jurisdictional Network Organization, sharing nearly 8 million records. Though still owned by the chiefs, in March the state took over running it.
For police, the system's appeal is in the depth of information.
Unlike a database run by the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the MJNO network doesn't just tell police if a person has been convicted of a crime. It also tells whether they've ever been arrested or if they appear in police files as a victim, a suspect, a complainant or a witness. It has juvenile files.
Agencies in neighboring states have begun to join the network and some officers have access to it from their squad cars.
Now, spurred by citizens who've found themselves scrutinized because of the system, the network is facing questions. Questions about the state's involvement. Questions about what authority a private group had to build it. Questions about whether people can get access to information shown about them. And questions about whether the system is accurate and secure.
At least one lawmaker is planning hearings and an attorney is exploring a lawsuit with the hope of shutting MJNO down.
How it began
The basic concept of the system began in 1992, when police in Crystal asked to view the records of their Minneapolis counterparts. In 1997, some 22 police agencies banded together to win a federal grant to build a prototype. Eventually, it was turned over to the nonprofit chiefs association to run and administer
So far, the network has been paid for through federal grants and subscribing agencies paying fees of between $50 and $500. In March, the state took on a more significant role, leasing rights to use it for 18 months in exchange for the state investing up to $150,000 to upgrade the system. It's housed on a state Web server — www.mjno.state.mn.us — and state employees run it. Before Thursday, when the site was down, members of the public could get to the home page, but queries required authorization.
The state is exploring absorbing MJNO permanently after the lease is up, said Bob Johnson, director of CriMNet, the state's broad effort to link public information for law enforcement use. Before that can happen, he said, plenty of thorny legal and practical questions must be answered.
How it works
When an officer gets a hit on a name searched in the MJNO network, the screen they call up shows them the person's name, date of birth, the number and type of case that brought them to police attention and the person's role in the matter; whether they were a victim, caller, suspect or witness, for example.
Click on a hypertext link offering additional details and it also gives a limited physical description of the person and a broader description of the case.
Dennis Delmont, executive director of the chiefs association, stressed that only police have access to the system. He said agencies that use the information are warned it is up to them to verify its accuracy.
And he said the association doesn't own or alter the data. The MJNO, he says, is merely a pipe linking one agency's data to another.
"(Critics are) concerned why the Chiefs of Police Association collects all this information on them. The answer is, we don't," he said. "We facilitate the collection by pointing to the data."
Testimonials on MJNO's Web site laud its ease of use. One investigator says it helped him do in four hours what would have taken his full staff a week. Another boasts that "tools like MJNO are changing the way we do business."
Indeed, police at cash-strapped agencies say joining the system has been the equivalent of adding an extra investigator to their staff.
Discovery
Scott Chapman may have been one of the first people outside of law enforcement to become aware of the reach of MJNO.
He said the experience left him feeling violated.
Last March, Chapman, a computer systems administrator, was at a political rally outside U.S. Rep. John Kline's office. He was carrying a sign reading "Freedom is not free," to balance people protesting the war in Iraq, he said.
As the rally neared an end, a Burnsville police sergeant stopped Chapman and asked to search his fanny pack. Chapman protested but eventually handed it over. Finding nothing unusual, the officer allowed him to leave.
Chapman said the experience left him shaken and curious why he'd been singled out.
The answer came from a friendly file clerk and the police report on the incident. Chapman learned that the officer was suspicious in part because he'd searched the MJNO and found that Chapman had requested but been denied permission to carry a concealed carry permit. (Chapman had since been granted a permit, though that wasn't in the records)
"Here I've done nothing wrong. I've done everything right. I applied for a legal permit and followed the process," Chapman said. "Now I find out that my name is commingled with all of the felons and arrestees and everyone else? It just seems wrong."
In an e-mail to Chapman, a Burnsville commander defended the use of the system as a normal course of police business.
His attorney, gun-rights activist David Gross, says he is exploring a possible lawsuit over the incident.
Gross questions the accuracy of the information and the security of the system. He believes the system should be shut down because it was never authorized by the Legislature and doesn't comply with parts of the state's records law, the Data Practices Act.
"There's all sorts of philosophical questions," he said. "What is it? Why did they need to create it? Is it lawful to create it? Why in the hell, if they needed it and wanted it to exist, didn't they go through the state government to create it?"
He said he believes state law demands that citizens have access to any data collected on them, provided they aren't the suspect of an investigation. Delmont said those questions should be taken to the agencies that hold the actual records, not MJNO.
Gross also says Chapman's experience shows MJNO is easily misused, too convenient and tempting for police not to use it to short-circuit traditional investigations.
"I'm a white guy from the 'burbs and I was stopped and illegally searched," Chapman said. "Can you imagine what it must be like for a guy who's not a white guy from the 'burbs?"
Lawmakers step in
Largely thanks to Chapman's efforts to bring the system to their attention, lawmakers are beginning to question the system.
Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, a Republican from Lakeville, recently went into the office of the Chiefs of Police Association and demanded a copy of the records the MJNO has on her.
She wasn't satisfied with what she learned.
Charging her $15, the group printed out a summary sheet that showed that one agency in the system has her name in their records. To find out more, she was told to contact that police department directly.
"I want to see what the cops see on their screens," Holberg said. "I don't understand why the MJNO screen on me is not accessible to me."
As a lawmaker who has served on key police and law committees, Holberg said she initially dismissed talk about a secret, privately run database, assuming she'd have heard about it if it existed. "I didn't key into it, because I thought it sounded so bizarre it couldn't be true."
Holberg said she can see the benefits of the system to police, but she's grown concerned enough to plan hearings on MJNO for the next legislative session.
"There needs to be major big time discussion from a public policy standpoint before we get much further down the road."
Powerful system
Gary Ritari can understand the concerns. As a director of technology at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Ritari is helping explore whether and how to merge MJNO into CriMNet.
He says he understands that MJNO has probably grown large enough that it's time for the Legislature to weigh in on issues about public records.
But he also wants people to understand the power of the system.
He tells this story:
When he was a Minneapolis police officer more than 20 years ago, a fellow officer was shot. They had a suspect, and it was Ritari's job to try to gather all the information from law enforcement agencies across the state on the suspect.
He started working the phones.
It took him eight days to finish.
Today, the bulk of the work could be done in seconds, the rest in hours.
"I love to see bad guys get caught and put away," he said. "This helps it happen."
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.