By Kristen Wyatt, The Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) -- Georgia will not join a sweeping crime database that tracks personal details of even law-abiding citizens, Gov. Sonny Perdue decided Tuesday, citing cost and privacy concerns.
The decision to withdraw from the multistate Matrix database came a day after state Attorney General Thurbert Baker said it would be illegal for Georgia to release its driver’s license records to the private company putting the database together.
The Matrix database, controlled by a Florida company called Seisint Inc., was billed as a speedy way for law enforcement agencies to find records.
But privacy rights advocates, including former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, a Republican, took issue with the plan. The database would track all citizens, not just people accused of a crime, and the information would include credit information, marriages and divorces, even fingerprints and Social Security numbers.
“I have held serious concerns about the privacy issues involved with this project all along, and have decided it is in the best interest of the people of Georgia that our state have no further participation,” Perdue, a Republican, said in a statement.
Georgia became the sixth state to opt out of the program after initially agreeing to join, leaving the project with seven members -- Florida, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah.
A call to Seisint was not immediately returned.
Matrix was initially intended to track terrorists, similar to the Pentagon’s Terrorism Information Awareness project, which was later watered down for similar privacy reasons.
The database is being built with $12 million in federal funds: $8 million from the Department of Homeland Security, which will have direct access to Matrix, and $4 million from the Justice Department.
Barr lauded the decision not to join Matrix, calling the database part of a “constant erosion of our individual right to privacy.
“While we all support the needs of law enforcement to track known lawbreakers, we should not allow our zeal to catch them to lead us to start gathering, manipulating and disseminating personal information on Georgia’s citizens who the government has no reason to believe have committed crimes,” he said.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has already given Matrix records for convicts and sex offenders, and Perdue said that those records would remain with Seisint.
“This information is relevant to the crime-fighting purposes of the pilot, but personal information of law-abiding citizens is not,” Perdue wrote.
The governor also cited budget concerns for pulling out. State officials originally thought the project could be paid for with federal funds, but found the state may have to pay millions after the pilot year of the database.
“The state was assured that no additional legislation or funding would be required. The question of funding remains unresolved,” Perdue wrote.
On Monday, Baker announced that Georgia law would have to be changed to join parts of the database. Baker said the law prohibits the state from releasing its drivers database “where there is no particular investigation or active prosecution pending for which the information is sought.”