Burnt Orange Report

Because Terrorism & Traffic Tickets Are SO related...

By Vince Leibowitz

With Byron and Karl-T in the Alamo City today working for Rose Spector, I thought I'd help pick up the slack with this little post, which I'm sure to be hammered by law-and-order-types over.

At any rate, it seems that five counties along the Gulf Coast "will soon be able to share information about everything from domestic disputes to traffic tickets. Now, that doesn't sound sinister at all. In fact, I thought most counties already did that through the DPS's databases. Here's where I think things start getting "iffy:"

At a cost of $2 million, the Gulf Coast Law Enforcement Alliance Project will let authorities in Aransas, Kenedy, Kleberg, Nueces, and San Patricio counties compile crime data into a federal anti-terrorism database, Shelby said. [Emphasis mine]

The system, expected to be up and running by June, includes seven police departments, the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, the Texas Department of Public Safety and police at two university campuses.

Shelby said the Corpus Christi region was chosen because its three U.S. Navy bases are surrounded by miles of vast ranch land near the Mexican border. About 18,000 Naval personnel train and operate at the bases.

"Vast ranch land" is now a terrorist threat? No, really. I know what they mean, the writer of the Chron article, however, could have phrased it better. Seriously, though, it sounds like this U.S. Attorney is afraid of a terrorist threat to these bases, coming through Mexico or somewhere else, and that's legitimate. But, read on:

Shelby said the system may be expanded to the entire Texas coast and eventually across the country, with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection also involved. Similar systems are in place near Naval operations in Seattle and Hampton Beach, Va.

The test comes amid growing efforts to share information and merge databases among different law enforcement agencies following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

"We had erected these barriers between us," he said. "Terrorists and individuals who were there to do us harm exploited those barriers."

He said information deemed "critically sensitive" would not be fed into the database, however.

Several problems. First, weren't those so-called "barriers" between agencies sharing data erected for a reason? Like so J. Edgar Hoover wouldn't come tramping through your town everytime some alleged Pinko got a traffic ticket? Weren't those barriers also erected for privacy reasons? Does the federal government really need to know if a college kid got a ticket for public intox on his 21st birthday on 6th Street? To me, that much information sharing makes the system wide open for abuse.

Of course, they also say that information not "critically sensative" won't be fed into the database. Anyone who's ever listened to Donald Rumsfeld's disjointed ramblings for even five minutes anytime after 9-11 knows that what types of information that could be important to a particular case changes on a case-by-case, minute-by-minute basis. So, how does one know--and more importantly, who judges--what information is "critically sensative"? For example, is the fact that I sometimes get speeding tickets "critically sensative" information? Should your teenage son/daughter be entered into such a massive state/federal database because they were loitering outside the local Sonic one Saturday night? I don't think so.

And, though the following statement could be true, it's further alarming:

David Brant, national director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said police collect a wealth of information each day, and much of it could help solve other crimes.

For example, he said, a traffic stop in Kenedy County could provide the tidbit needed to capture a terrorist suspect.

Now, unless you happened to give a speeding ticket to an actual terrorist, someone who stole a terrorist's car, or a terrorist's relative, I'm not sure how this could be useful. It could provide this kind of information if you stop the right person, which you might do maybe 1 out of 100 times. Otherwise, is a traffic ticket now going to be like checking baggage at the airport, to wit:

Officer: Have you left your vehicle unattended in the last 24 hours, accepted strange packages from anyone, are you carrying explosives, and do you have any foreign fruits?

Driver:Uh, nope.

Officer: Great. Thanks for helping keep America safe! Here's your citation for going 74 in a 65. Have a great day, and drive safe!

Of course, this could also open up a whole new window on "racial profiling." Whereas conventional wisdom used to be that law enforcement stopped African Americans in nice cars to look for drugs, will it now be that they stop anyone who doesn't look "American," to see if, perchance, they're a terrorist, even if it's just to get them in the database?

While I grant you that my examples border on the far end of the spectrum, it is clearly obvious that there are dangers associated with this type of "information sharing," as well as benefits. After all, who wants to be in a terrorism database just for, say, getting a traffic ticket?