Navy database tracks civilians

Mark Flatten

Navy database tracks civilians' parking tickets, fender-benders, raising fears of domestic spying

Navy database tracks civilians' parking tickets, fender-benders, raising fears of domestic spying.

A parking ticket, traffic citation or involvement in a minor fender-bender are enough to get a person's name and other personal information logged into a massive, obscure federal database run by the U.S. military.

The Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or LinX, has already amassed 506.3 million law enforcement records ranging from criminal histories and arrest reports to field information cards filled out by cops on the beat even when no crime has occurred.

LinX is a national information-sharing hub for federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. It is run by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, raising concerns among some military law experts that putting such detailed data about ordinary citizens in the hands of military officials crosses the line that generally prohibits the armed forces from conducting civilian law enforcement operations.

Those fears are heightened by recent disclosures of the National Security Agency spying on Americans, and the CIA allegedly spying on Congress, they say.

LinX was created in 2003 and put under NCIS, which has counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering missions in addition to responsibility for criminal investigations. LinX was originally supposed to help NCIS protect naval bases from terrorism.

More than 1,300 agencies participate, including The FBI and other Department of Justice divisions, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. Police departments along both coasts and in Texas, New Mexico, Alaska and Hawaii are in LinX.

The director of NCIS, Andrew Traver, drew stiff opposition from the National Rifle Association after President Obama twice nominated him to be head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The nomination failed to go forward in the Senate both times, largely because of what the NRA described as Traver's advocacy for stricter gun laws.

He became NCIS director in October.

Participating agencies must feed their information into the federal data warehouse and electronically update it daily in return for access.

Why LinX wound up in the NCIS, a military law enforcement agency, is not clear. Current NCIS officials could not explain the reasoning, other than to say it grew out of the department's need for access to law enforcement records relevant to criminal investigations.

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(This is worse that the IRS using your personal information against you. Its more evidence of a CORRUP government doing everything it can to keep up with every thing you do in another way, through the use of the US military. Everyday something comes out in the news about how the ferderal "government" is taking away your freedom. The kicker here is the NCI3 director wants stricker gun controls. In other words he wants to leave you defenseless!

"Background checks for gun sales and applications for concealed weapons permits are not included in the system, according to NCIS officials and representatives of major state and local agencies contacted by the Examiner." If you believe this you also own an obama phone.

Participating agencies must feed their information into the federal data warehouse and electronically update it daily in return for access.

The feds want any and all local information from local law enforement agancies. Your LOCAL government must give the feds all the information they have about you before they can get information about everybody else. Did ya get this bubba?) Story Reports