This Untrue Information May Be Used Against You

According to Wired’s Threat Level blog, the Supreme Court is about to consider a case on the government’s use of databases. In Alabama, a man was arrested because a database falsely said that he had a warrant in another county. When the officers arrested him (on a non existent warrant) they discovered crystal meth and a handgun. What’s surprising about the case is that the government is not arguing the search was Constitutional – everyone agrees that it wasn’t. What the government is saying is that it just doesn’t matter: it’s too complicated and involved for the government to bother keeping up-to-date records.

More and more of our information is being collected and collated in government databases. It’s nothing more than the government’s responsibility to make sure that these kinds of incidents don’t happen. If this evidence would be thrown out because a police officer didn’t have probable cause to search him in the first place, it ought to be thrown out because he was arrested for a warrant that wasn’t active. I fail to see a distinction between the two.

With nonsense like the “terrorism watch list” and other shadowy government databases, we need to hash out some new rights regarding the kind of information the government can collect, keep and use against you. If the government isn’t responsible for making sure this information is accurate and correct, than why would they bother?