The states of New York and Wisconsin have announced that they are withdrawing from the controversial MATRIX interstate database program. MATRIX is the state level version of the now scrapped Total Information Awareness program, which had the aim of sucking in vast swathes of personal data on everyone, thereby enabling the computer to automatically pinpoint the terrorists in our midst.

It sounds a superfically and intuitively attractive prospect, until you think about it. What if the computer or the operator gets it wrong? Like I said earlier. Law enforcement is difficult. And, as H.L. Mencken said, "For every human problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong." We're right back to the old theme which I seem to come back to repeatedly, the widespread

"Boys-Own blind faith of computing ignoramuses, like certain decision makers, in the ability of computers to automatically and magically make things better, regardless of the overall objective or the suitability of the tools (computers) to the task or [critically] the way in which those tools are deployed, drives me nuts on a daily basis in my own day job. That it is happening in so important a context " as [choose your own context - in this case I choose 'law enforcement'] "is worrying in the extreme"