Back on Nov. 4th, I wrote We'll keep your information secure... yeah, that's it! about the Multiple Jurisdiction Network Organization, a database shared by 177 law enforcement agencies in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The MJNO had been hacked into, and it became obvious that a lot of information contained in it could be dangerously misleading to police using it. As a result, it had been shut down for 3 days.

Yesterday, as reported in the StarTribune and other news outlets, the MJNO has been shut down completely because of privacy concerns. The board of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, which owned the massive database, voted to purge its millions of police "contact" records. State officials were prepared to order it shut down if the MCPA hadn't done so.

An analysis from the state Department of Administration determined that the network appeared to violate privacy protections in state law in several ways, including its treatment of juvenile records and gun permit data.

Part of the privacy concern was that It contained the names of many witnesses, suspects, and victims of alleged crimes, not just information on criminals. There can be a tendency for law enforcement personnel to take an "us versus them" attitude, and begin to think of citizens as only potential threats. This database seemed to put a lot more people into that "suspect" category, and the vast majority of us just don't deserve to be treated as suspects.

Internet surfers normally hate seeing the image below, but in this case, we can all take some holiday comfort in having it appear when accessing the (former) MJNO website .