Short abstract:

I show how state and corporate actors collaborated to scrape personal data, drawn from Florida public records, to create rudimentary digital profiles in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, the processes developed in Florida are employed by police and militaries to surveil racialized people around the world.

Long abstract:

In the 1980s, the state of Florida began an initiative to combine disparate data points -phone and criminal records with driver licenses and home addresses – into a single supercomputer. The datasets, owned by Database Technologies, created digital representations of individuals across the state. The company achieved this in three ways. First, to amass unique data sets, it made use of Florida’s Sunshine Law, which made government meetings, arrests, and records public knowledge. Second, it circumvented privacy concerns by allowing police forces to purchase the data from corporate actors. Third, the company utilized its contacts with the CIA and DEA to combine additional information and expand its data pool to the Caribbean. This paper revisits two flashpoints in the history of data fusion centers in Florida by first returning to early 1990s debates over the legality of biometric identification in law enforcement. Then, the paper discusses how, in the lead up to the contested 2000 Presidential Election, Florida tasked Database Technologies with purging voters in the months before the election. Throughout the Global War on Terror, US military and police forces utilized the company’s algorithms to profile racial minorities in the United States and deployed their technologies across the Global South. Today, Database Technologies’ base algorithm is used around the world, from biometric identifications for bank statements and credit bureaus to consumer data brokers and military contractors. The case of Database Technologies demonstrates the extent to which Florida serves as a data laboratory for surveillance mechanisms that shape our lives.