Tech CEO: Data Differences May Have Affected VT Massacre
(Austin, Texas) – April 24, 2007
Here is the problem: The computer databases used by states and the federal government for instant background checks are different.
"They're all written in a different language, different format," said Jack Holt, CEO of S3 Matching Technologies. "So it's like you had one database written in Chinese, one in Russian, and one is Spanish, and they all were supposed to say the same thing. So you have to invent some kind of software, so they all are translated into the same thing."
"That sounds like a mind-boggling exercise," responded KXAN's Jim Swift. "How do you even get started?"
"With smart guys from MIT," Holt answered.
Those smart guys at Austin's S3 Matching Technologies developed Teramatch, a program that uses computers to analyze information from different databases, from two merging companies, for example, at the same time and makes them speak the same language.
"I'm certain that for every one person that gets caught and is obstructed from buying a firearm, there are two others who should have been but were not," Holt said. "It's that bad. Our software could go a long way to fixing that."
But let's take all this to the extreme: What if every database were entered perfectly? What if every system spoke flawlessly with every other system?
There are those who worry that sort of thing would allow big business, big government, big bogeyman of your choice to know everything there is about every single one of us.
"I don't know if Big Brother would know everything, but your taxes would probably go down by 10 to 20 percent a year," Holt said. "You would be able to buy a firearm if you were a lawful, abiding citizen; you wouldn't be detained at the airport for three hours by mistake; and potentially, potentially, your son or daughter wouldn't be killed at some ridiculous mass shooting at a college that should never have occurred if the technology had been correct."