years of our life. Retrieval is impractical and often impossible. A central data bank removes completely this safeguard. I have every confidence that ways will be found for all of us to benefit from the great advances of the computer men, but those benefits must never be purchases at the price of our freedom to live as individuals with private lives..." [2, p.6].
There is another threat inherent in merging data files. Some of the data may be in error. More than 60,000 state and local agencies, for example provide information tot he National Crime Information Center and it is accessed by law officers nearly 400,000 times a day. Yet studies show that over 4% of the stolen vehicle entries, 6% of the warrant entries, and perhaps as much as one half of the local law enforcement criminal history records are in error. At risk is the safety of the law enforcement officers who access it, the effectiveness of the police in controlling crime, and the freedom of the citizens who names appear in the files. This leads to a concern for accuracy.
Accuracy
Misinformation has a way of fouling up people's lives, especially when the party with the inaccurate information has an advantage in power and authority. Consider the plight of one Louis Marches. Marches, an immigrant, was a hard working man who, with his wife Eileen, finally saved enough money to purchase a home in Los Angeles during the 1950s. They took out a long term loan from Crocker National Bank. Every month Louis Marches would walk to his neighborhood bank, loan coupon book in hand, to make his payment of $196.53. He always checked with care to insured that the teller had stamped "paid" in his book on the proper line just opposite the month for which the payment was due. And he continued to do this long after the bank had converted to its automated loan processing system.
One September a few years ago Marches was notified by the bank that he had failed to make his current house payment. Marches grabbed his coupon book, marched to the bank and, in broken English that showed traces of his country heritage, tried to explain