Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I rise in support of the bill, but to encourage the committee and this Congress moving forward to better address the issue of gaps in our missing persons database system. On August 24, a 31-year-old resident of my district, Billy Smolinsky, went missing. Sadly, foul play is suspected. And to this day, his parents, Janice and Bill, still don't know what happened to their son. What they found out, when they tried to go online to find databases that helped identify remains that had been found and missing adults, was that there is no central repository of information, and the databases that do exist don't communicate with each other. In fact, up until 2 years ago, there wasn't even a database that was open to the public, there were only databases that were available to private law enforcement.

Today, we have the Name Us database, which is available to individuals and families who are looking to try and find this kind of information, and yet it doesn't have enough information. The private databases that are run by the FBI don't communicate with these public databases.

And so I come to the floor this evening simply to encourage my colleagues in appropriations bills going forward to make sure that we look to appropriating funds to allow for this kind of transfer of information to make sure that families like the Smolinskys all across this country have access to the best and most accurate information possible to try to press their cases going forward.

I understand that there are legitimate privacy concerns regarding what kind of information the FBI might share with this public database, but I think that we can solve those problems and create a much more comprehensive public database for families going forward. I look forward to that conversation in coming appropriations bills.

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