The ATF may want to know who you hang with. But don't expect them to 'Friend' you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. They won't need to; your life will be an open database.
I've come to the unfortunate conclusion over the past few years that it's not only the press in this country that has become lazy -- trading in their inherent sense of curiosity and their investigative skill sets -- for better access to Washington power players and a stenographer's pad. It seems like government agencies have also taken the leisurely path to a paycheck as well. All it takes these days is a gentle nudge and taxpayer money to compel telecoms to track your every move and find out who your friends are.
The ATF has shown itself to be one such government agency. They've put out the word that they're officially looking to buy an expansive database. But the ATF doesn't want one that will reveal who you are by using a couple keywords. They want a super-duper database that can find out who your friends are with a single keystroke.
Wired.com has the story:
According to a recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the bureau is looking to buy a *“massive online data repository system.” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII). The system is intended to operate for at least five years, and be able to process automated searches of individuals, and “find connection points between two or more individuals” by linking together “structured and unstructured data.”
Primarily, the ATF states it wants the database to speed-up criminal investigations. Instead of requiring an analyst to manually search around for your personal information, the database should “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches” such as social security numbers (or even just a fragment of one), vehicle serial codes, age range, “phonetic name spelling,” or a general area where your address is located. Input that data, and out comes your identity, while the computer automatically establishes connections you have with others
*Note: ATF's bid proposal @ above link is a fascinating read.
But don't count on the ATF to use this shiny, new database to track people's gun purchases, which ostensibly would seem to be within their purview. It just so happens that the ATF is prohibited by federal law from using a database to track firearms purchases. The agency still has to track weapons manually.
Figure that one out.
More from the article:
It’s necessary to note, however, that the ATF already does most of these things. Tracking down your identity, financial data, and finding connections between you and your kinfolk — your relatives, friends and business associates — is what criminal investigations are all about. And the bureau’s intelligence analysts already use a number of databases to help piece this information together.
But hunting through them for information that’s relevant and timely is a mind-numbing and time-consuming job. “Many of these tasks are performed manually,” the solicitation states, “resulting in longer turnaround times on important information and intelligence research and analysis requests.”
It's interesting to note here that the ATF already has access to databases at
LexisNexis and
Thomson Reuters. But they won't be consolidating their access to those databases with the one they're proposing now. The proposed existing database will work independently to automatically gather and research information on the subject of the search, and will reveal private information not strictly relevant to the specific case they're working on. Besides not tracking gun purchases, the database will also not be used as an anti-terrorism tool. Nor will it be utilized to help agents respond quickly to problems, threats, etc.
It's not clear if this database request is intended to make up for the fact that the ATF is considered one of the weakest, most underfunded law enforcement agencies in the country, the fact of which could be attributable at least in part to Senate Republicans' continuous filibuster threat to any potential nomination of a director by President Obama.
Of course, with massive databases like the one being proposed by the ATF, along with the provisos included in the CISPA bill, almost every government agency and department -- weak or strong, funded or unfunded -- has the potential to becoming the closest thing on the planet to omnipotent entities.
But what's puzzling to me the most is this: if this new database isn't to be used to fight terrorism... or track firearms sales -- or even to help the government respond quicker to problems and criminal threats -- exactly what in the hell is it going to be used for?
Wait... don't answer that.