The ATF Wants To Know Who Your Friends Are

i_want_you_to_throw_ writes "You have a Friend Request from: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms... 'Confirm'? 'Not Now'? Seriously, the ATF won't try to friend you on Facebook. The ATF doesn't just want a huge database to reveal everything about you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know. 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)."

Comments

Convenience Store

[Anonymous Coward]

In a truely free country the ATF would be a convenience store and not a government agency. In a free country you would be able to buy your alcohol, tobacco, firearms AND explosives from an ATF convenience store.

Keep your friends close

[roman_mir]

Keep your friends close but keep ATF closer.

AFAIK FB 'friends' in most cases are not exactly what one would consider to be a friend IRL. I mean if you have 1000 friends, what does that mean?

An old tale:

A young man decided to get married, he was busy and asked his father to call 50 people on a list. He said "these are my friends, can you call them and invite them for the wedding ceremony?" The father agreed.
On his wedding day the son confronted his father "I asked you to call all of my friends", "and so I did", "but there were 50 people on my list and I only see 15". "Son, I called all 50 people and told each one of them that you have a problem and you need help and they should meet with you in this exact location at this exact time, so don't worry, all your friends are here now".

Back to the story: of-course government wants to know everything about you, don't you understand, it's for the collective good.

Terror Wins

[b4upoo]

The ATF wanting such a database is like terror turned inward. Are we really in such danger that we need all kinds of agencies studying the public? I think it is a bit much. And I am very aware that such information has been compiled, one way or another, since at least the 1950s..

Red Scare v2.0

[l0ungeb0y]

Seeing that our Government already did an end run around our First Amendment Rights to Freedom of Association in 1950 with the Red Scare under a Republican President, it only goes to follow that we now embrace the Democrat's Gun Scare under Obama.

IT. IS. WHAT. THE. PEOPLE. WANT. AFTER. ALL.

I mean, haven't we already seen a handful of news organisations and blogs outing local gun owners to shame the thousands of gun owners and invite them to be harassed, assaulted or worse? Already, we rightly expell kids from the school system for pointing a finger and saying "pew pewpew" and even dodgeball is facing bannination from the school ground for it's abject violence -- and you better bury those FPS like CoD in your backyard before "we" find them.

Why you ask? Why not? Why not going after anyone who's ever used or owned a gun?
After all, they must be bad people -- and if you know someone who owns a gun, you are probably a pretty bad person your self.

So choose your Facebook friends wisely, or you might have to suffer the "consequences".

When has it gone too far?

[Feyshtey]

When will the public finally decide that the US Govt has gone too far? Honestly I would have thought it'd been years ago. The left was going batshit crazy 6+ years ago about the imperialistic Bush administration, but apparently the new flavor of crazy this administration is pulling is all hunky dory.

Re:When has it gone too far?

[Feyshtey]

So in summary;
The left theorizes that giving this President more power is not as harmfull as if it were Bush because this President is more responsible.

The problem is that the left hasnt the foresight to recognize that the American public is entirely capable of electing someone equally or exponentialy worse than Bush.

Re:When has it gone too far?

[Anonymous Coward]

The one good thing that is happening is that a lot of people who voted for Obama are starting to see that the emperor truly has no clothes:

His platform of peace and ending wars has turned into more wars. His economic recovery consists of an inflated stock market propped up by printing $3,000,000,000 a day and a "falling" unemployment number caused by 9,400,000 people leaving the work force since he took office and more each month. His promise of transparent government has turned into a total farce. He throws a bone to drug-rights or gay-rights activists just often enough to keep them strung along. He continues the wars on the first, fourth and fifth amendments that Bush started, and now he's added a war on the second.

Come January 20, 2017 so many people on the left are going to be absolutely fed up with him. Hopefully the people on the right will maintain their anger, direct it towards the new (R) president, and together they can be mad enough at the government to get something changed.

I mean really changed this time.

Not Obama "changed."

The ATF needs a slapdown

[kawabago]

Their goals are ridiculous in free country. A country isn't free if it's government knows what everyone is doing all the time. Besides that, why weren't they asking for this information 10 or 20 years ago? People had connections in the past but the government never sought to know everyone's. The only result of all this total information awareness so far is to find out the CIA Director was having an affair. Billions of dollars could be better spent on infrastructure.

My friends?

[jcr]

My friends are anyone who upholds the bill of rights. Sounds like that doesn't include anyone in the ATF.

-jcr