A bipartisan group of 26 senators, led by Oregon's Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, have sent Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper a letter demanding details on the NSA's collection of data on American citizens, including whether the Obama administration is collecting firearm sales records which can be used as a gun owner database aka registry, which violates the Firearms Owners' Protection Act.
From the letter which will be embedded below the post, it states: "we are troubled by the possibility of this bulk collection authority being applied to other categories of records. The PATRIOT Act's businesses records authority is very broad in its scope. It can be used to collect information on credit card purchases, pharmacy records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information, and a range of other sensitive subjects. And the bulk collection authority could potentially be used to supersede
bans on maintaining gun owner databases, or laws protecting the privacy
of medical records, financial records, and records of book and movie
purchases. Theses other types of bulk collection could clearly have a significant impact on Americans' privacy and liberties as well."The ban on maintaining gun owner databases, is part of the Firearms Owners' Protection Act where it states :
No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established.
Democrats in Congress already tried, and failed, to bypass that law under the guise of a broad "background check" bill which would have included the ability to establish a database, but the bipartisan group of Senators are clearly trying to find out if the Obama administration is using their interpretation of the PATRIOT Act, to simply ignore the ban against the government maintaining a gun owners' registry.
Remember, in February 2013, Democratic lawmaker Maxine Waters confirmed, and in fact boasted, that Barack Obama "has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life." She continued on to say "That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before."
[WATCH]
With the recently revealed scope of spying the NSA has conducted against Americans, including but not limited to obtaining access to three months of phone records on all Verizon users, data on Americans from at least nine major tech companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple, the recent revelation that Americans' financial information is also being accessed without a warrant and much more, the concerns of these 26 Senators are quite legitimate.
Letter to DNI Clapper uploaded by Susan Duclos
