The ATF Wants 'Massive' Online Database to Find Out Who Your Friends Are | Danger Room | Wired.

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4/8/13 12:52 PM

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The ATF Wants Massive Online Database to Find Out Who Your Friends Are
By Robert Beckhusen 04.05.13 5:40 PM
Follow @rbeckhusen

The ATF is looking to speed up its caseload with an automated database for searching individuals like these cadets during a 2010 civilian training session and discovering the relationships between them. Photo: ATF The ATF doesnt just want a huge database to reveal everything about you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know. And it wont even try to friend you on Facebook first. 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.
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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. Many other specific requirements are also to be expected for a federal law enforcement agency: searching names, phone numbers, nationwide utility data and reverse phone searches. The data will then be collected to help out during investigations and provide relevant information and intelligence products. Theres no hint the database is to be used to track gun sales, which is a big part of the ATFs job, as the bureau is prohibited by law from establishing a centralized electronic database for gun purchases. Its 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 bureaus intelligence analysts already use a number of databases to help piece this information together. But hunting through them for information thats relevant and timely is a mind-numbing and timeconsuming 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. The bureau wants this new system to do all that gathering and research automatically. Which sounds like a good deal, in theory, allowing federal investigators to more easily bust criminals during a hot case. It could potentially give the investigators a lot more information than your sense of privacy may be comfortable with, or information not strictly relevant to a case. At the same time, the ATF is widely perceived as a weak, stagnant and underfunded agency. Even if it has a database that can track you down and find out who your friends are, it wont necessarily be able to apply that to tracing gun transactions due to Congressional restrictions. If the agency finds a gun linked to a crime, and then traces the gun to someone who bought it from someone else, all of that work figuring out the whos-who will still likely have to be done manually. A follow-up document from the ATF clarifies a few things. The database will not consolidate multiple databases the ATF already has access to like LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. The bureau is seeking to buy an existing database system and not fund the development of a completely new one. And it has to be reliable and work all the time. That includes 24-hour tech support for agents pulling those coffee-fueled all-nighter investigations. Its also not an anti-terrorism tool and isnt intended to quickly respond to problems, threats, etc. But putting the ATFs problems with tracing guns aside, it could still help agents track you down a lot faster than they could before along with finding out everything else about you. Related You Might Like Related Links by Contextly

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Robert Beckhusen is a writer based in Austin, Texas, where he covers Latin America for War Is
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Boring. Read more by Robert Beckhusen Follow @rbeckhusen on Twitter. Tags: ATF, intelligence, Justice Department, OSII, Surveillance Post Comment | 179 Comments | Permalink Back to top
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Joey Valentine
252

3 days ago Share

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Reply

Freemon Sandlewould

Joey Valentine a day ago

Bunch of adrenaline junkies join ATF. True story: Guys seek out ATF table at job fair saying "They want to bust down doors"
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Snoop8765

Joey Valentine 2 days ago Reply Share

Yep
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Sue Miller
4

Joey Valentine a day ago Reply Share

Excellent Constitutional concept!

Paul Lucero

Joey Valentine 3 hours ago

Don't laugh this is the same ATF Gang that burn people to death in their homes because they can. Evil is not a strong enough description of this team of people without morals!
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Robin Rhyne

Joey Valentine 7 hours ago

Kinda funny but very kinda true.

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reallyniceguy
170

3 days ago Share

How nice. The "heroes" of Waco back again. This Federal agency needs to go away.
Reply

Cowboydroid

reallyniceguy 3 days ago

This sounds like an unreasonable search to me, and thus a violation of the 4th Amendment. No need to wait for the courts to bust the feds. They took the power from you illegally. Take it back from them.
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ss396
31

Cowboydroid 2 days ago Reply Share

The courts ARE the feds. Don't expect them to bust themselves.

ErnieGjr

Cowboydroid 2 days ago

You beat me to it with your comment. Yours was more succinct, while mine was more long-winded. My compliments.
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manofsan

reallyniceguy 3 days ago

Department of Pre-Crime wants to conduct surveillance on you in advance of that crime they know you're going to commit.
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Maximillian Cunningham

manofsan a day ago

Yeah, and let's continue to fight and kill people worldwide to protect OUR and extend our precious and very special freedumb !
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Dem Slow
31

reallyniceguy 2 days ago Reply Share

Don't forget those "heroes" also were responsible for murders at Ruby Ridge.

Robert Fowler
0

Dem Slow 3 hours ago Share

That was the FBI. Vicky Weaver's murder was a FBI sniper.
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Charles Hammond Jr
13 1

reallyniceguy 2 days ago Share

Don't forget gunwalker.

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This comment is awaiting moderation. Show comment.

OG_Locc
39 1

Teresa Phillip 3 days ago Reply Share

Die spammer.

Agnon Mema
7 1

OG_Locc 2 days ago Reply Share

Just flag and ignore.... Do Not Feed The SPAMMERS.

Scott McCain

3 days ago

This has been in the works for longer than people realize. I worked for a company back in the early 00's that had contracts with scary organizations with three letter initials. They created a product that was touted as a text classifier, but it was really a sophisticated graph analysis program that looked at the relationships between words and letters to try to see if there was any coded information. It made use of complex neural networks and graph based analysis tools. It wasn't a garden variety "text classifier" by any measure. Along comes social networks that make the job of programs like that so much easier. Instead of having to scour unrelated sites and try to mash together unstructured data, social networks, FB chief among them, provide us the data in a nice, friendly API. We can extract the data and relationships and run analysis on those relationships today. Of course, that data is limited to your personal data (or the data of users who have authorized your application), but this is much more sinister. This is the gathering of information without your knowledge, which is tantamount to domestic spying. Just saying....
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Magnum Opus

Scott McCain 3 days ago

The Feds have been doing this since their inception it is called Human Intelligence or HUMINT for short. They send their people into loose social circles then work their way back like candiru. Then the feds create digital dossiers which converts the HUMINT into SYSINT(SYStem INTelligence) which can zip around the globe to wherever it is needed with all the case data integrity held high for perpetual storage. Now, systems are proactively searching for HUMINT via electronic transactions and are updating themselves to stay current.
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RESISTANCE

Magnum Opus 2 days ago

When I worked in HUMINT, it was always involved gathering information on FOREIGN citizens, not our own. This is an Orwellian nightmare coming to life.
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Magnum Opus

RESISTANCE 2 days ago

This is the result of big government at work in times where American freedoms are under assault. You haven't seen nothing yet.
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Thomas Varghese

RESISTANCE a day ago

Are you kidding? Its been here for a while, most people just haven't noticed since most people are not black, hispanic, arab, asian, etc. Besides most people think it will not happen to them since they have not done anything that bad that to warrant such scrutiny. As the folks from the NSA said "we do not monitor calls within the US", what they didn't say was "we do not record calls within the US". Not much of a difference to most of us. But they are telling the "truth". They are even keeping track of comments posted to news sites. So these will go on our records. The really sad part is most folks don't care that private corporations are tracking them everywhere. They can't make the simple connection that the govt. can get those records with a phone call or less. Oh well, we are all just a bunch of sleeping sheep.
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MustBeSaid

Magnum Opus 2 days ago

Illegal is illegal. Doesn't matter how long the government has been doing the illegal activity. There are laws against the collecting of dossiers on innocent citizens. Period.
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Magnum Opus

MustBeSaid 2 days ago

Illegal or necessary evil? There must be a monumental calamity coming our way, with the potential to dwarf 9/11 in order to justify collecting personal dossiers on innocent American citizens. You don't invest the expensive time intensive resources involved to individualize the populace of an entire country unless the threat is so clear, present and imminent. All 330+ million suspects are here at the party, what's next?
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present and imminent. All 330+ million suspects are here at the party, what's next?
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Happeh

Magnum Opus 2 days ago

"You don't invest the expensive time intensive resources involved to individualize the populace of an entire country unless the threat is so clear" Or unless the effort is really being done on behalf of the foreign country that controls America, and then gathering intelligence on Americans makes perfect sense. Everything must be known about the occupied peoples so they cannot rise up and retake their country from the foreign invaders that now control it.
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burntneal

Magnum Opus 3 days ago

***INT typically refers to collection methods not types of information and certainly not storage methods.
3 1

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Redhawke

burntneal 6 hours ago

"INT", is the acronym for Intelligence, or Intel for short. The types of collections are defined by HUM (human, personal contact) or by other means, such as SIGINT (communication devices like cell phones, internet, radio frequencies etc), there are a few more that I cannot think of right now, but contrary to most popular belief, the Govt has had and will continue to have intel on it's population. Is it illegal to collect dossiers on USA citizens? Not with the existence of Patriot Act, National Defense Authorization Act and anything else signed off on by the Dept of Homeland Security (AKA Big Brother).
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craniac
1

Magnum Opus a day ago Reply Share

I know it's wrong, but this sounds like really interesting work.

f0rtylegz

3 days ago

This is sick. America, Americans are terrorized. We have a gigantic military, we have a massive police and prison system. We have millions of Americans working in "security." And yet we are so afraid, so paranoid, that we can't make sense of our lives, and environment.
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I. M. Sirius

f0rtylegz 3 days ago

Welcome to the reality :-) Next level is not to listen to those who will call you conspiracy
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Welcome to the reality :-) Next level is not to listen to those who will call you conspiracy theorist.
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EntropyMan
2

I. M. Sirius 5 hours ago Share

Reynolds Wrap available at all grocery stores.

Reply

kikimonster

3 days ago

What's amazing to me is not the incredible expanion of govt intrusion into our life under the Obama campaign. What is amazing to me is that the same trolls who screamed bloody murder about completley innocuous legislation such as the Patriot Act and insisted they were losing their rights (despite never once having been able to articulate exactly what rights those were) are no completely silent on issues like the NDAA of 2012 and other gross violations of the Constitution. I'm guessing that it's because all those people voted for Obama so now they are too embarrassed to say anything. What cowards.
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DrDean

kikimonster 2 days ago

I don't think it's that they are embarrassed as much as they are combination of brainwashed, deluded and corrupt enough to let the government do whatever it wants as long as it gives them "free" stuff. I wish it were just that these people are too embarrassed.. that could be cured. "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." -- Benjamin Franklin
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Bill Gryan

kikimonster 2 days ago

Remember how they screamed about Guantanamo Bay, golf games, foreign wars? Now they're silent. They are people without principles. Whatever dear leader tells them is right is right, and it can change from week to week. That's what's really scary about the average Obama voter.
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bannedforselfcensorship
15 1

Bill Gryan 2 days ago

4 legs good! 2 legs better!

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MustBeSaid

kikimonster 2 days ago

Yep, Obama is pure garbage but he's only the latest in a line of human trash Presidents. He's certainly the most bold about invasion of privacy and civil liberties. America's enemies are dirt poor terrorist groups, 3rd world countries and drug cartels that only exist because of our war on drugs. Yet somehow we need security measures that go far beyond what we had in the Cold War or even during WWII? How does that make any sense?
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PeteEllis

MustBeSaid 2 days ago

Not dirt poor at all, you would be shocked at their financial resources.The war on drugs has nothing to do with this. Don't confuse being dirt poor with living in shit up to your ears. The bad guys like third world countries because they can operate more freely. They do live in shit up to their ears but that is where the foot soldier recruits are living.
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Gary Bradford
1

MustBeSaid a day ago Share

Are you saying, rich terrorists are better than poor terrorists?
Reply

Ronin

kikimonster 2 days ago

I think that's more in your mind. Anecdotally, I've seen just as many who are against this now, who were against it then. And there are degrees of it. Team O has cranked it up to "11".
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Maximillian Cunningham
1 1

kikimonster a day ago

Ahh no, make that TOO STUPID !

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bobbknight
27

3 days ago Share

Ruby Ridge, Waco, Fast and Furious, The BATFE needs more power to do more good work.
Reply

Agnon Mema
7

bobbknight 2 days ago Share

I hope you meant that as sarcasm......

Reply

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bryancostanich
2

Agnon Mema a day ago Share

of course he did. that's why he referenced specific fuckups.

Reply

Magnum Opus

3 days ago

Well isn't this nice? ATF wants to database who your personal friends are now, for what purposes exactly? I saw this coming down the pipeline with Facebook back in 2003-2004. The ATF probably figured out that out of the 1 billion plus Facebook dumbasses whom a fifth of them are American, they could slip right on the Facebook bandwagon by creating a database that will index personal associations for various 'assessment opportunity work', and the dumbasses wouldn't mind at all! Which most will not mind. Brilliant! I see how by registering with this huge federal endpoint database you could easily be found with the internet drastically shrinking the 6 degrees of separation down to 3 degrees, but nothing more. This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, 'Guilty by association'.
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Robert

Magnum Opus 2 days ago

So how many Facebook apps and games are fronts for the feds? They want you to give them access to your friends list in order to play. From there they have access to FB to monitor everything you post. Just like if you sign in here to Discus with your FB login..
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Areign

Robert a day ago

Zero apps are fronts for the feds, apps are unnecessary for them. They have national security letters (NSL) which any agent possessing a high-school education, GED or better can write. "Give me data because I say I need it." There are no checks and balances on these, the agent isn't required to spell all the words correctly. Why sneak in the backdoor with their own app when they can walk in the front door of Facebook or any company designing an app holding a poorly photocopied letterhead and a hand written note. Your point is well-taken but they are 5 steps ahead of you already.
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TMLutas

2 days ago

Why don't we have a massive online database of government employees to spot the nepotism and other corrupt connections? I'd be happy to fund that one first.
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Bill Gryan

TMLutas 2 days ago

Or even easier, a database of Congressmen's stock trading activity correlated to the days that financial legislation is passed?
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TMLutas

Bill Gryan 2 days ago

Why not both? It's the 21st century. In the US the people rule, why not give them the data tools to properly judge and exercise their power? I'm actually working on the problem: http://www.citizenintelligence...
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