A Bipartisan Group Of Senators Suggests the NSA May Have Illegally Created A National Gun Registry

by John Hawkins | July 1, 2013 6:22 am

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We still don’t know the extent of the NSA’s unconstitutional spying on Americans, but disturbingly, there is now a bipartisan group of senators suggesting that it may have been trying to create a gun database.

Senators are questioning whether the National Security Agency collected bulk data on more than just Americans’ phone records, such as firearm and book purchases.

A bipartisan group of 26 senators, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to detail the scope and limits of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities in a letter released Friday.

“We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the PATRIOT Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law,” the senators wrote in the letter.

…The senators noted that the federal government’s authority under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act is broad and rife with potential for abuse. Among the senators’ concerns was whether the NSA’s bulk data harvesting program could be used to construct a gun registry or violate other privacy laws.

“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,” the senators wrote. “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.”

The senators asked Clapper in the letter whether the NSA used PATRIOT Act authorities to conduct bulk collection of other types of records, and whether there are any instances of the agency violating a court order in the process of such collections.

Civil libertarians say such surveillance is a violation of privacy. However, the government has defended the program, saying it helped thwart several terrorist attacks and is minimally invasive.

Second Amendment groups and Republican members of Congress have long warned against the creation of a national gun registry. Fears of such a registry bogged down several attempts to forge a bipartisan gun-control bill in the Senate earlier this year.

Do these senators know something that we don’t? That’s entirely possible and it would be just like the Obama Administration to illegally use its own authority to do something after Congress told it “no.” Unconstitutionally spying on the American people is not acceptable and if anyone in the Obama Administration has gone outside the law to create a gun registry, he belongs in a jail cell. The only way we’re ever going to get the truth is if we get multiple people from the NSA under oath in front of Congress. The sooner that happens the better.

Endnotes:
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