In April of 2021, AmmoLand News learned from a source inside the FBI that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was using the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to monitor Americans’ gun purchases. These Americans were not prohibited people and were not guilty of any crime. Many of the subjects were not even suspected of a crime. The ATF monitored people for their associations and the feeling that the target might commit a crime in the future. The NICS monitoring program was open to all ATF agents and departments that wanted to monitor someone. The subjects of the surveillance were never notified by either the ATF or FBI.
After the story went public, the FBI admitted that the program did exist but spun it as a key tool for law enforcement to prevent straw purchases. Most privacy advocates pushed back and believed that it was an overreaching government hellbent on violating the gun buyers’ privacy. One unknown thing was the exact number of people the FBI was monitoring for the ATF.
The controversial program caught the eye of Gun Owners of America (GOA), who wanted to know precisely how many American citizens were being watched by the program. GOA launched a multi-year fight to get the information by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to force the ATF to turn over documents that might answer the public’s questions. GOA threatened to take the fight to court to get the documents. The ATF would finally relent but accidentally released the unredacted documents to the gun rights groups. This slip-up led to another battle when the ATF tried to gag the gun rights organization’s lawyers by claiming that the documents were not in the public interest.
Click the link to read the whole article: FOIA Shows the Extent of ATF Monitoring
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