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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

And the felony history never goes away now.

Just think, a child who gets their first smartphone today, will have their entire phone history recorded until death. Their geolocation saved. Their email saved. All their financial transactions. All their friends and family will be known. Every intercontact in society. Where they shop, eat, etc. Who they date.

I mean why would the NSA ever delete it? They can just get taxpayers to fund more and more storage.

I am also starting to wonder about the new requirement to digitize all medical records and how many contractors will have access to that as well and when all the databases will be allowed to intersect in the name of "security".

But I suspect the NSA doesn't know how many guns you own. That alone is somehow seen as a violation of your rights.

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I work with a Muslim from Yemen at an investment bank. He's as American as anyone I know but be recently got a gun permit and got a visit from the FBI about a week later. They wanted to know if he felt threatened, if there were problems at his Mosque, why he wanted a gun, if there was anyone at his Mosque who used hate speech, etc.

Something tells me he government knows if you have a gun.

Hmm, well "muslim" isn't a nationality, it's a religion almost as big as christianity. is he an American citizen?

Because otherwise that is profiling. They don't show up and ask others if there is any problems at their church or anyone using hate speech about the government at the church.

almost as big?

check your data.

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

That link says that Christianity is 40% larger than Islam, so it is significantly larger.

"almost as big?"

You're right - it's actually only 2/3 as big.

Thanks.

The ATF form 4473 (purchase record) is a paper record that gets stored at the local gun shop until they go out of business (upon which they all get sent to the ATF for scanning). It records the model, serial #, purchaser, etc. However, when you make a purchase the national instant background check (NICS) people do a national records search (to see if you're a felon, or other class of person not permitted to own a gun). The systems they query record who ask for information (security audit records, basically) so in those systems it will show that a NICS check was performed. Thus tying together the info that John Q. Public just bought a gun of some type.

At the state & local level, several states require you to get a Firearm Owners ID (FOID) or purchase permit. The background checks for these are also an indicator that John Q. Public is a (probable) gun owner.

I can say with certainty that as of 6 years ago, 4473 checks were not retained in any way by the ATF or the federal government.

There are local copies of the paperwork retained the FFL in which the sale took place, and those are required to be kept for a period of time and, should the FFL ever close shop, those records are shipped to the ATF, possibly revealing record data to them, but at least at the point of the NICS check, the data is not retained at all.

> I can say with certainty that as of 6 years ago, 4473 checks were not retained in any way by the ATF or the federal government.

To clarify, are you saying that no government entity retains either the 4473 or the NICS check records, or are you only speaking about the 4473 itself?

4473 and e-4473 (which both effectively follow the same process).

That said, the NICS system is managed and run by the FBI, so I can't speak authoritatively there. In dealing with them regarding it though, the impression I got from their tech team was that it wasn't storing anything past receipt acknowledgement, and even where it stored data, the implication was that it only stored the metadata there as well, uniquely identified by the NICS transaction ID.

I ask because several FFLs have reported having their local ATF agent bring printouts of their NICS check histories to check against the bound book.

If true, clearly someone would have to be holding NICS records and the ATF would have to have access to them.

So, it's possible for them to hold the NICS check without holding the person data. NICS is identified by a transaction ID and, at least as I understood it (NICS is an FBI system, so we had limited insight from the ATF, and as a contractor, I had possibly less insight than an ATF agent proper), the PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is purged from the NICS check upon completion of the check.

There might be, and probably is (at least) a record of the transactions that were processed and the result of the transaction. Also, as I understand it, if the check fails (hence, no gun is disbursed), then the PII may be held longer to aid potential investigations.

From the ATF's perspective though, PII definitely isn't kept, or at least wasn't as of 6 years ago. I honestly don't remember the specs on failed checks. I don't think that it did, but that isn't to say that if they are prepping for an investigation of an FFL that they couldn't requery the FBI for more thorough NICS records than what they hold in their own systems.

Ok, thanks.

That's good information on the NICS records. It would seem, though, that given the information in the NICS check record and information attainable from a mandatory bound book inspection that the end result would be the personally identifying information of the transferee. It is good, at least, that this would necessarily be a manual process.

I've always thought that the most querulous position the ATF has taken was on FFL closure. If an FFL closes up shop for any reason, they must ship all their records to the ATF.

I don't have any personal insight into what happens to them after that, but it seems like at least a sparse, time-delayed registry could be built from those records... which is perhaps the best kind of registry as private sales would skew the data substantially.

More likely, the guy at the gun store called the "See something, say something" number.

Or your friend (or someone with a similar name) is on a list. A friend of mine with a very common name (think John Smith) had a similar experience after getting a license from a local jurisdiction.

I've become more bearish about the idea of electronic medical records. The ability for a bureaucracy to keep those safe seems far, far off in the future, no matter what technology advances come through.

And guns: well, if you're pro-gun-control, this mindset (justified or not) should help you understand why the NRA is so passionately against gun registration of any kind.

In terms of the NSA: I don't think they care much for your felony record -- that is, the ones you've actually been convicted for -- they're more concerned about pre-felonies, of course. For the average citizen, though, the persistence of criminal history is going to be felt in more everyday situations, such as job searches and landlord background checks.

If I ever have a child, he or she is going to have a name like "Pat Smith", regardless of my or the mother's last name.

We should all today make a pact to name our children "Spartacus" with no last name.

And give them burner phones.

I'm in, got a site?

Sorry I should have said "potential felony history never goes away".

Basically:

we want to talk to this person about their friend, let's see what we can bring them in for and threaten them with so they talk...

All this NSA discovery has made a lot of damage.

As an example, the NRA doesn't sound so crazy any more. And that is bad.

What is so bad about realizing that a group you've considered a bunch of crazies -- which perhaps was an inherited or taught viewpoint -- might actually be right about something?

You have no obligation to buy a belt-fed machine gun in the wake of your realization. Just understand that REAL government has a little more complexity -- and lower ethical standards -- than what you were told in Civics class.

Still can't understand why gun registration is supposed to be so awful but car registration is apparently perfectly fine.

Cars are typically much more expensive than guns and we equate car thievery today to cattle thievery of yesterday - we take it quite personally.

Registering a car is simply an excuse for the government to charge you money to use your vehicle. Really, it doesn't reduce vehicle crime, although it does make stealing cars tougher. But you wouldn't need to charge a registration fee for that.

Also, guns have serial numbers like cars. If yours is stolen, hopefully you wrote down the serial so that if the cops ever find it it will be returned to you (unless used in a violent crime, and then I think you are just SOL).

A gun registry wouldn't reduce crime because criminals don't use their guns, they are either stolen or straw purchases. Otherwise, with violent crimes of passion that utilize guns it's very clear cut where the weapon comes from.

Because a car isn't as valuable tool when it comes to protecting yourself from tyranny (in the NRA's opinion). The NRA's point is that the government should be incapable of immediately identifying which citizens would be capable of forcibly resisting it, for the protection of those citizens who can resist (so that they aren't singled out) and those who can't (so that the government doesn't just pick easy targets).

Hmm... does the NRA keep a registry of its members?

A voluntary registry, but point still taken.

Yeah, I'm not trying to point out hypocrisy or anything silly like that. Still, it does seem at odds. Certainly, if I were running an oppressive government in the US, the list of NRA members would be top priority.

You only have to register your car if you plan to drive in on public roads. Most gun registration proposals would require registration whether or not you were using the gun on public lands. You already have to have a hunting permit to hunt on public lands (or to take publicly owned wildlife on private land) in most states. The purpose behind gun registration is very different.

If you don't think gun registries would be abused in the US- look at the State of Missouri recently leaking its CCW database to the IRS and even worse- look at what happened in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in Louisianna, where guns were stolen by armed members of the military from law-abiding citizens.

I've seen that "public roads" thing mentioned a lot. In practice, I don't see how it matters: to a very good approximation, nobody buys a car not to drive it on public roads.

Yes, that is very much true. That is why I outlined other examples to illustrate the differences- intent and effect of the two systems are very different.

"But I suspect the NSA doesn't know how many guns you own. That alone is somehow seen as a violation of your rights"

Have you purchased a firearm in the US from a licensed dealer recently? There's paper/digital record of most firearm purchase in most cases, with a few exceptions. There's a cursory background check ran too.

(In the case of most US citizens the government doesn't care about small arms. Most are used for sporting, hunting or deterrence.)

You can purchase firearms for cash from many dealers (at gun shows) without either a background check or a paper trail.

This is one of the exceptions I mentioned. Also known as the "gun show loophole".

Not true. If they are a dealer, then paperwork is required.

If they are a private individual (not in the business of selling firearms) then yes. But that's no different than buying a used deer rifle from your neighbor.

Not true. If the purchase is from an actual dealer with a Federal Firearms License then a 4473 (ATF form) must be filled out and an accompanying background check will be made. If the purchase is between two non-dealers then there is no requirement in many states for a background check or paperwork, so long as both are residents of the same state the transaction occurs in.

However, all new guns are (since 1968) purchased from a licensed dealer, so there is always the beginning of a paper trail. How far that goes before it gets muddled in private sales is another matter.

I believe it should be noted that federal law requires an FFL for anybody engaged in a "primary business" of selling guns. There's no bright line, here. People who regularly sell guns (at gun shows, or otherwise) but don't hold FFLs are playing with fire, if the ATF decides to take an interest in them.

> However, all new guns are (since 1968) purchased from a licensed dealer, so there is always the beginning of a paper trail.

My understanding is that there is technically an exception to this where you can manufacture your own firearms so long as you stay under the yearly limit and do not manufacture them with the intent of distributing them. Once you have done so, you can then distribute them as a private citizen.

That reads weird because the legality of distributing it depends on if you can assert that distribution was not your intent when you made it. This means this is probably not a very practical exception, as it potentially involves you arguing something rather nebulous in court.

The dealer maintains their own record but those are not handed over to the government and it is not possible to do lookups by a person's name, only by serial number. So police can trace ownership history of a specific weapon, by going from dealer to dealer - until it has entered the private market - but they cannot get a list of everyone that owns a weapon.

I'm not so sure that most US firearm purchases are recorded.

In many US states, direct private gun sales are perfectly legal. For instance, a Pennsylvania resident can directly sell (most) guns to another PA resident. They don't need to run background checks, keep records, or submit forms to the government. As long as the buyer doesn't know that the seller is a prohibited person (convicted/indicted felon, etc), it's kosher.

Because these sales aren't documented or reported, it's harder to count them. There are estimates, but I can't find anything that seems reliable. I did find an interesting article that discusses this issue at length, though:

* http://www.policymic.com/articles/24070/gun-control-policy-u...

Anecdotally, I know dozens of people who've collectively purchased many, many guns through private sales. Also, take a peek at Armslist.com, GunBroker.com, GunAuction.com, GunsAmerica.com, and similar sites.

I just wanted to clarify: private sales are person-to-person and cannot include any sort of shipment.

Online sales such as all the sites you listed are required by Federal law to only ship to a licensed Federal Firearms License holder who in turn may only transfer to customers after a NICS check. So, online sales are as cumbersome as in-store purchases.

Anything with a NICS check or credit card purchase is potentially trackable.

Also, with a gun registry [proposed in various places], sufficiently smart data mining, and fast processing, it may be possible to detect an ammunition purchase [via credit card] in a caliber in which the buyer supposedly doesn't have a registered firearm.

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