GOA Demands Investigation Into ATF’s Leaking of Personal Information

There’s a lot of information about you that you don’t want out in the public. Your social security number is a big one, but it’s far from everything. Trust me here, if someone starts finding that information, they can terrify you with what may seem to them a polite phone call.

Data breaches happen, which is part of why we don’t want certain people or companies to have information they really don’t need.

It’s another when the reason your information is out in the public sphere is because of, at best, gross incompetence by federal employees. That apparently happened, and Gun Owners of America is demanding answers as to how.

From a press release:

Erich Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America (GOA), has formally requested that the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) launch an immediate investigation into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the DOJ’s Civil Division. The request follows a series of alarming breaches in which the government intentionally filed, on a public court docket, the sensitive tax returns of a GOA member, along with details of this person’s private firearm collection.

During ongoing litigation in Silencer Shop Found. v. BATFE, DOJ attorneys representing the ATF intentionally filed the sensitive tax information and National Firearms Act (NFA) tax returns of a GOA member on a public docket. These disclosures included:

• Two approved ATF “Forms 1,” which legally constitute protected tax returns.
• In a negligent (but presumably inadvertent) move, the government failed to redact the GOA’s member’s name, city, and state.
• The ATF then provided a declaration detailing the exact number of NFA items owned by the GOA member, essentially providing a “map” of the member’s personal firearm collection to the public.

Under 26 U.S.C. § 6103, NFA registration forms are strictly prohibited from public disclosure. Despite this, even after being alerted to the breach and attempting to correct the filings, the DOJ inexcusably publicized much of the same sensitive information a second time.

“The sensitivity of this information cannot be understated, nor can the severity of DOJ and ATF’s breach of personal privacy and possible violations of federal law,” stated Erich Pratt in his letter to Acting Inspector General William M. Blier.

GOA is demanding a formal investigation to determine the specific circumstances that led to this disclosure and to identify the officials responsible for the decision to refile protected records. The investigation seeks to uncover:

• Whether these actions constitute a breach of federal statutes, regulations, or policies.
• What warnings, if any, the ATF provided to the DOJ regarding the sensitivity of the data.
• What new procedures will be implemented to prevent the government from “doxing” gun owners in the future.

“The millions of gun owners represented by Gun Owners of America expect a prompt, transparent, and complete investigation of this matter,” Pratt concluded.

John Velleco, Executive Vice President of Gun Owners Foundation, issued the following statement:

“Gun Owners of America will not stand idly by while the government weaponizes protected tax information on a public forum. We are as committed to defending our members’ privacy as we are to defending the Second Amendment, and this egregious violation must be reviewed with the utmost seriousness.”

Erich Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America, issued the following statement:

“The government has no right to dox gun owners or broadcast their private tax returns to the world. GOA will not stay silent while federal agencies flout the law to target our members. We take our members’ security as seriously as their constitutional rights, and we will fight to ensure this never happens again.”

At the very least, someone needs to get fired over this. Leaking someone’s personal information, which includes what NFA items they own and their exact address – can’t imagine why some criminal might find that handy – is beyond ridiculous. No one with half a brain can look at that and think that they’re not doing something wrong.

I know that when I was in boot camp back in the early 90s, we got classes on personal information and how important it was to keep it secret. You can’t tell me that ATF employees don’t get at least as much training, if not more. After all, we were incoming sailors, most of whom wouldn’t have access to personal information beyond their own. I got more in Corps School, since I was given access to a ton of data you don’t want public.

This was also well before the onslaught of the internet, when doxxing became super easy to do.

There’s no way this was the result of someone’s good-faith mistake. They didn’t know this wasn’t permissible. They had to know, and it happened anyway. I’m not saying it was intentional, necessarily, though I don’t rule that out as it would make a fine intimidation tactic, but it still happened.

GOA wants answers and, frankly, so do I.

Of course, if another agency did this to a litigant, the mainstream media would be all over it, especially during the Trump administration. Instead, we’re largely going to hear crickets from the big boys. They don’t care about gun owners in the least, even if protecting people’s privacy is something everyone should care about equally.

Still, we care, and we’re loud enough that we can and should demand answers for what happened. We’re loud enough that, hopefully, we’ll get them.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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