BY Herschel Smith
8 years, 4 months ago
The Trace:
The government takes making gun records difficult to search quite seriously. A Government Accountability Office report released August 1 concluded that in two data systems, the ATF did not always comply with “restrictions prohibiting consolidation or centralization” of records. The GAO, which is entrusted with ensuring that federal agencies follow the law, was essentially chiding the ATF for making it a bit easier for its hundreds of investigators to do their jobs.
Alarmed headlines from conservative publications followed. A Fox News pundit falsely claimed the report found the agency had “a list of every gun owner and every gun owned.”
Congress imposes conflicting directives on the ATF. The agency is required to trace guns, but it must use inefficient procedures and obsolete technology. Lawmakers in effect tell the agency to do a job, but badly.
Investigators scan and save them as digital image files. They are like online piles of paper, or PDFs, arranged by one field only.
Trick question: The system can’t really be considered a database. (There is a reason the ATF uses the phrase “data systems” instead). There is no ability to search the text of a file, and no effort is made to tag files with identifiers that could later be used to sort and search. “We compare it to an electronic card catalog system, where records are digitally imaged, but not optimized for character recognition,” ATF spokesman Corey Ray says.
The only thing better than obsolete technology would be nothing at all – no records, no cards, no PDFs. Because, “shall not be infringed.” Besides, one can quite easily turn this into a system capable of OCR.
I say trash all of the records in a gigantic fire, with celebratory partying and great fanfare.
