The ATF Wants ‘Massive’ Online Database to Find Out Who Your Friends Are

Wired

The ATF is looking to speed up its caseload with an automated database for searching individuals — like these cadets during a 2010 civilian training session — and discovering the relationships between them. Photo: ATF

The ATF doesn’t just want a huge database to reveal everything about you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know. And it won’t even try to friend you on Facebook first.

According to a recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the bureau is looking to buy a “massive online data repository system” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII). The system is intended to operate for at least five years, and be able to process automated searches of individuals, and “find connection points between two or more individuals” by linking together “structured and unstructured data.”-[Full Article]