Washington, D.C. – New revelations confirm that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has been utilizing facial recognition technology to identify gun owners, sparking alarm among civil liberties advocates and Second Amendment supporters.
The controversy resurfaced following the July 13, 2024, attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Shortly after, an FBI preliminary report released by Senator Ron Johnson revealed that law enforcement sent photos of the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, to the ATF for facial recognition purposes. This revelation has led to renewed scrutiny of the agency’s involvement in biometric surveillance.
ATF’s Facial Recognition Program Exposed
According to a 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the ATF has access to various facial recognition systems, including Clearview AI, Vigilant Solutions, and databases maintained by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. These systems allow authorities to compare facial images against a database of billions of online photos, including images scraped from social media, news sites, and mugshot databases.
Gun Owners of America (GOA), has raised concerns that the ATF could use this technology to identify law-abiding gun owners. A previous GAO report found that the ATF conducted at least 549 facial recognition searches between October 2019 and March 2022, but agency officials later claimed to have halted the practice as of April 2023.
However, recent events suggest otherwise.
AmmoLand News Puts Pressure on ATF
In 2024, AmmoLand News worked to get the ATF on record regarding its use of facial recognition technology. Through investigative reporting and direct inquiries, AmmoLand pressed the agency for answers on how it was using biometric data and whether this technology was being integrated with ATF’s already extensive firearm transaction records. The publication’s efforts, alongside scrutiny from Senator Ron Johnson’s office, helped uncover that the ATF continued using facial recognition despite prior claims to have ceased the practice.
Facial Recognition Used in Assassination Attempt Investigation
Following the July 13, 2024, shooting of Trump, law enforcement officers from Beaver County, PA, and the Allegheny County Bomb Squad took multiple photos of Crooks, his cellphone, and a suspected remote-triggering device. According to reports, these images were sent to a phone number associated with the ATF in Philadelphia for facial recognition purposes.
The ATF’s involvement has raised red flags, given that biometric identifications typically fall under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Secret Service.
Why was the ATF tasked with identifying the shooter using facial recognition technology? Critics argue that if the ATF can analyze a suspected assassin’s face in a high-profile case, they could easily use the same technology to track and target law-abiding gun owners.
Precedent Set in New Jersey
The ATF is not the only agency accused of misusing facial recognition technology to track firearm owners. In New Jersey, where gun control laws are among the strictest in the country, state officials used Clearview AI to cross-reference suspects’ faces with gun registration databases. Attorney General Gurbir Grewal later banned the use of Clearview AI, citing concerns that it was “racially biased and inaccurate.”
This case, however, proves that the technology already exists and has been used to identify legal gun owners. GOA has warned that the ATF could combine facial recognition databases with its nearly 1 billion firearm transaction records, creating a de facto national gun registry.
A National Gun Registry by Another Name?
For years, gun rights advocates have warned that the ATF has been illegally compiling a digital gun owner registry. While the agency insists its database is “not searchable by name”, critics argue that facial recognition technology could allow federal agents to bypass this limitation and instantly identify firearm purchasers.
The Senate is currently debating funding for “Law Enforcement Advanced Analytics,” a vague term that GOA believes could be used to finance ATF’s expansion of facial recognition programs. If passed, this funding could provide the ATF with the tools to monitor and track law-abiding gun owners on an unprecedented scale.
Call to Action
Gun rights organizations, including GOA, are urging Americans to contact their representatives in Congress and demand that no funding be allocated for the ATF’s facial recognition programs. Critics argue that allowing the ATF to merge biometric tracking with gun purchase records is a direct violation of the Second Amendment and an overreach of federal power.
As concerns mount over the ATF’s role in facial recognition surveillance, gun owners and civil liberties groups alike are warning that this technology could be used to enforce unconstitutional gun control measures and pave the way for future firearm confiscation.
The fight over government surveillance of gun owners is far from over, and the latest revelations about the ATF’s involvement only add fuel to the fire.
The question remains: How far will federal agencies go to track law-abiding Americans?
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Trump Survives Assassination Attempt, Shooter Neutralized at Rally
ATF Agent Caught Creating Illegal Gun Registry with Personal Cellphone
Hitler’s gestapo would be proud. Those cameras at every intersection ain’t there for nothing. Your new drivers license photo is no coincidence either. This is part of the reasoning for getting rid of private firearm sales, some power hungery communist/demoncrap wants to know where the guns are so they can be confiscated. Doesn’t happen? Hitler registered firearms, “For a kinder gentler nation.” The world lived happily ever after right? Nope, more than 60 MILLION CIVILIANS were killed during WW-2. Stalin did the same thing. Mao did the same. Pol Pot did the same. The list goes on. Love is something… Read more »
It will only get worse. Privacy is not really the issue here, the issue becomes mismanagement of the system and the content in that system. You’ll be marked a killer when in fact you just a Patriot. They’ll rely heavily on their access to massive Ai+qubit computing center in Utah to process data. Now you’ll think twice about going out in public without a full face mask. If lefty idiots come back into office with full control, which is just a matter of time and not if, they will use the system as a weapon.
Just more proof that the ATF is a rogue agency that needs defunded and disbanded . When their game is deception and lies ,we the people can no longer trust these Marxist a$$ wipes .
The NSA has been aquiring our photos,emails,and phone records for years now. There’s really no sense in getting unstrung
lol all yall using Facebook and believing you ain’t in facial recognition databases.
Another thing to be concerned about is the “Flock surveillance cameras “. They are popping up everywhere. The Flock surveillance cameras take photos of your vehicle and license plate numbers and send the information to thousands of police department across America ( who signed up for the service). They can start a record of when you are driving and what time you are out. Articles have said that innocent people have been arrested by police as the Flock surveillance cameras misread dirty.license plates, or the camera lens was dirty or foggy or it was raining or snowing. They always claim… Read more »
I understand the concern by We the People of misuse of this product. What I don’t understand is that there is concern over people not being trained to use this product. Working in Record Security at the DMV, I would compare photos of individuals and fingerprints. It was amazing how some brothers looked exactly the same and even fingerprints were close but there are always slight differences. Even though I was trained on how to review fingerprints, they were sent to the FBI for professional comparison by experts. Out of my three years in that department I only got one… Read more »
So if they are pulling photos from social media, what is to prevent people from incorrectly tagging photos? Could easily see photos matched to criminal but tagged as me – potentially resulting in SWAT breaking down my door – as ATF recently did to that poor FFL who’d been misidentified as a felon. Similar impact if other’s photos are tagged as me – their face is seen at a crime scene, ATF decides it’s me, and again my door is smashed in by SWAT.
We will never know how much of our information has been shared or bartered to NGOs. Will we ever know, if our collected images can be installed INTO a crime or riot scene, to fabricate guilt or destroy a reputation? I for one, do not trust the accumulated power of the deepshitstate and its minions. A conspiracy theory sans paranoia, might simply be described as a ‘Wonderment of possibility’. I don’t think we can retard technological advances, I see no wisdom in that. We can condition ourselves to expect abuses of said tech, and have in place a retaliatory protocol.… Read more »
Every time you purchase, gun shows, retail stores, you’ve just become an AI superstar.