Is This how Big Brother Knew About Your Trigger?

Both the government and the criminals who steal guns can get all the info they need from forums like this where people brag about what they have.
 
I'm sure the government does spy on your mail but that's not necessary to build a profile. I'm fairly certain that they're using artificial intelligence to rapidly scan millions of credit card and online transactions to aggregate the data and make sense and separate the signal from the noise.
 
Uncle Sam (Or is he Auntie Sam these days?) is checking our mail for contraband without warrants.
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I read the linked article, and I simply don't get what you're getting from it. The article states (More than once) that the govt cannot open your mail without a warrant to do so.

The information you put on the outside of the package is not private. Even if the Post Office gives that information to the police (or the NY Times, or your Aunt Maxine) its not spying, YOU voluntarily put that information into the public domain.
 
The atf gets your name from the go between. The go between is the credit card processor. They have no duty to protect you. All they do is transfer funds from one place to another. Whenever you buy something online, the card processor handles the transfer of monies.

Basically the feds contact the card processor and say; We are looking for folks who bought forced reset triggers from xyz. The card processor prints out a list and hands it to them. This is how they get the data without the actual seller even knowing about it.

If you dont want to be exposed, go to a Funshow and pay cash.
 
Between the Bank Secrecy Act and the record of misuse of FISA warrantless surveillance of US citizens and the commoditization of data, you should assume that anything transacted digitally or involving a financial institution is known and/or sold to parties for whom your interests aren't a driving concern.
 
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georgehwbush you think they need search warrants to know what you buy?
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Well, they did.;)
When ATF raided businesses selling "triggers" that ATF had determined were machine guns, those warrants allowed seizing certain business records.
 
rmh3481 The atf gets your name from the go between. The go between is the credit card processor. They have no duty to protect you. All they do is transfer funds from one place to another. Whenever you buy something online, the card processor handles the transfer of monies.

Basically the feds contact the card processor and say; We are looking for folks who bought forced reset triggers from xyz. The card processor prints out a list and hands it to them. This is how they get the data without the actual seller even knowing about it.

If you dont want to be exposed, go to a Funshow and pay cash.
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Nonsense.
Credit card processors have no idea what item was sold. None.
Only:
1. total amount of transaction being processed.
2. the buyers CC #
3. the seller submitting the transaction.

Nothing else is transmitted.

For sure, its possible to investigate every transaction for a certain amount AND GUESS what that purchase included, but its not definitive proof.
 
So, the credit card processor /the bank sees $400, and Big Ed's Guns and not what was purchased, item by item, right??

To see that, they'd need the actual sales receipt, and I think to get that' they'd need a warrant, wouldn't they??
 
My guess is, and its only a guess, ATF raids the "offending" business, gets their records of transactions, which are likely 2 years or less and goes after the latest purchaser to make examples of them. Again, total guess on my part.
 
rmh3481 said:
Basically the feds contact the card processor and say; We are looking for folks who bought forced reset triggers from xyz. The card processor prints out a list and hands it to them. This is how they get the data without the actual seller even knowing about it.

If you dont want to be exposed, go to a Funshow and pay cash.
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It's been a few years since I worked at a credit card processor, but the data that a store sends to the processor doesn't show individual transactions. It shows that $X was spent at store Y by such and such a card, but not the individual items you bought.

Now if you're dealing with a business that sells nothing but forced reset triggers it wouldn't be too hard to connect the dots.
 
The atf gets your name from the go between. The go between is the credit card processor. They have no duty to protect you. All they do is transfer funds from one place to another. Whenever you buy something online, the card processor handles the transfer of monies.

Basically the feds contact the card processor and say; We are looking for folks who bought forced reset triggers from xyz. The card processor prints out a list and hands it to them. This is how they get the data without the actual seller even knowing about it.
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This is patently false. As Dogtown Tom explained, CC companies don't even have an itemized list of what you purchased.

Between the Bank Secrecy Act and the record of misuse of FISA warrantless surveillance of US citizens and the commoditization of data, you should assume that anything transacted digitally or involving a financial institution is known and/or sold to parties for whom your interests aren't a driving concern.
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While this is generally true (regarding digital transactions should generally be assumed to be shared), the banking secrecy act does not allow credit card companies to just voluntarily share with the feds every customer who made a purchase from company XYZ (absent any criteria that should trigger a currency transaction report or a suspicious activity report, both of which involve large sums of money and target money laundering and terrorist financing). In fact, the right to financial privacy act bars financial institutions from sharing customer information with the government absent a legitimate reason, and the customer is notified of the request in advance and can appeal the request in an effort to block the governments request.

Of course the government will generally get a search warrant so the financial privacy protection act is largely moot. But it does specifically bar banks from just turning over your bank statement to the feds based on nothing more than a fishing expedition.
 
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