It’s bad enough that anti-gunners are unrelenting in their quest to take away your gun rights, but, unfortunately, in some areas, the government and even law enforcement are busy violating your rights in an attempt to control you “for your own good.”
For example, in one New England state, police have been allegedly illegally collecting data on gun owners in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, possibly for the purpose of using that information to violate their Second Amendment rights. Judy Harrison writes,
A division of the Maine State Police illegally gathered and handled personal data about Mainers, according to an employment discrimination lawsuit filed in federal court by a state trooper.
George Loder, 50, of Scarborough is suing the Maine Intelligence Analysis Center, and its supervisors, claiming he was demoted after he told his bosses that the center was collecting and maintaining data illegally, including information about people who had applied to buy guns from firearms dealers, those who legally protested and those who worked at a Maine international camp for Israeli and Arab teens. The center is responsible for sharing information with other law enforcement agencies.
The complaint does not say with which agencies the center may have shared the information other than the state police. It also does not say when the center began collecting it. Loder expressed his concerns to supervisors in November 2017.
Loder alleges that staff at the center illegally gathered and kept information gleaned from social media about people who legally protested in September 2018 against Central Maine Power Co.’s proposed transmission corridor stretching from the Quebec border to Lewiston.
State police maintain a database that can be searched to determine if a person is prohibited from purchasing a gun. Applications to purchase firearms are supposed to be destroyed after the sale is approved but the center stored that information in the database, the suit claims.
Loder’s lawsuit goes on to say that Maine policy have also been keeping track of who has been driving “to New York City or towns in Massachusetts considered to be sources of drugs for dealers in Maine.”
In fact, the issue is such a violation of rights that even the ACLU (which tends to lean very left politically) has called for an investigation of this whole situation.
We’ll see what happens in Maine, but if you’re in Maine, you need to jump on this and get the government out of your business, and if you don’t live in Maine, consider this a warning to look into what your state government agencies are doing to track and spy on you.
