JACKSON, Miss. (Jan. 31, 2023) – Last week, a Mississippi House committee passed a bill that would prohibit financial institutions operating in the state from using a credit card merchant code to track the purchases of firearms and ammunition.
Rep. Jansen Owen (R) and along with a large coalition of Republicans introduced House Bill 1110 (HB1110) on Jan. 16. Titled the Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act, the proposed law would prohibit a financial institution or its agent from “assigning” a specific firearm or ammunition merchant code to any firearms business located in Mississippi.
The bill defines “assignment” as “a financial institution policy, process, or practice that labels, links, or otherwise associates a firearms code with a merchant or payment card transaction in a manner that allows the financial institution or any other entity facilitating or processing the payment card transaction to identify whether a merchant is a firearms retailer or whether a transaction involves the sale of firearms or ammunition.”
HB1110 explains the background for this bill in the legislative findings.
“In September 2022, the International Standards Organization, based in Switzerland, approved a new merchant category code for firearm and ammunition merchants. In the letter to payment card networks, federal lawmakers stated that the new Merchant Category Code for firearms retailers would be “. . .the first step towards facilitating the collection of valuable financial data that could help law enforcement in countering the financing of terrorism efforts,” expressing a clear government expectation that networks will utilize the new Merchant Category Code to conduct mass surveillance of constitutionally protected firearms and ammunition purchases in cooperation with law enforcement. The new Merchant Category Code will allow the banks, payment card networks, acquirers, and other entities involved in payment card processing to identify and separately track lawful payment card purchases at firearms retailers in the State of Mississippi, paving the way for both unprecedented surveillance of Second Amendment activity and unprecedented information sharing between financial institutions and the government.”
HB1110 would also prohibit a state governmental agency or local government, special district, or other political subdivision or official, agent, or employee of the state or other governmental entity or any other person, public or private, from knowingly and willfully keeping any list, record, or registry of privately owned firearms or any list, record, or registry of the owners of those firearms.
On Jan. 26, the Judiciary B Committee gave HB1110 a “do pass” recommendation.
IMPACT ON FEDERAL PROGRAMS
As the legislative findings warn, data collected from this merchant code would almost certainly end up in federal government databases.
The feds can share and tap into vast amounts of information gathered at the state and local level through fusion centers and a system known as the “information sharing environment” or ISE.
Fusion centers were sold as a tool to combat terrorism, but that is not how they are being used. The ACLU pointed to a bipartisan congressional report to demonstrate the true nature of government fusion centers: “They haven’t contributed anything meaningful to counterterrorism efforts. Instead, they have largely served as police surveillance and information sharing nodes for law enforcement efforts targeting the frequent subjects of police attention: Black and brown people, immigrants, dissidents, and the poor.”
Fusion centers operate within the broader ISE. According to its website, the ISE “provides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and investigators…have mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign allies.” In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant. Known ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence which oversees 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA. ISE utilizes these partnerships to collect and share data on the millions of unwitting people they track.
In practice, local data collection using ALPRs, stingrays, drones and other spy technologies create the potential for the federal government to track the movement of millions of Americans, and obtain and store information on millions of Americans, including phone calls, emails, web browsing history and text messages, all with no warrant, no probable cause, and without the people even knowing it.
In a nutshell, without state and local assistance, the feds have a much more difficult time gathering information. When the state limits surveillance and data collection, it means less information the feds can tap into. This represents a major blow to the surveillance state and a win for privacy.
WHAT’S NEXT
HB1110 will move to the House floor for further consideration.
The post Mississippi Committee Passes Bill to Prohibit Using Credit Card Information to Track Firearms Purchases first appeared on Tenth Amendment Center.
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