Police in Latin America will be able to track American gun sales in their own language

In a move to crack down on weapons from the U.S. that are funneled to drug cartels, police in Latin America will soon be able to track American gun sales in their own language, despite privacy concerns by gun-rights advocates. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will begin testing this month on a Spanish-language version of eTrace, a computer system that law-enforcement agencies use to request traces of weapons by the ATF. The first users will be national police in Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica. The English version of eTrace is already being used in 25 countries, including Mexico, according to the U.S. State Department. To begin the trace, a foreign police officer submits this information into the system. An ATF agent then reviews the request. The United States does not have a national database of all gun owners, so the ATF agent must then call gun dealers and purchasers to track the gun's history. Under U.S. law, such information is private and can be seen only by law-enforcers doing legitimate investigations. "The more information you have in the system, the more effectively you can connect the dots," said Bill Newell, the ATF's special agent in charge for Arizona and New Mexico. However, the National Rifle Association said it is worried that encouraging more users abroad could lead to private information about gun owners being leaked to the public or criminals. "There's always a potential, especially when things are online, for errors to occur," said Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the NRA. "All it takes is one person clicking the wrong button and, all of a sudden, a whole of lot information could be made public."...read more