Comment Puritans, authoritarians and bootleggers (Score 1) 514
While it's highly objectionable to collect this sort of information in the first place, it's clear from history that the vast majority of citizens won't object until it starts to be misused. If citizens do begin to find that they are forced to register purchases of certain types of goods that are later used to convict them, publicly impugn their reputation or otherwise persecute them, it stands to reason that a black market for such goods would arise in conjunction with public outcry. Additionally, as a homebrewer, I can tell you it's incredibly easy to ferment alcoholic beverages and simple even to distill them to higher concentrations of alcohol (especially by fractional freezing), so if your concern is simply the procurement of alcohol without registration of some sort you have nothing to fear.
The point to be taken away here IMHO is that practices of this sort lay bare the Puritanical and authoritarian undercurrents in American society and government insofar as collecting/using this information further demonizes a form of established social interaction that has been practiced throughout the known world for all of recorded history. American government tends to be overly concerned with ensuring that the populace is more highly policed when it should be concerning itself with its citizens' wellbeing, and tends to perpetuate the cycle by creating an environment of fear in which the populace can be more easily convinced that surveillance, etc. are necessary.
