Month: April 2013

Dianne Feinstein Went (More) Insane

Speaking of gun control advocates going insane, Dianne Feinstein went on one hell of a tear during the Senate debate over the various gun control amendments:

The California Democrat was in full fury, spilling a stream of outrage beyond the mere two minutes allowed on her amendment to gun legislation that was crafted in response to the massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown, Conn., four months ago.

Her California colleague and fellow Democrat, Sen. Barbara Boxer, shouted for order so that Feinstein could be heard in the evening round of votes that left efforts to stem the availability of guns in shreds.

“We have had enough of the development of highly militarized weapons, easy to shoot, big clips, 100-plus bullets in each large-velocity gun, falling into the hands of grievance killers, juveniles, people mentally disturbed,” Feinstein said.

Wow. She actually became so enraged that she started babbling nonsense. Highly militarized weapons? Big clips? Large velocity guns? It’s obviously that she has personalized this issue so much that she can’t even feign being impartial. Further adding to her nonsensical statements she said:

“We’re here on six-year terms for a reason, to take votes on difficult issues,” Feinstein said. “Everything needs 60 votes today. This is supposed to be a majority body. We have crafted an assault weapons bill to really represent the people of America. Every single poll has shown support for this.”

Every single poll showed that Americans, by in large, supporting banning semi-automatic rifles? Somehow I doubt that. Even if a majority of Americans do support banning semi-automatic rifles, so what? As far as I’m concerned the state can ban whatever it wants because I’m not going to comply and I know many gun owners who will join me in giving the state the middle finger. She continued on:

“I know how this is going to end,” Feinstein said. “The despair and the dismay of families standing out there whose safety we need to protect, and we don’t do it,” she said, as some families of the victims of Newtown and other mass killings watched from the gallery.

This is probably the most nonsensical statement she made. She claims that it is the job of the Senate to protect families after she spent two minutes discussing how she wants to bring the state’s capacity for violence against every family that possesses a semi-automatic rifle. That’s akin to somebody stealing their neighbors assets and claiming that he wants to protect his neighbor’s home from burglars.

I think it’s time for Feinstein to take a break. The stress of being in the Senate is obviously getting to her and she’s beginning to show signs of a mental breakdown. I’m not surprised. According to Wikipedia she’s 79 years old. Of those 79 years she spent 10 as mayor of San Fransisco (and we know the descendants of Emperor Norton are the rightful heirs for the San Fransisco kingdom) and for the last 21 years she has been in the Senate. Wasting that many years in the political system will give anybody mental issues. Imagine if you literally wasted 31 years of your life threatening innocent people with state violence. Could you live with yourself? Would you be able to maintain your sanity? I don’t think most people could do either. Honestly, I almost feel sorry for the woman. She’s 79, has done nothing of value with her life, and have only a few short years remaining.

When Gun Control Advocates Go Insane

Now that some of the more zealous gun control advocates have gotten their drink on and refilled their mugs with their own tears it’s time to watch them lash out and anybody attached to gun ownership. The award for most entertaining example of rage induced nonsensical lashing out has to Lawrence O’Donnell:

But no one was more adamant about their hatred for the NRA than MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell who last night accused the civil rights group of aiding and abetting the terrorist(s) responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings.

“There are new developments tonight in the bombing investigation here in Boston,” O’Donnell said. “But that investigation could be moving faster were it not for the successful lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association.”

“The NRA’s efforts to guarantee that American mass murderers are the best-equipped mass murders in the world is not limited to murderers who use assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” he added.

Whenever I see random leaps in logic such as this I’m only able to laugh. How has the National Rifle Association (NRA) hampered the investigation of the bombing in Boston?

“The NRA is also in the business of helping bombers get away with their crimes. Gunpowder could be traced by investigators to a buyer at the point of sale if gunpowder contained a taggant, an element that would enable tracing of the purchase of gunpowder,” he explained.

“But thanks to the National Rifle Association, identification taggants are required by law only in plastic explosives. The NRA has successfully blocked any requirements for such taggants in gunpowder. So such supremely helpful evidence as taggants are not available to the FBI in this investigation,” he added.

Interesting. Do we know that the bombs used in Boston used standard gun powder? Furthermore, how would taggants help speed up the investigation? Taggants can only tell you about the powder manufacturer. Unless a gunpowder jug was also serialized and had the serial number recorded at time of purchase taggants would be useless. In addition to that recording sales information would be useless unless the buyer used an electronic means of payment such as a credit card. If the state mandated that personal information about gunpowder buyers had to be recorded the information would still be useless because making your own gunpowder from household items isn’t rocket science.

O’Donnell is just butt hurt because the state didn’t aggress against the people he wanted it to aggress against. Obviously he doesn’t understand how the state works. The state doesn’t follow any specific political ideology, it merely works to expropriate wealth from the general population. While it does pursue powers that makes expropriation easier, such as disarming the populace, it also wants the most bang for its buck. Gun control is a package deal with a lot of headaches. Expanding surveillance powers, on the other hand, doesn’t include nearly as many headaches, actually grants the state more power to expropriate wealth than disarming the populace, and is much easier to implement than gun control is to enforce.

Shooting at MIT

Reports are coming out that there has been a shooting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT):

A gunman has shot dead a police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge near Boston, officials say.

I’m beginning to think that Cthulhu is visiting the Boston area and people are being driven mad. Since there isn’t much information at this point I don’t have much of value to say, I just wanted to give a heads up.

More Thoughts on CISPA

HR3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which passed the House today, has been making news as of late. If passed into law, the bill would allow government agencies to share data with one another and allow private corporations to share data with the state without concerning themselves with any contractual obligations:

At that Committee meeting (1:01:45), the bill’s chief sponsor Chairman Rogers emphatically repeated his earlier assertions that CISPA wouldn’t breach private contracts in response to questions from Jared Polis:

Polis: Why wouldn’t it work to leave it up, getting back to the contract part, and I think again there may be a series of amendments to do this, if a company feels, if it’s voluntary for companies, why not allow them the discretion to enter into agreements with their customers that would allow them to share the information? …

Rogers: I think those companies should make those choices on their own. They develop their own contracts. I think they should develop their own contracts. They should enforce their own contracts in the way they do now in civil law. I don’t know why we want to get in that business.

[…]

And yet… for all Rogers’ bluster, CISPA moots private contracts—and House Republican leadership won’t fix the problem, even when five of their GOP colleagues offer a simple, elegant fix.

This is the same stubborn refusal to accept criticism and absorb new information that brought us SOPA, PIPA and a host of other ill-conceived attempts to regulate the Internet. It’s the very opposite of what should be the cardinal virtue of Internet policy: humility. Tinkering with the always-changing Internet is hard work. But it’s even harder when you stuff your fingers in your ears and chant “Lalalala, I can’t hear you.”

I think this brings up an important point that is often lost on people. As it currently stands most people rely on the service provider to protect their privacy. People who use services such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc. assume that those companies will prevent prying eyes from viewing unauthorized third-parties. This is a poor assumption for multiple reasons. First, most service providers make their money off of selling their customers’ information. There is an assumption that such information is anonymized to a point but there is no guarantee. I believe the conflict of interest is obvious. Reason number two is that even if a service provider does protect your privacy there is no guarantee that unauthorized third-parties won’t gain access by bypassing implemented security measures. The third reason is that customer information is often an asset that is sold off when a company becomes insolvent. If your e-mail provider were to enter bankruptcy they may be required to sell you information as part of their asset sale. Fourth, the state reserves the right to render contractual agreements irrelevant with the mere issuance of a subpoena. CISPA, ultimately, isn’t granting private entities the ability to violate their contractual agreements without legal consequences, it merely removes the requirement that a subpoena be issued before the contract can be violated.

The reason I advocate crypto-anarchy is because it’s a solution to all of the above mentioned problems. Imagine a world where everybody encrypted their e-mails. While the e-mails may be stored on an e-mail provider’s server the data would be unusable to them or unauthorized third-parties. The same applies to encrypted instant messages, web page requests, etc. Anonymizing tools can prevent service providers and anybody with access to their data from identifying your person or your location. Having encrypted data from an unknown person makes decryption difficult since you don’t know who to coerce the required keys out of.

Even if CISPA is passed there are many ways for your information to fall into unauthorized hands. Crypto-anarchy renders all of these threats irrelevant while begging politicians to not pass CISPA doesn’t. Solve all of the problems instead of a single minor one, use cryptographic tools today.

Tears of the Gun Control Movement

Now that the gun control bills have been voted down and the politicians can concentrate on exploiting the bombing in Boston to really ramp up the police state the gun control advocates are crying in their beer. Fortunately they have decided to drown their sorrows at the local watering hole instead of doing so in private, which means we get to watch them in their drunken stupor. Although I enjoy The Verge’s technology coverage their political coverage, as with most technology news sites that venture outside of technology, is rather pitiful. After the news of the gun control bills failure to pass Mr. Sottek posted this story complaining about how broken Congress must be for gun control to fail:

As The Washington Post reports, support for expanded background checks looks very different outside the halls of the Senate; a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 9 in 10 Americans favor strengthened background checks, with strong support even among NRA members and gun-owning households.

This 90% canard has been touted by gun control advocates for a while. Statistics obtained from polls are always suspect but that sentiment goes double when polls are conducted by news organizations. News organizations usually cater to a specific crowd. For example, Fox News and The Washington Times tends to cater to self-proclaimed conservatives while The Washington Post and ABC News tend to cater to self-proclaimed liberals. Since the poll was operated by The Washington Post and ABC News, who cater to gun control advocates, I’m not surprised that they found overwhelming support for prohibiting private sales (which is what is really meant by “strengthening background checks”). Had the poll been taken by Fox News and The Washington Times I’d expect the opposite result.

In addition to selection bias the claim that National Rifle Association (NRA) members strongly support ending private sales is difficult to prove with any certainty since the NRA doesn’t release its member list. Claiming gun-owning households also support ending private sales is suspect because there is no way to reliably determine if a household has guns inside. In other words the information obtained about NRA members and gun-owning households is based entirely on information that was volunteered by poll takers, which tends to be unreliable. Another point I found laughable was the following:

The failure is particularly biting for many in light of the dramatic gun violence from last December, when 20 children and six adults were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut. Despite the broad sense of national consensus that followed the Newtown tragedy, it appears that the incident did not actually change anything about gun politics in Congress.

I find it funny that The Verge, Mayor Bloomberg, and Philip Rucker spend so much time demanding gun control after a school shooting but will raise little more than a periodic murmur, if they they even raise that, when the United States government continues its terror campaign against Middle Eastern children. The lack of consistency makes me believe that they’re not really sincere about wanting to protect children. Instead it appears that they simply don’t like non-state agents owning guns. The article gets more mind numbingly stupid:

Critics of the Senate’s failure to act cite influence from special interests, namely the NRA, which has stepped up its marketing efforts in recent months as tragedies in Connecticut, Colorado, and other areas have thrust gun control into the national spotlight. As part of its outreach efforts, the NRA won a sponsorship for NASCAR which renamed the Samsung 500 to the NRA 500 this April.

First of all the NRA wasn’t the only game stepping up marketing efforts. Gabriel Giffords started her own gun control advocacy organization and Mayor Bloomberg put millions into advocating for more gun control. In addition to that the NRA didn’t “win” a NASCAR sponsorship, they bought it. I’m surprised a news organization that makes money off of advertising doesn’t understand that sponsorships, another word for advertisements, aren’t won in competitions but purchased with money.

While politics seldom interests me anymore I find the reactions of gun control advocates, who do put their faith in the political process, rather entertaining after they lose. They whine that everybody supports their cause but Congress won’t obey the will of the people. In actuality the issue of gun control is hotly debated and Congress would rather expand its powers in less troublesome ways. Why waste time riling the serfs up by pushing gun control when you can offer buisnesses a lucrative deal where they can sell their customers’ information to the state without worrying about legal repercussions? Less people get riled up about expanding the surveillance state and it nets the state more power. Congress doesn’t obey the will of the people, it grabs for power over the people. Gun control gives them some power but there are much better ways of obtaining more power that involve less headaches. The reason gun control advocates haven’t achieved many victories as of late is because they aren’t offering Congress much of value. Like sponsorships, Congressional victories aren’t won, they’re bought.

Coming Attractions

As you can see I don’t have a lot of content ready this morning. Last night I gave a talk about Tor hidden services to a group of people in Apple Valley, Minnesota. I may get some material posted over my lunch hour or after work so stay tuned.

Some good news came out of Washington yesterday, the Senate basically said they weren’t going to deal with gun control at the moment. I think the bombings in Boston changed things. Suddenly the state has a new tragedy that grants them far the ability to seize far more power than petty gun control laws could manage. Voting the gun control bills down was the fastest way to get the issue out of the way so votes on enhancing surveillance powers and other expansions to the police state can commence. It looks like we have a bit of breathing room before the state decides to come after us directly again.

The Lies of Moms Demand Action

Every Day, No Days Off had a post showing a new campaign by Moms Demand Action. After first I thought the campaign images were a parody until I looked at their website. As it turns out the pictures are not parody images, they’re part of the organization’s actual campaign. Let’s take a look at the three images currently available on their site.

First we have this example:

This picture implies that the banning of Little Red Riding Hood from schools was legitimate. I guess Moms Demand Action support censorship.

Next up his this ditty:

Banning dodge ball, at least banning rubber balls instead of foam balls, was one of the biggest let downs of my youth. Dodge ball was one of the few games I was decent at and it was a great deal of fun. Then one kid got hurt and the game was replaced by a mockery that relied on foam balls that couldn’t get tossed fast enough to hit even the slowest kid. But the game wasn’t banned because it was viewed as “too violent,” the use of rubber balls was merely banned because a kid was injured.

Third we have this monstrosity:

Nothing is prohibiting children from buying Kinder chocolate eggs. In fact they were available during Easter.

Now that I’ve commented on each images individual absurdity it’s time to comment on the absurdity they all have in common. None of the times mentioned in the three pictures have been banned in America. Some of those times may have been banned from some schools but children haven’t been prohibited from enjoying them outside of school. Firearms are a different manner. Under the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 non-state entities, which includes all children, are prohibited from bringing firearms into school zones. In addition to that most states prohibit children from being in possession of firearms unless they are being supervised by an adult. The examples given by Moms Demand Action are asinine. In fact the implications behind made in those pictures are outright bald-faced lies.

I’m not an ends justify the means kind of guy and that’s probably why I don’t understand why Moms Demand Action believe it’s acceptable to lie so blatantly. Look, I get it, they don’t like guns. While I don’t agree with gun control advocates I believe we can have a debate without having to resort to outright dishonesty.

More Empty Promises from Obama

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is coming up for a vote. If it passes it will create a tighter marriage between the state and service providers. It will also be a boon for the technology industry because the passage of the legislation will also mean the need for new software for agencies and service providers to share data with one another, which is why so many major technology companies support the bill. Besides the state and politically well-connected technology companies everybody else will suffer. In a political stunt likely aimed at generating some positive feedback Mr. Obama has said he will veto CISPA if it passes:

As an amended version of CISPA nears a vote on the House floor, the White House has once again stated that it has fundamental problems with the cybersecurity bill in its current form. In an official policy statement, the Obama Administration said that lawmakers had not addressed several issues regarding information-sharing and privacy, and that “if the bill, as currently crafted, were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.” Instead, it urged a continuing dialog between Congress and the President in order to create a more acceptable version.

We’ve witnessed Obama’s veto threat before when the indefinite detainment clause of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was up for a vote. As it turned out the threat was only made because he was worried he wouldn’t get as many additional powers as he wanted. I’m guessing CISPA’s current form doesn’t give the executive branch enough power so the threat of a veto has been made until more power is handed over.

Demands to Expand the Surveillance State Arrive on Schedule

I said the first thing the state would grab for after the bombings in Boston were more surveillance powers. As if on queue a Republican from New York is using Monday’s tragedy to demand more cameras to spy on the general populace:

ANDREA MITCHELL, MSNBC: Congressman, briefly, do you think that this will lead to more cameras? I know it’s controversial, there are privacy issues. Boston does have a lot of cameras. European cities, led by London, have the most. Are Americans going to have to get used to more surveillance on a daily basis?

REP. PETER KING (R-NY): I think we do because I think privacy involves being in a private location. Being out in the street is not an expectation of privacy. Anyone can look at you, can see you, can watch what you’re doing. A camera just makes it more sophisticated, but it’s no different from your neighbor looking out the window at you or a police officer looking at you walking down the street.

So, I do think we need more cameras.

Surveillance powers are always the first thing the state grabs for after a tragedy. It’s a fairly safe thing to demand because the general population often view more state surveillance powers are rather benign. Another benefit of surveillance powers is that it expands the state’s watch without having to expand the number of people employed by the state to any notable extent, which keeps more money in the hands of the politicians. Before you know it we’ll be emulating London’s Big Brother situation.

I’m Sick of Politically Correct Bullshit

After the news of the bombings in Boston I took to social media sites to discuss the event. My first comment was posted on Facebook and said “Brace yourselves. A new wave of state power grabs are upon us.” That comment lead to a short discussion amongst me and a few of my friends regarding the incident. Two hours after posting my comment another friend commented about how I was the only person on her friends list politicizing the event and that it was “too soon.”

Looking at Twitter, Reddit, and other comments from friends of friends I’m lead to believe that the only acceptable way of dealing with a tragic event is to say nothing besides the event was a tragedy and my heart goes out to the victims. This is more politically correct bullshit. Political correctness exemplifies the thing I hate most about collectivism, it attempts to socially engineer us all into perfect carbon copies of one another. Here’s the thing, we’re not all perfect carbon copies of one another. We’re each unique little snowflakes. All of us have different views, beliefs, hobbies, outlooks and ways of dealing with things. While remaining solemn and saying your heart goes out to those affected by the bombings is a perfectly acceptable way to cope with the event it is not the only way.

Some of have different ways of dealing with tragic news. I, for example, upon learning about a tragic event desire to discuss it with friends. Since many of my friends are political the political aspects of the event are discussed. Because of this I am apt to make a comment on Facebook that is political in nature. My intention isn’t to politicize the event it’s to spur up discussion with my friends, many of whom are political.

Another way I cope with tragic news is introducing humor. I have a dark sense of humor that can border on being outright morbid at times. That doesn’t mean I find the event funny, nothing about the event is funny to me. What it does mean is that I try to lighten the mood by making witty (to me, not to most people) remarks about the event. Not only did I rip off a well-known Internet meme but during the conversation I also said “Perhaps the FBI accidentally handed one of their self-created extremists a real bomb instead of a fake bomb. Jim down in ordinance is going to catch Hell for this.” That comment was a play on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) habit of recruiting nobodies, urging them to commit terrorist acts, and arming them with fake bombs just so “bust” them and brag about how they stopped a terrorist. It was a smart ass remark meant to lighten the mood.

For those who believe it’s “too soon” to discuss the event let me ask you, when can I discuss the event? What is the proper time where my discussion goes from being insensitive to acceptable? I’m sick of this “It’s too soon!” bullshit. I like to discuss current events as they’re happening, not a week after the fact.

Also, why are my comments about tragedies that happen in other countries acceptable? When I make quips about the United States government’s habit of bombing brown people in sand regions most of my friends who are currently screaming “It’s too soon!” either laugh (out of the absurdity of the situation, they don’t find the situation funny) or join me in denouncing the violence. But when tragic events happen here suddenly there is a prohibition on making any comment other than “My heart goes out to the victims.” When a wedding in Afghanistan is bombed I can make any comment I want but when a marathon in Boston is bombed I’m expected to keep my mouth shut. Where the fuck is the logic in that? Shouldn’t all tragedies be viewed as such? Shouldn’t we deal with those tragedies in a consistent manner? Are people living outside of the United States somehow lesser and undeserving of solemn respect? This inconsistency probably pisses me off more than the nagging that my comments are being made “too soon.” Maybe my way of dealing with tragic news has developed because I read about tragic events every — fucking — day. Every day there seems to be a story about a bombing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or some other part of the world where people have likely become callused to shit blowing up because it happens all the time.

In summary, we’re all different. We deal with things in different ways. I deal with tragic news by discussing it and attempting to lighten the mood through humor. There is no such thing as discussing an event “too soon.” Some of us like discussing events as they’re happening. I’m not politicizing, I’m not being insensitive, I’m merely coping with the news in my own way. We’re not all perfect carbon copies of one another and shouldn’t be assume as such. Let me also close by saying “Fuck!” Why? Because I feel like it’s the only appropriate end to this rant. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go about being a horrible human being and discussing the bombings.