Month: April 2013

Gun Owners Being Sold Out, Again

It shouldn’t surprise anybody that gun owners are being sold out in another political maneuver. Things started heating up with Alan Gottlieb of Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) fame announced that he supported the Toomey-Manchin Amentment. Joining Mr. Gottleib is Cheaper Than Dirt, who generated a bit of anger last year when they ceased selling firearms online and jacked up their prices on standard capacity magazines (which, let’s face it, under a shortage is going to happen) after the Connecticut shooting:

I had a chance to sit down with Allen Gottlieb from the Second Amendment Foundation and get the straight scoop about the gun related legislation pending in the Senate. The following is the summary from my conversation with Gottlieb.

First, let’s start from the point where we lost the cloture vote. The vote lost by a huge margin with 68 senators voting in favor of cloture. Once reached, it was evident something was going to go to the floor and Schumer’s background check bill was simply draconian, bad, evil, and needed to be stopped.

As for Senators Manchin and Toomey, both have “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and care tremendously about the Second Amendment and gun rights. The Toomey-Manchin bill was crafted in Sen. Manchin’s office as a response to Schumer’s proposal. A representative from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was present to suggest talking points and provisions for inclusion.

Their support, along with Mr. Gottleib’s support, seems to stem primarily from the fact that the proposed Toomey-Manchin Amendment isn’t as bad as the bill proposed by Schumer. In other words they’re being pragmatic and you know how I feel about pragmatists. The primary thing that concerns me about the recent support for the Toomey-Manchin Amendment is that many of the claims being made by advocates are, according to David Kopel, not true. Specifically the Cheaper Than Dirt post claims that the Toomey-Manchin Amendment prohibits the creation of a national registry but Kopel, who I might add is a lawyer, says otherwise:

The limit on creating a registry applies only to the Attorney General (and thus to entities under his direct control, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives). By a straightforward application of inclusio unius exclusio alterius it is permissible for entities other than the Attorney General to create gun registries, using whatever information they can acquire from their own operations. For example, the Secretary of HHS may consolidate and centralize whatever firearms records are maintained by any medical or health insurance entity. The Secretary of the Army may consolidate and centralize records about personal guns owned by military personnel and their families.

The Attorney General may not create a registry from the records of “a person with a valid, current license under this chapter.” In other words, the AG may not harvest the records of persons who currently hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Thus, pursuant to inclusio unius, the AG may centralize and consolidate the records of FFLs who have retired from their business.

If you support or are considering supporting the Toomey-Manchin Amendment it would be well worth your time to read Kopel’s analysis. It’s a sucker’s deal reminiscent of what us Minnesotans had to suffer earlier this year. Don’t let yourself be suckered into publicly supporting gun control legislation. While people like Mr. Gottleib and organizations like Cheaper Than Dirt will lie and strike fear into you by claiming that we either take the Toomey-Manchin deal or suffer Schumer’s bill remember that they are giving you a false choice. They are conveniently forgetting to mention the third option: opposing all proposed gun control legislation. You don’t have to carry water for your ideological opponent. If gun control advocates want to prohibit us from owning guns then make them do all the damned work.

IBM Executives are Heading to Washington to Lobby in Favor of CISPA

Speaking of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), it appears that executives from IBM are heading to Washington DC to lobby in favor of passing the bill:

Nearly 200 senior IBM executives are flying into Washington to press for the passage of a controversial cybersecurity bill that will come up for a vote in the House this week.

The IBM executives will pound the pavement on Capitol Hill Monday and Tuesday, holding nearly 300 meetings with lawmakers and staff. Over the course of those two days, their mission is to convince lawmakers to back a bill that’s intended to make it easier for industry and government to share information about cyber threats with each other in real time.

IBM has a history of helping governments collect data on their citizens. Considering the consequences of their last marriage with the state I should be surprised by this news. But we all know that there is big money in selling customer data to the state. It’s always disappointing when a technology company sells computer users down the river. Fortunately CISPA is irrelevant thanks to cryptography technology.

Prediction Time

Yesterday explosives were detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon and a fire broke out at the John F. Kennedy Library. The news cycle will likely consist of wall-to-wall coverage of this event until Friday. During that coverage many speculations and accusations of who is at fault for the explosions will be made. The New York Post is already running with the standard schtick that the perpetrator was a brown person from the Middle East. In all likelihood the war mongers will emulate the Post’s direction and blame the act of an extremist Muslim brown person with ties to al-Qaeda while the Southern Poverty Law Center will blame the act on extremist right-wing Christian white people with ties to to the Ku Klux Klan and several neo-Nazi organizations. For all we know the explosives were set off by a Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) created terrorist after somebody in ordinance accidentally supplied real bombs instead of the usual fake bombs (that’s called snark, it’s not a serious accusation). In the end it will probably take some time to determine who the culprit was but that won’t stop the state from immediately exploiting the tragedy to justify another power grab.

Here are my predictions of what is to come. First the state will grab for more surveillance powers, as it always does after a tragedy. That means the recent opposition to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) will vanish. CISPA will be pushed through under the auspices of ensuring a tragedy like this never happens again. The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) high speed low drag Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams will be present at every high profile sporting event, not just events that take place in expensive stadiums. VIPR teams aren’t the only thing we’re likely to see at sporting events in the future, I’ll bet good money that restrictions against domestic drone usage will be loosened. The state’s eyes in the sky will probably be patrolling metropolitan areas with notable frequency. Additional powers will also be claimed by the federal government for its war on foreign and domestic terrorists.

In summary we’re in for the same shit as usual. If there’s one thing the state never lets go to waste it’s a tragedy.

Bitcoin Mining isn’t an Environmental Disaster

I don’t know what possesses people who don’t understand the advancement of technology to write about the advancement of technology. Bitcoin has been headlining many news sites recently. Most of the headlines discuss the recent crash but Mark Gimein had decided to write about another aspect of Bitcoin, the energy requirements of Bitcoin mining. According to Mr. Gimein Bitcoin mining is an environmental disaster:

Most people aren’t used to thinking in terms of the energy it takes to solve math problems; a few minutes of Excel may not take much energy. But make the problems complicated enough, and things change. “Mining” Bitcoins takes so much processor power that it’s often done with specialized computers optimized for rapid repetitive calculations. So how much power can that take?

Blockchain.info, a site that tracks data on Bitcoin mining, estimates that in just the last 24 hours, miners used about $147,000 of electricity just to run their hardware, assuming an average price of 15 cents per kilowatt hour (a little higher than the U.S. average, lower than some high cost areas like California). That, of course, is in addition to the money devoted to buying and building the mining rigs. The site estimates the profits from the day of mining at about $681,000, based on the current value of Bitcoins. So mining, at least for the moment, is a lucrative business.

The trade-off here is that as virtual value is created, real-world value is used up. About 982 megawatt hours a day, to be exact. That’s enough to power roughly 31,000 U.S. homes, or about half a Large Hadron Collider. If the dreams of Bitcoin proponents are realized, and the currency is adopted for widespread commerce, the power demands of bitcoin mines would rise dramatically.

What Mr. Gimein fails to understand, or at least mention, is that Bitcoin is in its infancy and, like any technology in its infancy, is still running inefficiently. New technologies always start off rough around the edges and improve over time. A majority of Bitcoin mining was originally performed using computer processors. Today a majority of Bitcoin mining is done using graphics cards. Both processors and graphics cards, especially the powerful ones that were and are used by Bitcoin miners, can require a great deal of power. However the technology is improving.

First, let’s understand the the current trend in computing is power efficiency. More computing is being performed on mobile platforms, which need to run off of energy stored in batteries. A mobile phone, for example, doesn’t do much good if it can only run for an hour before the battery goes dead. This is why manufacturers are sinking huge amounts of research and development dollars into making more power efficient chips. Consumers always want more. They want more powerful devices and better battery life. Manufacturers want to make consumers happy because making consumers happy is what nets manufacturers a profit. So we are seeing more powerful processors and graphics processors that also consume less power.

The age of wearable computing is also beginning. Google has introduced Glass, the Pebble watch is selling very well, and there are rumors that Apple is planning to introduce a watch of its own. Wearable computers are even smaller than mobile phones, meaning there isn’t as much room for batteries. When wearable computers begin to take off the demand for even more power efficient chips will increase.

Today Bitcoin mining may take 982 megawatt hours a day. Tomorrow it will likely take less. Not just because of more power efficiency processors and graphics cards, but because current efforts are being focused on Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). ASICs are chips designed to perform a specific task. This contrasts with general purpose computing chips such as the processor and graphics card (which are more specialized than processors but still capable of performing other tasks) found in your computer. Because of this ASICs can be designed to use less power. The linked article linked to Butterfly Lab’s website. Butterfly Labs is purporting to build ASICs for Bitcoin mining (I say purported because I know several people who have ordered from Butterfly Labs but have so far received no hardware). ASCIMiner is another ASIC aimed at Bitcoin mining and is powered off of a standard USB port.

Mr. Gimein must believe that Bitcoin miners like sinking vast amounts of money into buying electricity. If that was the case then Bitcoin miners wouldn’t be looking for more efficient methods of mining. But Mr. Gimein’s apparent belief is incorrect, Bitcoin miners don’t like spending great deals of money on electricity, which is why money is being put into developing more efficient mining hardware. Doing more with less has been the trend in human technology. When somebody makes estimations based on current technology they are doomed to fail. One must also predict how technology will advance. The electricity required in Bitcoin mining will decrease as the technology matures.

The IRS Accused in Health Record Theft

Keeping records can be dangerous, especially if those records may be of interest to the state. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is being accused of stealing the medial records of some 10 million Americans:

The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.

According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.

I doubt this news surprised anybody since the primary job of the IRS is to steal from Americans. Usually they steal wealth but I can see the reason the state would be interested in medical records now that it has further put itself into a position to foot medical bills. What this case does demonstrate is the danger of holding records that the state may find of interest. If the state can’t access records legally it can do it illegally since it both makes the laws and enforces them. One of the state’s favorite laws is making its agents immune from legal repercussions of illegal acts performed on the job. If the plaintiff wins this lawsuit the IRS agents who were responsible for the theft will go unpunished. Instead the IRS will merely take some of the money it has stolen from the general population and give it to the plaintiffs. Even when the state rules that is has done something illegal the people are the ones who end up paying.

Kansas City Police Kick Homeless Individuals Out of Unused Tunnels

While I agree with the expressed idea of self-proclaimed progressives that society should better care for the homeless I disagree with their tactics. Self-proclaimed progressives always want the state to get involved and, as I’ve explained, the state would rather see homeless people die off because they have on wealth to expropriate. Demonstrating the conflict of interest I talked about Kansas City police found a community of homeless people living in unused tunnels. What did the police do? Kicked the homeless out of the tunnels that they then filled in to ensure nobody could return:

Police and volunteers from Hope Faith Ministries first visited the camps on Tuesday to advise the residents they had to clear out by Friday. After repeated visits, they encountered only four people, but it was obvious that many others lived there. Cooley said three of the four either accepted services offered or said they would.

On Friday, city public works crews used a Bobcat to close up the tunnels and holes after they were searched by a police robot with a camera. Representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs also were on hand to offer services. Animal Control came because police had reason to think there might be a dangerous pit bull on site, but they did not encounter one.

Whenever the police strike out against the homeless they always concoct some excuse. Usually they claim to be enforcing health or safety regulations but this time around the police merely used the excuse that cooper had been stolen in the area:

It was found while police were investigating copper thefts in the industrial area of the East Bottoms, some of which are very costly. Police have previously encountered evidence of copper thefts at other camps and think some homeless people are responsible for some thefts and may serve as lookouts for larger theft operatives.

Even though the police had no evidence (at least no evidence has been put forward that I can find) that the homeless individuals in the tunnels were the thieves they rousted them anyways. In all likelihood the accusations copper thefts was merely a convenient excuse to kick the homeless out of the area so they could become some other city’s problem. Most large municipalities seem to believe that the best way to deal with the homeless is to make their lives so miserable that they flee to somewhere else. That’s the kind of “charity” you get from the state. If a person isn’t a revenue source they are roughed up and told to go elsewhere, locked into a cage, or outright murdered. Using the state to help those in need will never succeed because the state has no use for those who truly have nothing to expropriate.

Monday Metal: War Of The Universe by Luca Turilli

Another Monday, another metal song. Raise your hand if you don’t like symphonic metal. Everybody who has their hand raise is dismissed. Seriously, get the fuck out. For those of you with the good musical sense to keep your hands down we’re going to hear a song by Luca Turilli. Luca Turilli is the self-titled band by Rhapsody of Fire’s guitarist and songwriter. He turns out some incredible music and it’s difficult to settle on one song of his. I decided on War of the Universe because it has an awesome name, sound, and cover art (mecha always win me over):

More Thoughts on the Bitcoin Crash

It appears that Bitcoin hasn’t hit the floor yet. This news has left many members of the Bitcoin community scrounging for a scapegoat. Reading various Bitcoin communities (although the /r/bitcoin subreddit has provided me with the most entertainment) it seems the recent devaluation of Bitcoin was caused by automated trades performed by bots, fake libertarians (I guess you can only be a libertarian if you invest heavily in Bitcoin), and a secret cabal of central banks. While the last scapegoat sounds the most plausible of the three (those central banks are ruthless bastards) I think the community is ignoring the most likely cause: Bitcoin is a new technology.

Bitcoin really is the first notable crypto-currency. Although previous crypto-currenciies have existed none of them enjoyed the prominence that Bitcoin enjoys today. Most people alive today have lived their entire lives using state controlled fiat currencies. Bitcoin is the opposite of what we call money today. It’s a decentralized currency that cannot be inflated past a certain point (only 21 million Bitcoin will ever exist). The decentralized nature of the currency means no single entity can wield monopoly control over it. It is also the first free-market monetary system that most of us have experienced. In other words, Bitcoin is a revolutionary idea and, like all revolutionary ideas, nobody can predict how it will, or won’t, change things.

Speaking in software terms the concept of Bitcoin (not to be mistaken for the network, clients, or services) is in the alpha stage of development. People participating in the Bitcoin community should understand that they are testers and should expect to find copious amounts of bugs that need to be worked out. Is Bitcoin vulnerable to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks? If so, that must be corrected. Is Bitcoin too reliant on single points of failure? If so, that must be corrected. Is it too hard for the average person to acquire Bitcoin or use it in everyday transactions? If so, that must be correct. Growing pains are unavoidable when working with a technology that few, if any, understand the ramifications of.

Instead of playing the blame game I believe the Bitcoin community would be better served by noting the failure and thinking of methods to utilized the currency’s main features to overcome that failure. For instance, I’ve seen a lot of blamed aimed at Mt.Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange. Bitcoin is a decentralized currency, why was one exchange allowed to gain so much influence over the exchange rate of the currency? Having a single point of failure is always a bad idea. Trusted members of the Bitcoin community should start developing more exchanges. More Bitcoin exchanges would mean more resiliency as it would be difficult for attackers to bring down or manipulate all of them simultaneously. Members of the Bitcoin network should put more work into developing easy methods for the average person to buy Bitcoin. In today’s world people like the convenience of credit cards. Credit cards, due to the ability of a purchaser to perform a charge back and the inability to recover sold Bitcoin, don’t work well for purchasing Bitcoin so some other convenient method must be created. The idea of Bitcoin Automated Teller Machines (ATM) is a good start, but they need to be located in high traffic areas such as grocery stores and gas stations. Until people can acquire Bitcoin as easily as they can buy things with their credit cards they won’t adopt the currency.

Another feature that should be leveraged more is the mostly anonymous nature of the currency. I’ve seen a lot of comments from Bitcoin advocates trying to refute the claim that Bitcoin is most heavily used in the drug trade. Stop that. Embrace it! Expound the fact that Bitcoin is used by drug dealers and purchasers because transactions cannot easily be tied to physical individuals. As the world governments continue to wring more and more money out of their people those people are going to look for a place to hide their wealth. A currency that is outside of the state’s control, can be used to store wealth in a mostly anonymous fashion, and allows individuals to perform transactions in a manner that that state can’t record for taxing or prosecution purposes should be huge and will be necessary as the state’s rate of expropriation increases. By denying that Bitcoin is used for “black” market purchases members of the Bitcoin community are downplaying its most valuable feature. Don’t try to control its image, let its image develop freely.

As an agorist and a crypto-anarchist I want to see Bitcoin succeed. In order to succeed I believe the Bitcoin community needs to understand that Bitcoin is a revolutionary idea, will have growing pains, and must be rid of state dogmas against the “black” market. Trying to shoehorn it into mainstream monetary and political principles will relegate it to always being an interesting idea that never gets widely adopted.

How About Those Republicans

Were I to listen to the most outspoken members of the gun rights community I would be lead to believe that the Republican Party believes in gun rights. For my sake I’m glad I don’t listen to them and recognized the Republican Party for what it is, the exact same thing as the Democrats minus their chosen party color and totem animal. Whenever I express this belief around other gun rights activists I’m almost always challenged by some dyed in the wool Republican. I’m lucky, little argument for my position is necessary as it is continuously confirmed by Republicans voting in favor of gun control:

un-control legislation survived its first key test vote in the Senate on Thursday, signaling that a bill will finally come to the chamber floor and setting up a bruising floor battle over background checks and gun and ammunition bans.

[…]

Sixteen Republicans voted in favor of the motion. Two Democrats — Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas — voted against it. Both are up for re-election in 2014.

I can already hear gun rights activists across the nation promising that they will work to ensure those 16 Republicans are voted out of office. I also know that, with very few exceptions, they won’t follow through with their promise. How do I know this? History tends to run in parallel paths. Whenever a Republican votes in favor of gun control gun rights activists say they will ensure that Republican won’t get reelected. By the time the election rolls around those very same gun rights activists will make up an excuse to justify supporting that candidate. Usually the excuse sounds something like, “I know his history on gun rights isn’t perfect but things will be much worse if the Democrat challenger gets into office!” Case in point, gun rights activists claimed they would do everything in their power to ensure Mitt Romney didn’t get another political position after he supported gun control as governor of Massachusetts. During the last presidential election gun rights activists supported Romney and demanded other gun owners support Romney because he was “better than Obama.”

So long as you fall for the false dichotomy inherent in our political system you will forever be suckered into supporting gun control advocates. This is because, in most cases, you’ll only be given the choice between an extreme gun control advocate or an apparently less zealous gun control advocate. Regardless of who wins you’ll lose. You might believe that one candidate will ensure that you’ll lose at a slightly slower rate but even that isn’t true because those less zealous gun control advocates will make deals with the more zealous gun control advocates in order to achieve other political agendas. In the political realm your so-called right to bear arms is nothing more than a bargaining chip used by political candidates to sucker you into supporting them and by politicians to trade trade with other politicians.

If you want to protect your ability to own a firearm then you need to take direct action. Direct action is the only tactic that has a history of delivering goods. As long as you rely on the political system you will find your ability of own firearms more and more restricted. After all it was the political system that robbed us of our legal ability to own machine guns registered after May 19th, 1986, mail order firearms directly to our homes, purchase new “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines for 10 years, and own any firearms if the state labeled us felons.

Fear Mongering and Cyber War

For some time the United States government has been beating the cyber war drum. We’re lead to believe that foreign nations are going to hack into all of the nation’s networks and cause destruction and mayhem. In fact, according to Mike Rogers, the scary foreign hackers are already inside of your computers:

The House Intelligence Committee is warning that “time is running out” before the next major cyberattack: The Russians, Iranians, Chinese and others are likely already on your computer.

“You have criminal organizations trying to get into your personal computer and steal your personal stuff. And by the way, the Chinese are probably on your computer, the Russians are probably on your personal computer, the Iranians are already there,” House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R.-MI). told Fox News.

One is left to wonder what Mr. Rogers means by the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians. Does he means hackers living in those countries or agents of those countries’ governments? From his statement I’m left to believe he means the government agents of those countries. In all likelihood nobody inside of the governments of Russia, China, or Iran give two shits about the data on your personal computer. There are two things to consider: breaking into a computer requires effort and having access to all data on all personal computers would leave one with so much data to sift through that their efforts would be rendered worthless. If the Russians, Chinese, or Iranians are going to sink resources into compromising systems they are probably going to expect a good payoff. Breaking into one of my systems isn’t going to give them much of value so they are unlikely to sink resources into attempting to compromise my systems. Most of your are likely in the same boat as me. The real threat to most people are regular malicious hackers who want to create botnets. Those hackers generally work for themselves or a non-state crime syndicate.

I believe it’s also worth pointing out the language Mr. Rogers used. He said the Russians and Chinese are probably in your computer but knows for a fact that the Iranians already are. Isn’t it strange that the nation the United States government has been trying to declare war on for the last several decades is known, for a fact, to be in your computer but the most technologically advanced nation of the three, China, is potentially in your computer? It’s almost as if Mr. Rogers is trying to drum up fear of Iran specifically.

We all know what this is about though:

Rogers believes the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act (CISPA) can help counter that threat. The bill was introduced last year and passed the House, though it failed to make it through the Senate following a groundswell of concern from privacy activists.

Be afraid you stupid serfs! Allow us in the state to pass laws that grant us the ability to spy on your communications so we can protect you from the scary people are aren’t from around here!

What Rogers wants is the legal ability for the United States government to compromise your system. He wants the exact thing he’s using to strike fear into the hearts of Americans. Computers are a good tool for the state to use to generate fear. A majority of computer users lack a good understanding of the underlying technology and people tend to fear what they don’t understand. This is why foreign states are also good tools to use to generate fear, most Americans have very little knowledge of foreign countries. Combining the two makes for a very effective tool to generate fear that can be used to sucker the public into supporting most government control over their lives.