Month: April 2013

Microsoft and the NYPD are Partnering to Spy on You

Fascism, the marriage between the state and private entities, is a lucrative business for both parties. Sadly, unlike mutual exchange, fascism involves more than the exchangers, it involves everybody who falls under the tyranny of the state, and those people always suffer from the unholy union. Last year Microsoft and the New York Police Department (NYPD) announced their partnership in expanding the police state. The two collaborated to create the Domain Awareness System, a system that integrates city-wide surveillance technology to assist the state in spying on the general populace. As it turns out this marriage stands to be very profitable for both parties as other cities are looking to implement the system:

A unique public-private partnership that joined gut-level police acumen with advanced computer algorithms is proceeding toward two goals that rarely coincide: The policing system is making New York safer and it will also make money for the city, which is marketing it to other jurisdictions.

In the six months since the Domain Awareness System was unveiled, officials of Microsoft, which designed the system with the New York Police Department, said they have been surprised by the response and are actively negotiating with a number of prospective buyers, whom Microsoft declined to identify.

“The interest from the United States has come from smaller municipalities, from sheriff’s departments, and police chiefs from several major cities,” said Dave Mosher, vice president of Microsoft Services. “Outside the U.S., large sporting events have approached us, and also law enforcement — people who are interested in providing public security.”

Buyers would pay to access the software (at least several million dollars and more depending on the size of the jurisdiction and whether specifications have to be customized). New York City will receive 30 percent of the gross revenues from the sale of the system and access to any innovations developed for new customers. The revenue will be directed to counterterrorism and crime prevention programs.

The state loves surveillance because it offers a method to expropriate wealth from the general populace without having to hire and pay additional enforcers. I’m not even slightly surprised that Microsoft and the NYPD have been met with such high demand. Let’s face it, most municipalities are hurting for money. The only way those books can be shored up is if more wealth can be expropriated from the general populace. In order to increase expropriation the governments of those municipalities must increase taxes, increase the number of issued citations, or both. Technology like the Domain Awareness System assists in increasing the number of issued citations because it allows enforcers to see more taxable vices (speeding, parking violations, etc.) and record evidence for a court case if a citation is challenged.

There is some goods news. Surveillance systems are vulnerable to a type of exploit known as smashing cameras and audio recording devices.

Reasons to Bike Armed

I’ve explained why it’s a good idea to carry a gun when biking. Concealing a firearm while biking is difficult and openly carrying one will certainly get you some attention, especially in Minneapolis. Since I don’t give two shits what other people think about me the latter issue doesn’t bother me so the former is of no consequence either. Still, people inevitably want to know why I’m carrying a gun while biking (usually they ask in a somewhat hysterical manner, as if what I’m doing is going to harm them in some way). My reason is simple, there are some very violent people out there:

A cyclist who’s spent the last two years delivering coffee by bike for Peace Coffee narrowly avoided a flaming Molotov cocktail tossed at him Wednesday afternoon from the 15th Avenue bridge spanning Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway.

[…]

Things tossed from the overpasses are well-known hazards to Greenway riders, said Ditlefsen. He said he knows someone who had a grocery cart tossed at them. Luckily, it missed.

Molotov cocktails and shopping carts raining from the sky? Talk about a hostile environment! I bring up these incidents because of the amount of danger they presented. Had the Molotov or the shopping car hit their intended targets it’s very likely those targets would be in the hospital or graveyard. It’s also fairly safe to assume that people willing to throw Molotov cocktails and shopping carts are cyclists have no moral issues with assault and murder. Who’s to say those individuals won’t lie in wait on the trail, knock a passing cyclists to the ground, and beat him to death? The fact that there are people willing to injure or kill cyclists is what motivates me to carry a gun on my rides.

Another Demonstration of the Absurdity of Intellectual Property

Even though intellectual property is going the way of the dinosaurs the state continues its attempt prevent the inevitable. This week one of the state’s many courts ruled that you can’t legally sell digital music files that you’ve purchased unless you’re given permission by the copyright holder:

A court ruling has put the kibosh on reselling digital media.

In a lawsuit between Universal Music Group’s Capitol Records and MP3 reseller ReDigi, U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan has sided with the record label and said that reselling songs bought on iTunes, Amazon, or other digital music venues is akin to copyright infringement.

“The court grants Capitol’s motion for summary judgment on its claims for ReDigi’s direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement of its distribution and reproduction rights,” Judge Sullivan wrote in a summary judgment filed Saturday. “The court also denies ReDigi’s motion in its entirety.”

This ruling brings with it some interesting ramifications. Intellectual property, if you can call it property, is unique in the way it is created. Most property, under the laws of the United States, is created when somebody labors to produce something. If you use raw metal and wood to create a hammer the resulting hammer is legally considered your property. Since it is legally recognized as your property you are able to utilize, sell, or give it. Since money, at least to a point, is considered your property you are able to trade it to another person in exchange for their property. Intellectual property doesn’t follow these guiding principles.

How is intellectual property created? Most people probably believe that intellectual property is created when an idea is created. If you create a song is that song legally your property? No. That song only becomes your property when you tell the state about it. The state has a monopoly on granting copyrights and patents, the only recognized mechanisms of creating intellectual property. If you don’t tell the state about your idea you can’t claim it as intellectual property. However, once the state recognizes your idea you gain legal control over everybody who learns about your idea. This is where the ultimate absurdity occurs, intellectual property requires legally recognized control over the minds of others. If you, or somebody else, tells me about your idea I cannot choose to forget it. The human brain absorbs knowledge whether we want it to or not. After learning about your idea I am not legally allowed to use that knowledge. If, after hearing the song you created, I recreated that same song you could bring a lawsuit against me for violating your intellectual property.

The above mentioned court case demonstrates this fact perfectly. Copying a digital music file is nothing more than an act of telling another about that song. Even though the knowledge of that song is forever in the listener’s head he is restricted from telling others about it. This is why the court ruling makes sense under intellectual property laws. Selling an MP3 doesn’t transfer knowledge of the song, it merely tells another person about the song. The absurdity lies in the fact that, legally, a person who hears a song is not allowed to tell another about that song unless the copyright holder gives the seller permission. In other words when you hear a copyrighted song you, without any say in the matter, are now partially owned by the copyright holder. You are no longer legally allowed to express all of your thoughts to other people, even if you took no action to acquire the copyrighted idea (you may have involuntarily heard the song while you were at a restaurant, party, or bar).

If one accepts intellectual property as legitimate they necessarily accept a legal ability for one person to own, at least in part, another person.

Absolute Equality

The left, progressives, collectivists, or whatever you want to call them have an overall obsession with equality. They want to see a world where everybody is perfectly equal in all regards. It’s a noble goal, although one that is impossible to achieve. Being impossible has never stopped the state from attempting something, and it periodically attempts to level the playing field, at least for the serfs (the state will never create a level playing field, it wants power to lord over the serfs). The state’s desire for equality manifests in odd, at least from an outside observer’s vantage point, ways. For example, the state continues to leverage its monopoly on declaring individuals criminals to create equality by declaring everybody a criminal. Having created enough decrees to label most adults criminals the state has moving on to declaring children criminals:

During his first term, President Barack Obama declared October 2009 to be “National Information Literacy Awareness Month,” emphasizing that, for students, learning to navigate the online world is as important a skill as reading, writing and arithmetic. It was a move that echoed his predecessor’s strong support of global literacy—such as reading newspapers—most notably through First Lady Laura Bush’s advocacy.

Yet, disturbingly, the Departments of Justice (DOJ) of both the Bush and Obama administrations have embraced an expansive interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that would literally make it a crime for many kids to read the news online. And it’s the main reason why the law must be reformed.

Equality an be achieved in our lifetime. No longer will there be a lower, middle, or upper class. There will only be a ruling and subservient class. Members of the subservient class will enjoy perfect equality as they all live in tiny concrete cells, eat gruel, and work as slave laborers for the ruling class. The only thing needed to secure this future is for the state to declare everybody a criminal, kidnap them, and lock them in a cage. At the rate things are going this utopian future isn’t far away.

Doing the Goddess’s Work

What is commonly referred to as the religious right never cease to entertain me. A group of most zealous lawmakers in North Carolina have decided to spit in the fact of United States legal history (good on them) by introducing legislation that would allow their fine state to declare an official religion:

Republican North Carolina state legislators have proposed allowing an official state religion in a measure that would declare the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings.

The bill, filed Monday by two GOP lawmakers from Rowan County and backed by nine other Republicans, says each state “is sovereign” and courts cannot block a state “from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.” The legislation was filed in response to a lawsuit to stop county commissioners in Rowan County from opening meetings with a Christian prayer, wral.com reported.

Although these lawmakers don’t acknowledge her existence, the goddess Eris smiles favorable upon them. Through their single minded attempts to establish order by forcing everybody to abide by their religious beliefs these lawmakers are creating untold amounts of discord. If these bills manage to advance in any way they will almost certainly lead to massive protests full of angry people on both sides shouting at one another. Maneuvers like this also sow seeds of doubt in the minds of those who oppose state established religion. Were this bill to pass opponents of state established religion would have one more reason to view the state as illegitimate. Since the state is the greatest producer of order any strike against it will surely please Eris.

New Contender for Dumbest Gun Control Statement

Once in a great while a new person steps up to the plate to challenge Carolyn McCarthy’s “I believe it is a shoulder thing that goes up.” response for dumbest gun control statement. Let me introduce you to Diana DeGette, a politician from Colorado. She has decided to take it upon herself to fill the large shoes left by McCarthy. She started off her challenge to McCarthy by stating that magazines are ammunition:

While participating in a public forum on gun control hosted by the Denver Post Tuesday, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Col., said that the number of magazines will decrease over time as shooters fire bullets, CNS News reported.

“What’s the efficacy of banning these magazine clips? I will tell you, these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them,” she said.

She went on to say that “the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will be shot and there won’t be any more available.”

Either nobody informed her that magazines can be reloaded or she’s trolling the living shit out of the shooting community. I would prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt and go with the latter but I’m fairly certain it’s the former. DeGette wasn’t satisfied with just one moronic statement though, she double down:

During a public forum on gun control hosted by the Denver Post Tuesday night, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Col., mocked a senior citizen who wondered how he was supposed to defend himself under the state’s new gun laws, Jim Hoft reported at the Gateway Pundit.

The audio was not very clear, but the man can be heard talking about being at a disadvantage when facing an armed criminal.

“The good news for you, you live in Denver. The Denver PD would be there within minutes,” she said to laughter.

“You’d probably be dead anyway,” she added, smirking.

I think she may have taken the title from McCarthy. While stating that a barrel shroud is a “shoulder thing that goes up.” is pretty dumb it’s still little more than a lack of technical knowledge. DeGette not only demonstrated a lack of technical knowledge but she also told a elderly gentleman that his life wasn’t worth protecting. In all likelihood DeGette assumed that the gentleman was retired and therefore no longer profitable to the state, which makes him worthless in the eyes of politicians. Still, most politicians at least have the good taste not to publicly say such things. In three sentences DeGette was able to tell the man that he doesn’t need a firearm because he has the police and the police aren’t going to save him so he’ll be dead anyways.

I honestly don’t remember the last time I’ve seen a politicians say “Shut up slave.” so insensitively. DeGette is going to be a politician to watch in the coming months.

Bitcoin’s Rapid Rise in Value

Anybody that has been paying attention to Bitcoin as of late is aware of the crypto-currency’s sudden, massive increase in value compared to the dollar. Proponents of Bitcoin are pointing to this climb as proof that the currency is a real contender in the currency market and detractors have been saying that the rise is a bubble that is bound to burst. As an advocate of crypto-anarchism I have a keen interest in crypto-currencies, which offer a means for individuals to perform transactions in a fairly anonymous way. With that said I don’t see how this rapid growth in Bitcoin’s value is anything but a bubble. Rapid rises in value, such as a 50% increase in a 48 hour period, tend to be followed by a rapid drop in value. There are many potential reasons for this. Players of the stock market will sometimes perform what is called a pump and dump. Through various methods these players will artificially increase the price of a held stock and sell it when they predict the game is up and the price will soon fall. I wouldn’t be surprised if we later find out that somebody was performing a pump and dump style game with Bitcoin.

The part of me that wants to see crypto-currencies become pervasive wants to see Bitcoin continue to increase in value. Unfortunately the cynical asshole side of me is fairly certain that Bitcoin is in for a major drop in value at some point in the future (it may be tomorrow or it may not happen for a while). I am going to put myself on record saying that Bitcoin will experience a rather notable period of devaluation compared to the dollar. Since Bitcoin is established I don’t believe the devaluation will be as severe as the last period but I believe it will bit harsh enough to create a great deal of butthurt for those who have recently entered the Bitcoin market.

With that said, I base this prediction entirely on a consultation I had with Odin and a ghost claiming to be Ludwig von Mises. Anybody who has studied Norse mythology knows that Odin likes to fuck with people and the apparent ghost of Mises had a very minor, and potentially fake, German accent leading me to doubt its claim. Take my prediction with a grain of salt and wash it down with copious amounts of alcohol.

The Real Reason So Many Laws Exist

Anybody reading federal or state statutes would quickly realize that there are a lot of damned laws on the books. Why does the state feel the need to enact so many laws? Somebody who believed the state exists to protect the general population would likely believe that all, or at least a majority, of those laws are necessary for the protection of the people. Those who understand the true nature of the state also understand that the reason for the large number of laws on the books is so the state has a means of threatening individuals into compliance. Alfred Anaya was a victime of that very tactic:

But in late January 2009, a man whom Anaya knew only as Esteban called for help with a more exotic product: a hidden compartment that Anaya had installed in his Ford F-150 pickup truck. Over the years, these secret stash spots—or traps, as they’re known in automotive slang—have become a popular luxury item among the wealthy and shady alike. This particular compartment was located behind the truck’s backseat, which Anaya had rigged with a set of hydraulic cylinders linked to the vehicle’s electrical system. The only way to make the seat slide forward and reveal its secret was by pressing and holding four switches simultaneously: two for the power door locks and two for the windows.

[…]

Sometime in late 2008, Anaya received a call from a customer who lived in the San Diego area. The man wanted him to fix a malfunctioning trap located in Tijuana. Anaya was scared to venture across the border; as much as he hated to renege on his warranty, he refused to go to Mexico.

Anaya thought he had protected himself by turning down the job, but the damage had been done the moment he answered the phone. This particular customer was the target of a DEA investigation, and agents had eavesdropped on their conversation. The DEA decided to tap Anaya’s phone too, in an effort to identify other drug traffickers who were having traps built by Valley Custom Audio.

[…]

The agents took Anaya to the DEA’s office in downtown Los Angeles, where they questioned him at length. Anaya spoke freely about his traps, estimating that he had built 15 over the past year. He even boasted about his perfectionism, stressing that he was always careful to conceal his wire harnesses.

The agents told Anaya that he could avoid any potential legal complications by doing them a big favor: They wanted him to outfit his clients’ cars with GPS trackers and miniature cameras, so the DEA could build cases against suspected traffickers. They told him to take a few days to mull over the offer, then they released him from custody.

The next day, a dazed Anaya drove to his father’s grave to meditate on the choice before him. The epiphany he had while kneeling by the headstone wasn’t comforting. “I had a feeling that no matter what decision I made, something bad was going to happen,” Anaya says. “But I couldn’t do anything that would put my family in danger.” And while he felt he could handle jail time, he worried that any trafficker big enough to interest the DEA would have no compunctions about killing his children, nieces, and nephews. That made the decision clear.

When Anaya told the DEA that he was too frightened to become an informant, the agents made a new, more enticing proposition: They would set up Valley Custom Audio in a deluxe storefront, complete with every piece of equipment that Anaya desired. They wouldn’t ask him to place any surveillance gadgets in cars, but the shop would be bugged from floor to ceiling.

Once again, Anaya refused.

On December 10, Anaya was arrested and subsequently charged in Los Angeles Superior Court for “false compartment activity.” He was initially denied bail, in part because an illegal assault rifle and a bulletproof vest had been discovered in his house during a police search. (“Y’know, hey, I like to shoot guns,” Anaya says unapologetically; he has two large pistols tattooed on his chest.) His lawyer advised him that, given his totally clean criminal record, he was unlikely to spend much time behind bars for such a minor offense.

But in March 2010, Anaya received grim and surprising news: The federal government was taking over the case, and it was going to prosecute him in Kansas—a state he had never set foot in.

Although Anaya did nothing illegal the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) used California’s law against building secret compartments to first coerce him. State agents gave him two options to avoid cage time: bug customer vehicles or work in a bugged garage. Both options carried a great deal of risk for Anaya and his family. Drug runners aren’t generally known for being nice people. They are attracted to the high payout that drug running offers and not put off by the fact that they could suffer a great deal of state violence. In fact knowing initiated violence is a likely outcome many of the people attracted to the drug trade are individuals who hold very few moral quarrels with using violence themselves. To protect themselves from state violence drug runners often employ violence against individuals who they fear will turn them over to the state. Thanks to the state the drug market is a vicious cycle of violence. Thanks to the DEA Anaya only had two options: face the violence of the state or face the potential violence of drug runners. He chose the violence of the state.

The reason for the vast number of laws on the books is simple; it gives the state a tool to coerce individuals with. If California didn’t have a law against creating secret compartments the DEA may not have had any leverage to use against Anaya. Thanks to the law they had a tool to threaten him with. Since Anaya didn’t fold under the threat of violence the DEA decided to make an example of him. Now the DEA can tell future compartment builders about Anaya, which may convince those builders to take their chances with the potential violence of drug runners instead of the state’s demonstrated violence.

Feedbin

Yesterday I said I was going to try Feedbin, a potential replacement for Google Reader, when Reeder was updated to support it. This is where I admit that I’m not a patient man, when there is something new and shiny to try out I want to try it right now. Needless to say I decided to open a Feedbin account and give it a try even though Reeder doesn’t support it yet.

I’ll save you a lengthy writeup of my initial impressions and just give a bullet point summary of my thoughts.

The Good

  • It successfully imported my feeds from the file Google Takeout provided me.
  • The site always uses Hypertext Transfer Secure (HTTPS) (I’m still baffled by the number of sites that use unsecured connections).
  • The web interface, both on desktop and mobile systems, is very clean and straight forward.
  • Adding new feeds is very easy (I’m surprised by the number of Really Simply Syndication (RSS) clients and services that fail in this regard).
  • No advertisements.
  • You can easily export your list of subscriptions.
  • The developer is pretty upfront about planned features for the service.

The Bad

  • No way (at least that I’ve found) to rename feeds or tags.
  • No way (at least that I’ve found) to easily delete tags, you have to remove the tag from each feed individually.
  • The interface doesn’t allow you to sort feeds based on tags.
  • It’s currently unsupported by Reeder (this isn’t Feedbin’s fault, but it’s an important feature for me).

The Indifferent

  • It’s not free (which is why there are no advertisements).
  • There’s a complete lack of social media features (I’m not against social media features, I just don’t use them).

Overall I like the service so far. While part of me still isn’t used to paying for an online service the other part of me that enjoys a complete lack of advertisements and other attempts of monetizing user data is quite content. When you sign up on the site it notifies you that your card won’t be charged if you cancel within the first three days. Since I like what I’ve seen so far I’m going to pay the whopping $2.00 and try it for an entire month.

Gun Control Moving in Connecticut

Punishing the innocent is par for the course when politicians are involved. Even though all but one Connecticut denizen refrained from shooting up the school in Newtown the politicians of that state have decided to punish every resident gun owner:

The Connecticut deal includes a ban on new high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 children and six educators dead. There are also new registration requirements for existing magazines that carry 10 or more bullets, something of a disappointment for some family members of Newtown victims who wanted an outright ban on the possession of all high-capacity magazines and traveled to the state Capitol on Monday to ask lawmakers for it.

The package also creates what lawmakers said is the nation’s first statewide dangerous weapon offender registry, creates a new “ammunition eligibility certificate,” imposes immediate universal background checks for all firearms sales, and extends the state’s assault weapons ban to 100 new types of firearms and requires that a weapon have only one of several features in order to be banned.

The newly banned weapons could no longer be bought or sold in Connecticut, and those legally owned already would have to be registered with the state, just like the high-capacity magazines.

Most of these restrictions are mirrored by proposed laws we’ve seen either federally or in other individual states. While the politicians and advocates of gun control claim these restrictions are common sense and necessary to prevent the next mass shooting the truth of the matter is much more sinister. What these laws will actually do, as most laws do, is put the law abiding at a severe disadvantage. Gun owners who want to maintain the status of being a lawful individual will be unable to purchase standard capacity magazines or 100 previously legal firearm models and must acquire a certificate just to legally purchase ammunition. On the other hand gun owners willing to ignore the law will now enjoy an advantage since they will still be able to acquire or manufacture standard capacity magazines and the 100 models of firearms that will soon be verboten.