Month: March 2014

Zero Accountability

The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) has a colorful history involving a lot of abuses of power. Police departments abusing power isn’t something that surprises people these days as it’s incredibly common, especially in larger cities. But people often wonder why so much abuses takes place in modern police departments. I believe the answer lies in the lack of accountability modern police officers face. One of Minneapolis’s finest has a habit of beating people while off duty and two lawsuits filed against the department for his behavior have turned into payouts for the victims:

A judge’s order in a Minneapolis police brutality suit last week pushed the city’s bill to $410,653.33 for two lawsuits filed against police officer Michael Griffin.

The suits, one stemming from a 2010 incident and the other from 2011, both involve cases in which Griffin was off-duty and at downtown bars when he allegedly punched or kicked people who did not want to fight him. Three people were hospitalized as a result of the incidents, including one man who was unconscious and bleeding for more than five minutes, according to one of the lawsuits.

Griffin remains a patrol officer in the Fourth Precinct on the city’s North Side, according to a department spokesman. The status of an internal affairs review of the incidents was not immediately available Friday.

Notice two important points. First, the city is footing the bill. Although officer Griffin was the attacker in both cases the tax victims of Minneapolis are left paying for his violence. Mr. Griffin should be the one who has to pay his victims as he was the one who wronged them. Second, Mr. Griffin is still on active duty. The man has been found at fault for assaulting two people. He should not be allowed to remain in his position of authority.

But cases like this aren’t uncommon. Police officers are generally insulated from the consequences of their misdeeds. Cities often pay the bills of lawsuits stemming from police abuses cases and officers found guilty of wrongdoing often remain employed by the department. This insulation from wrongdoing means officers often face no consequence when they abuse their power. If one doesn’t suffer consequences for abusing power they are more likely to abuse power.

I believe making officers personally responsible for their actions would do a lot to reduce abuses of power performed by police in this country.

Cryptocat for iOS

I’ve been experimenting with Cryptocat with a few friends for several months now. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Cryptocat is an Off-the-Record (OTR) messaging client that runs as a browser plugin. I’m a fan. Cryptocat has undergone and passed at least one security audit, which makes the developers’ claims of security far greater than many other clients. More importantly, as somebody who is trying to convince people to use secure communication systems, Cryptocat is easy to use. After spending some time trying to convince people to use security methods of communication I’ve learned that the primary barrier is effort; the more effort a system requires the less apt people are to use it. Of course there are downsides to everything that the biggest downside to Cryptocat has been it’s lack of a mobile client.

Fortunately that issue has been partially resolved with the introduction of Cryptocat for iOS. I’ve been playing with it for roughly one week now and am impressed. The interface is straight forward, the client has no issue logging into Cryptocat conversations, and you receive iOS notifications when a new messages appears in a conversation. Unfortunately, due to Apple’s restrictions, Cryptocat is only able to run in the background for a few minutes before it’s unceremoniously killed. Since Cryptocat rooms don’t maintain a history of posted messages (by design) you can’t catch up on any message sent between the time your client is killed and you log back in. But when you’re working on Apple’s system you have to play by Apple’s rules.

I’m hoping an Android client will be released soon. Once that’s done a vast majority of smartphones will be able to access Cryptocat rooms, which will make the system more viable. Who knows, someday OTR may become commonly used for text communications.

The Debate Over Whether the Cops Can Steal Your Stuff

Here in Minnesota there is a rather heated political debate brewing. No, I’m not talking about the debate over whether or not cannabis should be legalized but this other debate does tie into it. The big debate is whether or not the cops have to find your guilty before keeping your stuff:

A move that would bar cops from keeping property and cash seized in drug cases when there is no criminal conviction is the flash point of a debate between law enforcement and civil liberties advocates that is ­heading to the Legislature as soon as next week.

Backers say the state’s civil forfeiture laws are long overdue for a little due process. The laws have become a growing source of cash for law enforcement agencies and were famously abused by the now-defunct Metro Gang Strike Force, which paid out $840,000 in settlements to ­victims who had their property illegally seized.

Under current law, police or sheriffs can keep property, vehicles and cash seized in drug cases or drive-by shootings — regardless of the outcome of the criminal case.

I find it funny that this is even a debate. The fact that the police are opposing reforms to civil forfeiture laws is telling. If the job of the police was to uphold law and order they would be all for reforms that prevent the state from stealing property from the innocent. But the police want to keep the laws as is because their primary duty isn’t to uphold law and order; it’s to expropriate wealth from the people for the state. The police really are a gang of thieves as evident by their opposition to require due process before property is stolen.

Civil forfeiture laws are one of the reasons I laugh whenever somebody says that the United States is a nation of laws and our legal system is based on due process. Perhaps that was true at one time but it certainly isn’t true today. The war on unpatentable drugs has made sure whatever due process that may have existed in the United States legal system is now dead and buried.

Monday Metal: 吹响号角 by Ego Fall

This week we’re heading to China for some folk metal. Now some people may recognized this as metalcore, which I know is held in low regard in the metal community. I don’t have time for that type of political bullshit. This song sounds pretty awesome in my opinion and this is my blog so I’m posting it. One of the things that I think make this song interesting is the inclusion of throat singing:

For the record I have no idea what the actual song title is. Chinese, unfortunately, isn’t a language I know.

Photograph of Samurai

I’ve had a fascination with Japanese history since college. There’s something about an island that maintain a mostly isolated existence from the rest of the world for hundreds of years that makes for some interesting studying. My fascination is what motivated me to take up classes to learn how to properly wield a samurai sword. It’s also what makes photographs such as this one really neat:

samurai-photograph

I stumbled across this picture on the @History_Pics Twitter account, which I encourage you to follow if you have an interest in general history. There has been some very interesting photos posted on that feed and this one just happened to fit my interests enough that I found is worth posting.

Criminal is an Arbitrary Label

Both advocates of gun control and gun rights spend a lot of time discussing the need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. On paper it sounds like a good idea but when you look at what the label “criminal” means in American society it becomes a less desirable idea.

What is a criminal? Criminal, in our society, is a completely arbitrary label. If a select group of individuals gather in a designated marble building, write some words on pieces of paper, and a majority of them later vote to make those words law then anybody in violation of those words is no a criminal.

Imagine that today, March 7th, Mr. Smith is an upstanding law-abiding citizen. Tomorrow some guys donning suits and gathering in a marble building write some words that Mr. Smith is in violation of and vote to make it law. By March 9th Mr. Smith is no longer a law-abiding citizen but a wanted criminal.

This is why I have no time for programs that are supposedly meant to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Until we redefine criminal to actually mean something other than arbitrarily selected individuals the mission of keeping anything from the hands of criminals is foolhardy. Instead we should first work to make the process of defining who is and isn’t a criminal something consistent and predictable instead of arbitrary. Once that has been done we can have a discussion about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

Facebook Does Nothing, Gun Control Advocate Declare Victory, and a Handful of Gun Rights Advocates Lose Their Shit

Moms Demand Action (MDA) has found itself unable to buy politicians so it has switched tactics to harassing companies. One of the companies on the MDA hit list was Facebook. After being the target of minor harassment for sometime Facebook decided to revise its policies regarding the posting of ads for commonly regulated goods, including firearms:

Today, we are introducing a series of new educational and enforcement efforts for people discussing the private sale of regulated items:

  • Any time we receive a report on Facebook about a post promoting the private sale of a commonly regulated item, we will send a message to that person reminding him or her to comply with relevant laws and regulations. We will also limit access to that post to people over the age of 18.
  • We will require Pages that are primarily used by people to promote the private sale of commonly regulated goods or services to include language that clearly reminds people of the importance of understanding and complying with relevant laws and regulations, and limit access to people over the age of 18 or older if required by applicable law.
  • We will provide special in-app education on Instagram for those who search for sales or promotions of firearms.

We will not permit people to post offers to sell regulated items that indicate a willingness to evade or help others evade the law. For example, private sellers of firearms in the U.S. will not be permitted to specify “no background check required,” nor can they offer to transact across state lines without a licensed firearms dealer. We have worked with a number of individuals and organizations on the development of these efforts, which will be implemented and enforced in the coming weeks. We are grateful in particular for the advice offered by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Americans for Responsible Solutions, Sandy Hook Promise, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and Moms Demand Action, which helped us develop an approach for the private sale of firearms. We also appreciate the feedback provided by the Facebook Safety Advisory Board.

As it did with Starbucks, MDA managed to convince another company to issue a statement of policy change that didn’t actually change anything. Now when an ad for a firearm sale is reported the Facebook system will send the poster and automated reminder to comply with relevant laws. Pages that primarily deal with the sale of firearms will be required to post a reminder for users to comply with relevant laws. Finally the Instagram app will remind users to comply with relevant laws when searching for firearm sales. In other words Facebook is reminding people that there are laws regarding firearm transfers.

The part that a few (by which I mean a very very minor number) gun rights activists have been bringing up as a bad change is the prohibition on ads that say no background check is necessary. Since intrastate transactions in many states don’t require a background check this blanket prohibition is not necessary in all cases. I don’t find this to be the big anti-gun ploy a few outspoken critics are trying to make it. Those of us who have researched firearm regulations in the United States know that the topic is incredibly complex. On top of the federal regulations there are also 50 individual states with their own lists of regulations. Facebook, being a social networking site, probably doesn’t have lawyers on hand who are experts in gun regulations. It is also headquartered in California. Therefore it’s likely that Facebook, not having the proper lawyers on hand, went with the safest option and decided to comply with California law in regards to background checks.

I highly doubt the prohibited language is a grand conspiracy. If Facebook wanted to implement anti-gun policies it could have. For example, it could have posted a prohibition against ads for aesthetically offensive firearms and standard capacity magazines. But it didn’t. Instead it did the corporate equivalent of telling MDA “There, we did something. Now shut up and go away.”

For you gun control advocates out there I’m sorry to report that you accomplished nothing. You are still free to declare victory but doing so will simply prove to the world that you’re delusional. For the handful of gun rights activists making this out to be proof that Facebook is anti-gun I’m sorry to report that it’s not. I know you have a deep need to be the victim but you’re not in this case. For everybody else I apologize for interrupting your day only to report nothing important happened. But I’m guessing most of you will agree with me that nothing happening is a good thing in this case.

People Find a Way

China is reeling from a recent knife attack that claimed the lives of 33 persons:

Authorities on Sunday blamed a slashing rampage that killed 29 people and wounded 143 at a train station in southern China on separatists from the country’s far west, while local residents said government crackdowns had taken their toll on the alleged culprits.

Police fatally shot four of the assailants — putting the overall death toll at 33 — and captured another after the attack late Saturday in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. But authorities were searching for at least five more of the black-clad attackers.

Tragedies such as this point out something that we must all come to accept. Humans are creative creatures. Our creativity can be used for both good and evil. Gun control advocates focus their attention on wanting to prohibit firearms. Prohibitions against weapons, like any prohibitions, don’t work because human creativity will render it meaningless in a short period of time. History has shown us this with alcohol prohibition in the United States and we see it today with the war on unpatentable drugs.

An absence of guns simply means other weapons will be used and in our creative hands everything is a weapon. The chemicals under my bathroom sink can be mixed into a rather unpleasant gas. My kitchen contains numerous sharp objects that, as the linked story demonstrates, can cause a great deal of harm in a fairly short period of time.

Prohibitions are pointless. They throw a lot of innocent people in cages and fail to hinder the evil in any ways. This is why I feel we need to stop implementing prohibitions and start focusing on identifying the causes of society’s ills. Calls for prohibitions are a waster of time and effort and this is proven time and again whenever evil men are able to accomplish their goals when prohibitions that were supposed to hinder them are in place.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

When you were young did you ever imitate something your parents did only to have them scold you for it? I did and when I called my parents on it they would often say “Do as I say, not as I do.” That’s kind of what this feels like:

US President Barack Obama has once again accused Russia of violating international law and said Moscow was “on the wrong side of history”.

American officials say they are planning to target Russian individuals and organisations with economic sanctions.

They have also once again urged Moscow to withdraw troops from Crimea, and have proposed sending international monitors to Ukraine.

I’m not sure how Obama can, with a straight face, demand Putin stop invading a foreign land when the United States has a long and proud history of doing exactly that. Heck, the entire foreign policy of the United States is based on invading countries for no real reason.