January 2015 – A Geek With Guns

Fellow Minnesotans, Please Take a Moment to Thank Your Representatives for Protecting Bad Officers from Accountability

I have some glorious news comrades! As you know there has been a conspiracy by the proles to hold bad police officers accountable for their actions. Part of this conspiracy involves making officers wear body cameras. They want to use evidence recorded by these cameras to review the actions of our brave enforcers. Thankfully our enforcers have loyal allies willing to stand up against the proles. Tony Cornish, Brian Johnson, and Dan Schoen presented a bill yesterday that would classify and quickly destroy all evidence collected by body cameras that isn’t being used to prosecute a prole in court:

A proposal by a trio of cops-turned-legislators would shield almost all footage shot by police body cameras from public eyes, in what they say is an effort to protect citizens’ privacy.

But advocates of open government say keeping the footage under lock and key undermines attempts to keep police accountable.

The measure filed Thursday is the first legislative effort to regulate the use of the video recording devices worn by police. Footage shot by body cameras would not be available to the public, although individuals captured in the videos would be allowed access. Agencies would be required to keep meticulous records and to destroy any video that is not part of an investigation.

As loyal citizens of this great state of Minnesota we should thanks these three brave representatives. As former police officers themselves Tony Cornish and Brian Johnson have demonstrated that they are still loyal to their fellow enforcers. Dan Schoen is showing he has the right stuff to continue his career in law enforcement. If you would like to read their wonderful work it can be found here.

We can only hope that this bill passes because these traitorous attempts by the proles to hold enforcers accountable cannot be allowed to stand. Our society would collapse overnight if enforcers were no longer allowed to steal, assault, murder, and rape proles without consequence. Tony Cornish, Brian Johnson, and Dan Schoen know this and we can only pray that they are able to convince their fellows of this truth before the proles have a chance to organize a counteroffensive.

Eau Claire County Sheriff Kidnapping People for Jury Duty

Do you want some more proof that you live in the land of the free? How about this story:

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU)– Imagine going about your daily routine, you’re running errands, and perhaps running by the mall, but that’s where you see Eau Claire County Sheriff Ron Cramer approaching you. He says he needs jurors, and you have to go with him, right then, right now.

[…]

Unless those that were approached wrote down their personal information and agreed to drive themselves to the courthouse, the Sheriff’s Department would physically bring them to the courthouse.

You read correctly. The Sheriff of Eau Claire County is literally kidnapping people off of the street and forcing them with the threat of physical violence to serve jury duty. Now some may ask, what choice does he have? Somebody has to server jury duty, right? Wrong. There are many alternatives. For example, you could declare a mistrial and let the accused go free. Obviously that’s not ideal when the crime involves an actual victim. In those cases you can pay people an actual wage to perform jury duty. I know, this is a radical concept. But giving people a pittance to serve jury duty is not a good motivator. If you actually paid people enough they would happily serve jury duty. So instead of walking around town and threatening people with violence Mr. Cramer could walk around town and offer people, say, $20.00 (or more if necessary) per hour of jury duty.

People Shouldn’t Wish Violent Criminals Be Armed

As I was combing through the Internet I came across a rather interesting article titled Why Your Gun Makes Me Nervous. The reason I found the article interesting is because of the first two paragraphs:

There’s a mantra quickly repeating in my head: “Please have a badge. Please have a badge. Please have a badge.” It’s a steady heartbeat as I begin a conversation with a shop clerk and reposition myself so I can peer over her shoulder.

I’ve already seen the bulge in his jacket, and it’s clear from the size and shape that he has a holstered gun. Now my eyes are quickly scanning, hoping to find a law enforcement badge clipped to his belt.

The author wrote an article to explain why guns make her nervous but her two opening paragraphs describe her desire that the person she spotted carrying a gun be a member of a violent gang. You could simply replace her first sentence with “Please have the appropriate gang colors. Please have the appropriate gang colors. Please have the appropriate gang colors.”

I can sort of understand a person being nervous seeing an armed individual in public just because it’s not something thought to be common. But for some reason many people nervous about seeing armed individuals are at ease when they see a badge. A badge, mind you, that indicates the individual’s job involves expropriating wealth from the populace and kidnapping people who break arbitrary laws written by men in marble buildings.

Consider this excerpt from the article:

I do not know this man, have no knowledge of his profession, personality or character. I am unaware of his mental state, of why he feels the need to carry a weapon into a bookstore.

When I see a cop I don’t know them, their personality, or character. I am also unaware of their mental state or why they feel the need to have a job that requires initiating violence against nonviolent people. In fact a badge doesn’t reliable tell you what an individual’s profession is since anybody can get a badge and pretend to be a cop.

Everything the author wrote about the armed individual is equally applicable to a police officer. The only difference is that a cop’s job is to put your in a cage whereas any other armed individual is probably just in the bookstore to buy a book.

Pravda Coming to Indiana

For those who either lived through or studied the Cold War the name Pravda is familiar. Pravda was the state sanctioned news source in the Soviet Union. When you needed to know what was now considered wrongthink you needed only to consult your latest edition of Pravda. For good reason people living outside of the Soviet Union made fun of the fact that the Soviet government had control over news. People living in side of the Soviet Union also made fun of Pravda because they knew anything it reported was almost certainly the opposite of the truth.

Now that the Cold War is over the United States seems hellbent on replicating many former Soviet programs. Indiana just announced that it will be creating its own state run news source:

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) is starting a state-run news agency that will offer pre-written stories to news outlets in the state, according to The Indianapolis Star, which obtained documents about the news service.

The new news service, called “Just IN” will also sometimes offer stories about Pence’s administration. The site is set to launch in the later half of February. Stories will be written by state press secretaries and will be overseen by Bill McCleery, a former reporter for the Star.

In other words other news sources better write good things about the Party or face trouble in the form of not receiving exclusive access to politicians and potential lawsuits. Righthaven showed us the kind of legal damage one can wield with access to newspaper copyrights. While Righthaven ultimately feel when it was ruled they had no cases since they didn’t actually own any copyrights Indiana’s version of Pravda will, which could open the door for lawsuits against other news sources that reference it.

Obviously that last part is a worst case scenario but unlikely to hold up in court. But other news sources losing access to Indiana politicians is a very real threat if the state operates its own news source. After all, why would a politician risk talking to a news source that may badger them when they can talk to the news source they control?

What Dying Free Speech Looks Like

Free speech is dying and states are killing it. In their zeal to destroy any potential challenge to their power, err, protect us from the terrorists states have been drafting more laws that speech they don’t approve of illegal. France is taking the next step. President Francois Hollande will introduce legislation that would hold Google, Facebook, and other sites that allows comments legally responsible for what users say:

(Bloomberg) — The French government is stepping up the pressure on Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. to help in the struggle against terrorist groups.

President Francois Hollande said Tuesday in Paris the government will present a draft law next month that makes Internet operators “accomplices” of hate-speech offenses if they host extremist messages. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he will travel to the U.S. to seek help from the heads of Twitter Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as well as Google and Facebook. Spokesmen for the companies did not immediately return requests for comment.

In other words, censor any speech he don’t like or face the wrath of the French legal system (which is pretty wrathful when it comes to persecuting Muslims or Romani). With enough legalese one could argue that this law isn’t an abridgement of free speech because companies, not the state, would be charged with the task of censorship. But with enough legalese I could argue that gravity is not longer in effect. Legalese is bullshit.

This is a clear abridgement of free speech by holding the state’s gun to the heads of companies that enable communication. And while it’s being marketed as a means of controlling hate-speech we all know that hate-speech is defined by the state and therefore can be used by it to censor anything it wants.

The story noted that spokespersons from any of the major companies that would be impacted by this law didn’t return any comments. Hopefully they’re all preparing comments that are variations on, “Go fuck yourself, Hollande.” Because that’s the only proper response to this law.

DEA Planned to Surveil Arizona Gun Show Attendees

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is building a system to track motorists throughout the country. Part of the system likely relies on license plate readers. But this isn’t the first incident where the DEA planned to use license plate readers to track Americans. In 2009 the DEA was planning to use them to track attendees of gun shows in Arizona:

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives collaborated on plans to monitor gun show attendees using automatic license plate readers, according to a newly disclosed DEA email obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act.

The April 2009 email states that “DEA Phoenix Division Office is working closely with ATF on attacking the guns going to [redacted] and the gun shows, to include programs/operation with LPRs at the gun shows.” The government redacted the rest of the email, but when we received this document we concluded that these agencies used license plate readers to collect information about law-abiding citizens attending gun shows. An automatic license plate reader cannot distinguish between people transporting illegal guns and those transporting legal guns, or no guns at all; it only documents the presence of any car driving to the event. Mere attendance at a gun show, it appeared, would have been enough to have one’s presence noted in a DEA database.

Responding to inquiries about the document, the DEA said that the monitoring of gun shows was merely a proposal and was never implemented.

Call me skeptical but for some reason I don’t believe the DEA’s claim that it never implemented this strategy. But that is largely irrelevant now that it is implementing a nationwide system that will track motorists indiscriminately. What this proposal does show is that the technology, while indiscriminate in nature, can be used in a discriminatory manner.

Tracking attendees of gun shows is just one example of the type of discrimination widespread surveillance lends itself to. This technology could just as easily be used to identify attendees of a cannabis legalization or gay rights rally. Once you have that type of information in hand you can use it for either legal harassment or blackmail. Imagine the DEA using the fact that somebody attended a gun show and a cannabis legalization rally as probably cause to investigate somebody on the grounds that they may be a user of unlawful substances in possession of a firearm. Even if such evidence isn’t enough to bring charges it is enough to harass and badger the person.

This is the future George Orwell warned us about. I think we’ve reached the post of a boot stamping a human face — forever.

Police Love to Stalk But Hate Being Stalked

Police love stalking people. To this end most departments have invested a lot of money into acquiring technology that makes their creepy behavior easier. But what happens when the tables are turned at the people start keeping tabs on the police? The police cry foul, what else?

Sheriffs are campaigning to pressure Google Inc to turn off a feature on its Waze traffic software that warns drivers when police are nearby. They say one of the technology industry’s most popular mobile apps could put officers’ lives in danger from would-be police killers who can find where their targets are parked.

Talk about a bunch of hypocrites. They’re bitching about people being able to find and target them but the tracking technology they use is totally cool even though it’s used to find and target us. It’s not unheard of for police officers to use department resources to stalk an ex, a potential love interest, or just somebody they feel like harassing. Take this story for example:

Fort Collins police officer was fired following an investigation that determined he used agency resources to discover where a woman worked and lived.

So why aren’t these sheriffs volunteering to dispose of their departments’ license plates scanners, accounts will with cellular providers that allow them to request customer location information, cell phone trackers, and other technology that enables their officers to stalk us? It’s because they love doing to us what they fear us doing to them.

The Justice Department is Building National Database to Track Motorists Throughout the Country

Just when you think you’re paranoid enough the state goes and pulls a stunt like this:

(Reuters) – The Justice Department has been secretly gathering and storing hundreds of millions of records about motorists in an effort to build a national database that tracks the movement of vehicles across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Not surprisingly the national automobile tracking initiative is being operated by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The DEA, thanks to civil forfeiture laws, enjoys the ability to raise a fuckton of money if it can makeup any evidence whatsoever of a possible drug crime. Somebody driving from Colorado to anywhere could very well be enough evidence to seize their property because buying cannabis there is legal but it’s illegal almost everywhere else.

One question that arises from this story is where the DEA is getting its data. Either local governments are either feeding their data to the federal government or the federal government has its own license plate scanners operating throughout the country. My money is on the latter.

Some states have started regulating how long their police departments can hold on to license plat data. Here in Minnesota there are no such laws so police departments pretty much makeup whatever policy that amuses them. The State Patrol only keeps their data 48 hours, St. Paul’s police department keeps their data for 14 days, but Minneapolis’ police department keeps it for a year. There’s talk about implementing state regulations here but that talk doesn’t include whether or not local law enforcement agencies can feed their data to the federal government. In fact, from what I can find, most state regulations don’t touch that subject. That being the case it would be fairly easy for the DEA to setup deals with local agencies to get the data it needs to populate its national database.

As Orwell said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” So long as states exist our privacy will continue to be violated.

Ron Trolling Rand

People within liberty circles have been talking about Rand Paul’s potential presidential run. Those of us who still have our sight and hearing intact view his potential run as irrelevant because we recognize Rand for the neocon he is. But many others believe the son mirrors the father and therefore stupidly cheer for the possibility of caucusing for Rand. Like many members within the liberty circles, there are a lot of neocons who mistakenly believe that Rand is just like Ron. When Ron says fun statements it makes the neocons more skittish about Rand. Thankfully Ron seems to be more than willing to troll his son:

“A lot of times people think secession, they paint it as an absolute negative,” said former representative Ron Paul (R-Tex.). After all, Paul said, the American Revolution was a kind of secession. “You mean we should have been obedient to the king forever? So it’s all in the way you look at it.”

This weekend was a crucial one for Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky and undeclared candidate for the presidency. He was in California, trying to line up donors at an opulent retreat organized by the billionaire Koch brothers.

At the same time, his father — retired after 12 terms in Congress and three presidential runs — was in the ballroom of an airport hotel here, the final speaker at “a one-day seminar in breaking away from the central state.” He followed a series of speakers who said that the U.S. economy and political establishment were tottering and that the best response might be for states, counties or even individuals to break away.

Hear hear! Secession of the individual is what I’m all about. Now that Ron’s out of politics he also seems to be more willing to discussion radical ideas such as individuals seceding from the state. But this talk could cause headaches for Rand since the neocons will believe that he also supports individuals seceding from the state. And if there’s one thing neocons can’t stand it’s individual liberty.

I don’t give a damn about Rand’s potential presidential run but I look forward to the drama if he chooses to. There is the obvious family drama, which really kicked off when Rand endorsed Mitt Romney over his own goddamn father. But the real juicy drama will be within liberty circles as the more gullible caucus for Rand while the rest of us tell them it’s a big mistake. After Rand either gets railroaded at the Republican National Convention just like his father or wins the presidency and does nothing to advance liberty those who refused to support him will take a few victory laps around the track as we laugh our asses off.

On Brad Spangler

Those of you knee deep into liberty advocacy may have heard of Brad Spangler. If you haven’t heard of him then this post probably won’t be of much interest to you. But those of you who have heard of him probably now know that on Thursday he made a post on Facebook admitting that he molested his daughter. Just in case the post goes away I will include a screenshot of his confession.

I don’t have much to say about Brad Spangler himself. His admission to molesting his daughter is enough for me to deem him a terribly human being, a disgusting piece of shit, and a man the world would have been better without. However I do want to talk about some of the discussion that cropped up in the aftermath of his admission. Namely the fuckwits who have deemed it necessary to use this to host the mother of all philosophical dick measuring contests. As of this writing there are about 2,200 comments on his Facebook post. If your faith in humanity is shaky I wouldn’t advise venturing through the comments because it will only show you that there are a lot of shitty people amongst anarchists and statists.

Pretty quickly after the post went up there were anarchist urging Spangler not to turn himself in to the state’s police and statist using Spangler’s confession as proof that anarchism can’t work. One guy even decided to use the confession as a platform to bitch about male circumcision. That’s right, a child was molested and the only thing these people can think about are arguments against each others’ philosophies.

Perhaps I’m not a zealous enough anarchist but I don’t think a child molester’s confession is the place to have a philosophical argument. I mean, come the fuck on. A man admitted to molesting his child and said he is going to turn himself into the police and your reaction is to urge him not to because the state doesn’t dispense justice. Then some statist arrive and say, “An anarchist molested his daughter therefore all anarchists are child molesters or sympathize with child molesters har har har LOLOLOLOL!” There are also right-libertarians laughing about this because Spangler is a left-libertarian and that somehow reflects on all left-libertarians because individualism is only a thing when you’re not trying to lump everybody you hate into a fucking box.

How about everybody take a few steps back and find somewhere else to debate philosophy? Is that too much decency to ask for? If so, could somebody stop this planet for a second so I can get off?