January 2015 – Page 3 – A Geek With Guns

Finnish Sniper

American Sniper is getting a lot of press. One side sees it as a movie about an American hero who rightly put a bunch of terrorists into graves. The other side sees it as a movie about a murderer and a liar. Based on what I’ve read about Chris Kyle’s life I’m guess we wouldn’t have gotten along. Furthermore the movie seems to be very popular amongst neocons so I won’t bother seeing it because I don’t want to be stuck in a theater with a bunch of people who have a raging erection because they’re watching Muslims being killed left and right.

I am a history nerd though so I want to poke a bit of fun at the tag line, “America’s greatest sniper”. According to Wikipedia Chris Kyle had “160 confirmed kills out of 255 probably kills.” That’s cute. But it also shows that surpassing “America’s greatest sniper” isn’t that high of a bar to jump over.

Enter Simo Häyhä. Simo Häyhä was a Finnish sniper that operated during the Winter War. For those unfamiliar with the Winter War it was an attempt by the Soviet Union to take over Finland. It didn’t end well for the Soviets. Using a modified Mosin-Nagant rifle, that didn’t have any optics I might add, Simo Häyhä managed to get somewhere between 505 sniper kills.

Simo Häyhä is also a more interesting individual in my opinion. First of all he was engaged in a war against an invading force instead of being a member of an invading force. The man was literally protecting his home. Another thing that’s worth noting about Simo Häyhä is that he was a humble man. He didn’t go around bragging about all of the commie he killed, he didn’t start random fights in bars, and he didn’t make up stories about traveling to other places to kill people. After the Soviets were run out of Finland he made a life for himself by moose hunting and dog breeding.

So when I hear people talking about “America’s greatest sniper” I can only chuckle. Chris Kyle, at best, managed roughly half of the kills that Simo Häyhä had, was a jackass if his own accounts of his actions are to be believed, and was helping to expand a tyrannical regime instead of defending against one.

Obama Wants Enable Abusers to Better Surveil Their Victims

Last week David Cameron, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, publicly stated that he wanted all encryption to be broken so him and his cronies could better spy on the populace. Shortly afterward Obama came out in support of Cameron’s desire:

President Barack Obama said Friday that police and spies should not be locked out of encrypted smartphones and messaging apps, taking his first public stance in a simmering battle over private communications in the digital age.

Apple, Google and Facebook have introduced encrypted products in the past half year that the companies say they could not unscramble, even if faced with a search warrant. That’s prompted vocal complaints from spy chiefs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and, this week, British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Obama’s comments came after two days of meetings with Cameron, and with the prime minister at his side.

“If we find evidence of a terrorist plot… and despite having a phone number, despite having a social media address or email address, we can’t penetrate that, that’s a problem,” Obama said. He said he believes Silicon Valley companies also want to solve the problem. “They’re patriots.”

Every time a politician tells us that we need to surrender security they always sell it with fear. They tell us that they must be able to read all of our communications otherwise terrorists will kill us, pedophiles will kidnap and rape children, abusers will continue to abuse their victims, and murderers will be able to kill with impunity. I think it’s about time to bring this conversation full circle. Every one of those arguments can be flipped around.

Without having a means of anonymously and privately individuals become much easier for terrorists to target. Imagine an individual inside of a terrorist cell that wants to communicate the cell’s plans to counter-terrorists. Unless he is able to do this anonymously and privately he will likely be killed. The problem with breaking cryptographic tools so the government can bypass them is that anybody who knows about that weakness can also bypass them.

Then we have the children. Everything attack against our privacy is “for the children”. But cryptographic tools can also protect children from predators. Imagine a school setting where an instructor is planning to abduct one of the pupils. He’s obviously not going to do it on school grounds because the likelihood of him being caught is high. However if his target coordinates plans with other schoolmates via electronic communications and those communications are not secure the predator can view them and wait for them to go somewhere more isolated.

Abusers love to surveil their victims. Keeping tabs on where their victims go, what they spend, who they’re talking with, and what they’re talking about allows abusers to wield a great deal of psychological power. This ability to surveil also makes it less likely that their victims will seek help. When the chances of getting caught seeking help are high and the consequences are physical abuse then a victim is more likely to do what maintains to status quo.

Murders, like terrorists, would benefit greatly from broken cryptography. Like terrorists, murderers need to identify and track their target. If somebody is trying to murder a specific individual they may know where that individual works and lives. Businesses and neighborhoods often have too many witnesses around so a smart murderer is going to suveil their target and use the information he uncovered to strike at a more opportune time.

It’s time we start calling the politicians on their bullshit fear mongering. Whenever they bring up terrorists, pedophiles, abusers, or murderers we need to point out that those threats are also good arguments for strong cryptography.

ATF Rules Holding Firearms Incorrectly is a Felony

This just goes to show how meaningless the label felon is and how much power an agency can wield. Arm braces for AR pattern rifles have been a big seller. They’re designed to help you brace an AR pistol against your forearm. It just so happens that these designs can also secure the weapon against your shoulder like a traditional stock. Because of this many people have chosen to build AR pistols with arm braces instead of paying the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) $200 for a tax stamp that gives them the privilege of using a traditional stock on an AR with a barrel shorter than 16″.

The ATF has now ruled that using an arm brace to shoulder an AR with a barrel under 16″ is a felony [PDF]:

The pistol stabilizing brace was neither “designed” nor approved to be used as a shoulder stock, and therefore use as a shoulder stock constitutes a “redesign” of the device because a possessor has changed the very function of the item. Any individual letters stating otherwise are contrary to the plain language of the NFA, misapply Federal law, and are hereby revoked.

Any person who intends to use a handgun stabilizing brace as a shoulder stock on a pistol (having a rifled barrel under 16 inches in length or a smooth bore firearm with a barrel under 18 inches in length) must first file an ATF Form 1 and pay the applicable tax because the resulting firearm will be subject to all provisions of the NFA.

What this means is that having an AR with a barrel under 16″ equipped with an arm brace is perfectly legal so long as you don’t put the brace against your shoulder. The second you do put that brace against your shoulder you are committing a felony. Holding a gun wrong is now officially a felony.

And this new felony didn’t take an act of Congress or the signature of the President. It only required an agency to write a letter. This is why the idea that Congress must vote and the President must sign a bill is some kind of meaningful check against runaway government power is laughable. In the case of firearm laws the ATF need only redefine what “redesign” means and it can create a new felony crime. No fuss, no muss.

I think this also explains why the average working professional unknowingly commits and average of three felonies a day. When an agency can simply redefine a single word and create a new felony it goes without saying that there are going to be a lot of felonies. This is also why everybody who thinks they’re a law-abiding citizen is wrong.

Monday Metal: Nemesis by Arch Enemy

Do you know what makes anarchism better than statism? Music. Us anarchists have way better music to listen to than statists. Statists get shitty country songs about how awesome the illegal invasions being performed by the United States are. But us anarchists get to listen to amazing metal such as Arch Enemy:

Fighting for freedom is a way better message to get behind than bombing people in the Middle East.

Bloomington Police Department’s Desperate Attempt to Punish the Mall of American Protesters

Just before Christmas a group held a protest at the Mall of America. The police overreacted to say the least and had a ton of officers on site in riot gear hoping the opportunity would present itself for them to thumb some skulls. Since the protesters could be goaded into a fight the officers didn’t get to play their violent game. All in all the protesters really made the Bloomington Police Department look silly and, in my opinion, completely pathetic. Not surprisingly the police want revenge and they’re seeking it by charging some of the protesters with ridiculous offenses. Just read some of these charges:

— Aiding and abetting trespassing

[…]

— Aiding and abetting unlawful assembly

[…]

— Aiding and abetting disorderly conduct

[…]

— Aiding and abetting public nuisance

How can aiding and abetting public nuisance be an offense? Seriously. Public nuisance is already such a minor offense that it’s hardly worth noting so aiding and abetting somebody who is a public nuisance is even less noteworthy. At most the protesters could be charged with trespassing, although the Mall is a receiver of stolen tax money so I would actually argue that every Minnesotan is a partial owner and therefore the Mall is a public space. The rest of these charges, no matter how you look at them, are trite bullshit.

CIA Investigates CIA, Finds CIA Did Nothing Wrong

One of the fascinating things about government agencies is their ability to investigate themselves when they’re accused of wrongdoing. When a police officer kills it’s usually somebody from their department that investigates the incident and, not surprisingly, usually finds the officer innocent. Some time ago the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was caught spying on the congressional subcommittee tasked with overseeing it. In response the CIA put together a board to investigate the matter. Can you guess what the board’s findings were?

A CIA accountability board has cleared the spy agency of wrongdoing after CIA officials were found to have searched the files of congressional investigators tasked with reviewing the possible use of torture tactics during the Bush presidency. The board, set up by the CIA itself, published a report today that said that five agency officials made a “mistake” by searching for files used by the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating the CIA, but said that their actions “did not reflect malfeasance, bad faith, or the intention to gain improper access to SSCI [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] confidential, deliberative material.”

The accountability board stressed that there were no clear rules for using the “unprecedented” RDINet, the secure network set up to allow congressional investigators to review the CIA’s files on rendition, detention, and interrogation techniques, and said that the five individuals had “acted reasonably to investigate a potential security breach.” The accountability board report overturns the conclusions of the current inspector general of the CIA, David Buckley, who said in a report last July that the five CIA officials had acted improperly by accessing the network. Buckley also found at the time that the CIA had inaccurately filed criminal referrals against congressional investigators that accused them of mishandling classified information.

That’s right, the CIA’s investigation of itself found the CIA innocent of any wrongdoing. This is why the concept of an accountable government is laughable. Since government maintains a monopoly on creating and enforcing law it can, and always does, put itself in charge of overseeing itself. Once that happens it finds itself innocent of any accusations. The only remarkable part about this is that so many people are stupid enough to agree that it’s how things should be handled.

Bigots Can’t Even Get Their Bigotry Right

Remember the fuckface gun range owner in Arkansas that decided to ban all Muslims from her gun range? Sickeningly I know some people who cheered this decision because they believe Islam is a synonym for terrorist. Apparently the range owner believes Islam is a synonym for brown people:

When we reported last fall on a Hot Springs firing range that was declared a “Muslim free zone” by its owner, several blog commenters asked, “how will she know who’s a Muslim?” The answer, unsurprisingly, seems to be good old fashioned racism. The Times was contacted over the weekend by a college student from Hot Springs who went to the Gun Cave with his father for a round of target practice.

They’re not Muslim, but they do happen to be South Asian. They were told to leave by a woman, presumably Jan Morgan, the owner.

[…]

“When we went in, a woman asked, ‘Where are you guys from?’ We told her we were from Hot Springs. She said, “this is a Muslim free shooting range,” so if we are [Muslim] and if we don’t like the rule, then leave. We said that we’re not Muslim, but my dad asked, ‘Why is it Muslim free?’ and they started having a conversation. Then, all of a sudden, I don’t know what went wrong, but she stopped us from filling out the paperwork and said ‘I don’t think you guys should be here.’ She told us to leave or she’d call the cops on us.”

Listen, if you’re hellbent on being a bigot at least get your bigotry right. I’m theorizing, with the circumstantial evidence available to me so far, that the owner of the range isn’t hating on Muslims specifically but claiming to hate Muslims being that’s more acceptable in this country than being a racist.

Either way, I really hope the range goes bankrupt. Or burns down in a fire. I’m not picky.

Without Police Who Would Harass the Homeless

Can you imagine a world without heavily armed goons with no accountability? Without the men and women in uniform we wouldn’t have no-knock drug raids leaving trails of dead family pets in their wake. And we all know that the police are a critical component of most city’s attempt to “fix” their homeless problem by making the lives of homeless people so miserable they migrate elsewhere. Proving once again that police are not held accountable and you can beat the charges but you can’t beat the ride a homeless man got to enjoy a night in jail because he had the audacity to charge his phone in a park electrical outlet:

SARASOTA – A homeless man spent the night in jail Sunday after police arrested him for charging his cellphone in a public picnic shelter at Gillespie Park.

Darren Kersey, 28, was charged with theft of utilities after Sarasota Police Sgt. Anthony Frangioni spotted him charging his phone at about 9:20 p.m. Sunday. Unable to come up with the $500 bail for the misdemeanor, Kersey had no choice but to stay in jail.

In his arrest report, Frangioni wrote that he told Kersey that the “theft of city utilities will not be tolerated during this bad economy.” Frangioni also told Kersey that he should charge his phone at local shelters, according to the report.

But Monday morning Circuit Judge Charles Williams threw the case out, saying Frangioni lacked the legal justification to make the arrest.

Some would point to the fact that the charges were dismissed as an example of the system working. But the system still allowed a police officer to kidnap a man and hold him in a cage without any consequences. That is a major issue with our “justice” system. The officer, in my seldom humble opinion, should be fired immediately at the very least and realistically charged with kidnapping and unlawful detainment or whatever crimes you and I would be charged with for this kind of behavior.

But he won’t because he wears a magical liability shield and the person he wronged was homeless and therefore somebody hated by the state.

Google Stops Supporting Old Unsupported Code

I give software companies a lot of shit for failing to keep their customers secure but I also acknowledge that the task is really difficult. This is especially true when your customers are running old versions of your software and either refuse to or cannot upgrade. Microsoft continued supporting Windows XP for a decade, which is probably a century in software terms. When it cut off support many people still running Windows XP complained that they were being put at unnecessary risk. But software companies can’t support every version of every software product they’ve released. Google recently announced that it was no longer going to support Android WebView and now people are complaining that they’re being put at unnecessary risk because they’re running a old version of Android:

Owning a smartphone running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean or an earlier versions of Android operating system ?? Then you are at a great risk, and may be this will never end.

Yes, you heard right. If you are also one of millions of users still running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean or earlier versions of the operating system, you will not get any security updates for WebView as Google has decided to end support for older versions of Android WebView – a default web browser on Android devices.

WebView is the core component used to render web pages on an Android device, but it was replaced on Android 4.4 KitKat with a more recent Chromium-based version of WebView that is also used in the Chrome web browser.

Admittedly only supporting the latest version of Android is pretty shoddy but who is really to blame? Google has released a new version of Android, 4.4, and is supporting it so why aren’t customers upgrade? Because device manufacturers and carriers are standing in the way.

The smartest thing Apple did with the iPhone is cut the carriers out of the update cycle. When Apple wants to release an update it just released an update. Furthermore it has been doing an OK, albeit not great, job of supporting older devices.

Most devices require the device manufacturer to release an update and each carrier to sign off on it before it gets pushed to customers. Android device manufacturers have also been stopping updates for older devices at breakneck speed. Oftentimes you’re fortune to have your device supported with updates by the manufacturer for the entirety of your two year contract. And even if the manufacturer does a good job of supporting your device the carrier through inaction many prevent the update from being released to its customers.

I don’t think Google should bear most of the blame here. The real culprit are the companies that have prevented their customers from upgrading to the latest version of Android. Unless mobile handsets move to a model similar to desktops and laptops, where customers are free to install whatever operating system version they desire, we’re going to continue seeing instances where software developers drop support for legacy products and leave massive numbers of users without needed support.

Y’all Need More Jesus

One of the things I love to watch is a politician’s transition from whatever they were when elected to a party zealot when they get aspirations of becoming president. Governor Bobby Jindal has been, as far as I know, liked by many self proclaimed liberty advocates. For Louisiana is seems to be not as much of a dick as the state’s other politicians but that’s not a high bar to jump over. But now he seems to want a chance at the presidency. In order to do that as a member of the Republican Party you need to provide that you’re a religious zealot, which Mr. Jindal has demonstrated a willingness to be:

But as his presidential aspirations grow, so is his desire to mix religion and politics. Speaking to a group of Christian and Jewish leaders in Iowa, Jindal averred:

“The reality is I’m here today because I genuinely, sincerely, passionately believe that America’s in desperate need of a spiritual revival,” Jindal, who is weighing a presidential bid, said during a 37-minute-long speech followed by a 20-minute question-and-answer session.

“I love to quote Winston Churchill. … ‘You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they’ve exhausted every alternative,’ ” Jindal said.

“That’s where we are as a country,” he continued. “We have tried everything and now it is time to turn back to God.”

As you can guess I don’t give two shits about this man. He’s a politicians, which makes him scum in my book. The reason I’m bringing this up is to discuss one of the Republican Party’s biggest shortcomings, it’s religious zealotry. You would think a party that claims to love Jesus so much would be something other than a social group for bigots, tyrants, and blood thirsty war mongers. After all, Jesus hung out with a motley crew, never involved himself with politics, and preached about loving thy neighbor and such.

Instead of focusing on the actions of the man they claim to worship they focus on very strange parts of the Bible that, when interpreted liberally, say that all of the gays need to pray away their sexual orientation, imaginary lines determine who is great and who sucks, and people with a skin tone darker than luminescent need to be bombed. More importantly these things that the Republican Party focuses on are the very things that prevent it from gaining political power for more than a few short bursts of time.

Wouldn’t you think that a political party that wants to stay relevant would try changing what hasn’t been working? I would think that. But Republicans don’t think that, which is why they’re the laughing stock of politics. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that they haven’t been able to grab more power otherwise there probably wouldn’t be a Middle East left. But I find it amusing that one of the two political parties in this country manages to stay a big political party while also being so incredibly incompetent.