January 2015 – Page 5 – A Geek With Guns

We’re All Sons of the Patriots Now

Obligatory reference.

TrackingPoint is a company known for developing a $17,000 Linux powered scope. Now they’re moving into Internet enabled optics:

The company, which is here at CES Showstoppers, has just announced ShotView, an iOS and Google Play app that lets a hunter stream video from his or her gun to anyone in the world. And the press release is very clear about its place in the tech world:

“Hunting and shooting sports are now part of the Web fabric. With this new technology, friends and family are virtually transported and immersed in exotic and exciting hunts,” says Danielle Hambleton, TrackingPoint’s vice president of marketing. “Hunters can now share the thrill of the stalk and the excitement of victory in real-time.”

According to Cisco, more than 99 percent of things in the physical world are still not connected to the Internet. But, this new technology represents a giant leap forward for the firearms industry. “We wholeheartedly embrace Cisco’s vision for the Internet of Everything,” says Hambleton. “Our exceptional long-range hunting technology combined with Cisco’s foresight will vastly enrich the world of hunting and shooting sports.”

“Now that the firearm is networked, the sky is the limit,” says Vann Hasty, TrackingPoint’s vice president of engineering.

This is an interesting take on so-called smart guns. While the technology being discussed into integrated into the firearm itself it’s not hard to see that happening a few years down the line. After all, humans crave data. Why not include mechanisms to measure trigger pull, chamber pressure, barrel harmonics, etc.? That would give a far better experience to people watching your hunt via your optic. But then we get into the strange realm of security.

While I’m a fan of integrating technology and firearms my enthusiasm is curbed but the lackluster history of computer security we’ve experienced as a species. Internet enabling a firearm opens the door for potential remote attacks. Give the right electronics in a firearm it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that a firearm could be rendered disabled via remote Internet exploit. On a wide enough scale, such as the scale seen when exploits are used to create botnets, you could even render large percentages of weapons inert.

For you gamers out there this could eventually lead to system similar to Metal Gear Solid 4’s Sons of the Patriots (SoP). In the series, because of the magic of nanomachines, anybody who is able to gain control of SoP can disable most military hardware including small arms. It’s a pretty stupid premise as it is based on technomagic but as more military hardware becomes network enabled it isn’t unforeseeable that large chunks of a military could be disabled through remote hacks.

We live in an interesting world and it’s getting more interesting every day.

Anarcho-Robots Care Not For Your Laws

I was out late helping plan a local CryptoParty so this will be all the content you will get today. But I’m giving you some gold. Science fiction often explores the ideas of artificial entities breaking laws. Usually these entities take the form of artificial intelligences that are capable of thinking and acting on their own. Under such circumstances it’s easy to see how human law can be applied to artificial intelligences. But what happens when the artificial law breaker isn’t intelligent? That’s exactly what this story is making use address:

The Random Darknet Shopper, an automated online shopping bot with a budget of $100 a week in Bitcoin, is programmed to do a very specific task: go to one particular marketplace on the Deep Web and make one random purchase a week with the provided allowance. The purchases have all been compiled for an art show in Zurich, Switzerland titled The Darknet: From Memes to Onionland, which runs through January 11.

The concept would be all gravy if not for one thing: the programmers came home one day to find a shipment of 10 ecstasy pills, followed by an apparently very legit falsified Hungarian passport– developments which have left some observers of the bot’s blog a little uneasy.

If this bot was shipping to the U.S., asks Forbes contributor and University of Washington law professor contributor Ryan Calo, who would be legally responsible for purchasing the goodies? The coders? Or the bot itself?

This case is another example of the legal system being unable to keep up with the advancement of technology. The article goes on to explain that the laws apply to people knowingly purchasing illicit merchandise. Because of the bot’s random nature the author could not know that they would receive illegal merchandise. But the bot also didn’t know what it was doing since its actions were random and it is incapable of thinking (as far as we know, those AIs can be pretty sly).

In all probability politicians will scramble to debate this issue, write a law, and pass it. By the time they’re done the next technological advancement will be created that acts outside of the boundaries imagined by the politicians who passed the law that was supposed to deal with the last situation. Eventually we will have to address more severe crimes such as assault or murder. At some point when machines are intelligent enough to create new machines we’ll have to deal with the idea of whether or not an artificial author is responsible for the actions of its creation’s crime. Property crimes will also be interesting once the offenses are committed by machines instead of humans.

The legal system is incredibly slow moving while technological advancements happen at a rapid pace. There will likely come a day when intelligent machines become responsible for most technological advancements. What will happen then? Will we have to put the legal system into the hands of machines as well? Will people accept that? It’s an interesting thought exercise.

Minors and Agency

As an anarchist I am greatly interested in the concept of individual agency; that is the “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power” according to Merriam-Webster. Most often this interest is in relation to the state and its subjects. Subjects, or citizens as they are often euphemistically referred to as, do not have full agency because their capacity to act and exert power is limited. But the concept of agency can be analyzed in other parts of society as well. Employer-employee, husband-wife, and user-administrator relationships are all interesting areas to analyze the concept of agency.

A touchy subject amongst anarchists is agency of minors. The reason this subject is touchy is because children obviously lack the knowledge, experiences, and common sense to survive without guidance. To further complicate the issue different individuals become capable of surviving without guidance at different ages. Most societies, for reasons of simplifying legal systems, have set age ranges for when they consider an individual an adult. In the United States, for example, an individual, with the except of certain extenuating circumstances, has no legal agency until they turn 18. Setting an arbitrary age works when the goal is to create a simplified legal system but relying on arbitrary cutoffs is also extremely rigid.

What happens in situations where the well-being of a minor and the beliefs of their guardians are at odds? That’s what happened in the case of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen who ended her life after her parents’ religious views conflicted with her needs. In her suicide note, reprinted here (the original source appears to have been taken down), she made her situation clear. Her parents, who were devout Christians (I will use the label with the understanding that I am speaking exclusively of her parents’ specific Christian beliefs, not Christianity as a whole), were only willing to accept the fact that Leelah was transgender within the scope of their beliefs. That is to say they didn’t acknowledge Leelah as transgender but instead saw her as a teenager going through a phase, a sinner, or both and felt that the only solution was to have her see therapists that also saw things within the scope of their religious beliefs. Eventually when the results they desired were not attained they isolated her by removing her from public school and confiscating her means of communicating with her friends.

Leelah’s parents took actions that most mental health professionals would oppose. She obviously had reached a point in her life where she possessed knowledge of her situation. Her words coupled with her parents’ actions lead me believe she was the expert in this matter between the three. But the legal system under which she lived wouldn’t acknowledge that and thus she had no agency in the matter. Instead of being free to pursue options based on her research she was restricted to options permitted by her parents, who seemed entirely ignorant of the matter.

Leelah’s situation isn’t unique. A very close friend (whose permission I sought and was granted to write this) of mine went through a similar situation in her youth and the result was almost the same. She too attempted suicide but survived and made it to the age of 18, or the finish line as she calls it, and was able to pursue options previously closed to her. Those options, which she wanted to pursue years earlier, changed her life for the better. Receiving the help she needed allowed to to move forward and live a fulfilling life. And it is situations such as these that make me believe that we must rethink how minors and agency are treated. Minors should be granted agency when it is clear that they’re the experts on a matter effecting their lives. Admittedly that makes for a far more complicated legal system but I also believe that justice should be the primary goal of a legal system, not simplicity.

North Korea Facing New Sanctions Because of Something It Didn’t Do

In the infinite wisdom of our government the country of North Korea, which probably already has the status as most sanctioned country on hear, must be punished for something it wasn’t involved in. Last week Mr. Obama signed more sanctions against North Korea because of the latest Sony hack:

The US has imposed new sanctions on North Korea in response to a cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order on Friday allowing sanctions on three North Korean organisations and 10 individuals.

The White House said the move was a response to North Korea’s “provocative, destabilising, and repressive actions”.

US sanctions are already in place over North Korea’s nuclear programme.

But Friday’s actions are believed to be the first time the US has moved to punish any country for cyber-attacks on a US company.

Of course the only entity in the world that is seriously claiming that North Korea was involved is the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). Nobody else is buying that claim.

What Laws Actually Entail

I often wonder if people really know what they’re saying when they say “There ought to be a law.” In their heads I’m sure they believe that they’re saying that a specific type of behavior is wrong or dangerous and must be curtailed. What they’re actually saying is that they want costume-clad men with guns and liability shields to inflict violence against anybody who performs said behavior.

For example, when people said there ought to be law requiring cyclists to have lights when riding at night they probably though they were saying that riding a bike at night without a light is dangerous. What they actually said was that people riding a bike without a light should result in K9 units and police helicopters being deployed and dogs being shot:

Deputies tell us they attempted to stop a suspect on a bicycle outside of the Dollar General store on Gunnery Road for riding without a light. That’s when the suspect ran away from deputies.

A helicopter and K9 unit were called in to help search for the suspect. While tracking the suspect in a wooded area, a K9 unit was attacked by an unleashed Pit bull. That’s when a deputy in pursuit shot the Pit bull.

When laws are passed police are given orders to use whatever force is available to them to stop anybody who breaks said law. It doesn’t matter how minor the offense is. Something insignificant as selling an untaxed cigarettes can escalate to deadly force when the act is declared illegal.

Neocon Quest, My Proposal for a Video Game

Every since I was young I’ve always wanted to make a video game. Unfortunately my skills in the art department are nil so it never happened. But from time to time I still like to come up with ideas for games. My latest idea is Neocon Quest. In it you will play a neocon politicians who has just been elected to a city council or a boarder town, which is your first step on the way to the presidency.

The first stage will be similar to SimCity except you’re not building the city. Instead you are using your position on the city council to extract taxes from the populace in order to build a wall along the boarder and to attract several large companies involved in the military-industrial complex.

Stage two will continue from there. With the wall build and military-industrial complex firmly cemented you move on to dealing with social issues. Namely you must run out everybody who isn’t a white straight cisgender Christian conservative or a Jewish individual with ties to Israel.

Once you’ve accomplished that goal you’re ready for the House of Representatives! Once you’re a representative your task is to secure funding for a multi-billion dollar fighter jet that cannot reliably fly, provide oxygen to the pilot, or fire its main gun due to a software glitch.

I’m still thinking about the middle stages but eventually you become the commander in chief! From here the game will begin to play similar to Command and Conquer. You will be tasked with building a military base in a nondescript Middle Eastern country. In addition to building a base you must also harvest resources (oil) and build a war machine to take on the local opposition. The opposition won’t have a base, a military, or the ability to harvest resources. What the opposition will have are AK-47s, improvised explosive devices, and the home field advantage. Victory isn’t achieved by killing all of the opposition units (it has infinite units) but by earning propaganda point. Propaganda points are acquired by killing opposition units, which also helps it recruit new units and thus increases its numbers, and by covering up the atrocities committed by your soldiers.

Obviously this is just the beginning of a much larger idea but I wanted to toss it out there because I think other people may have valuable input.

Monday Metal: Romulu by Ex Deo

Since this is the first Monday Metal of 2015 I decided to go with yet another song that brings my love of metal and history together. This week we’re listening to Romulus by Ex Deo. As the name implies it is about Romulus, one of the mythical founds of Rome.

It saddens me that Ex Deo is no longer producing music. A band themed on Roman history is a veritable smörgåsbord of metal material.

BRB, Oper8ing

I know what you’re thinking, where the fuck is all the new free content. It’s not here, that’s for sure. Yesterday, because I wasn’t hungover as fuck, I decided to slack off and hit the range with a couple of friends so we could practice our elite oper8ing skills. As you can see by my blackness of my weapons and my 1950s greatcoat I’m tactical as fuck:

Pictured are the Glock 30SF and my DPMS AR chambered in 7.62x51mm. Not pictured are me practicing my Captain Kirk rolls.

As a side note I think my New Year’s resolution will be to buy more firearms chambered in 9mm and 5.56x45mm because trips to the range with .45 and 7.62x51mm doubles as a weight lifting event. But I love the calibers to much.