Tag: Law and Disorder

What to Do if You’re Company is Failing

Sue somebody! Sharp as a Marble let us know that the good guys over at The Armed Citizen are being sued by a Las Vegas newspaper for “willfully copying content.” Translated into laymen terms that means The Armed Citizen blog reported news by sourcing a newspaper who is failing to make money and has no other business plan in place.

The main kicker here though is the fact the newspaper sued several blogs before even contacting them. Well I’m all for contacting people so here’s how to contact the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Las Vegas Review-Journal
1111 W. Bonanza Road
P.O. Box 70
Las Vegas, NV 89125

Main phone number:
702-383-0211

Newspaper office number:
702-383-0264

Let them know hos much you appreciate their news business strategy. Personally I recommend they put up a pay wall. That way us dirty bloggers can’t use their content and they’ll lose enough money as to fall into irrelevancy. Two birds meet one stone.

When a Problem Isn’t a Problem

Google’s been getting some flak for recording MAC addresses and unencrypted data from unsecured wireless access points while cruising around in their little street view cars. Several European countries have blown this completely out of proportion as have 37 states in this country.

Google has been very forthcoming with information including the fact that they were running Kismet in their vehicles. Kismet was being used to record the MAC addresses of wireless access points which were than tagged with GPS coordinates. The idea behind this is pretty simple; each access point has a unique MAC address. If you know the location of these wireless access points you can determine your location through Wi-Fi instead of having to rely on aGPS. The main advantage is you can have location based services with devices that have Wi-Fi cards but no GPS (for instance most laptops). By default Kismet saves all unencrypted data so Google obtaining this information isn’t so much nefarious as just forgetting to change the default settings.

Truth be told very little information is going to be gleamed from this data because the speed at which they were driving around put them in and out of range of most access points pretty quickly. Of course there is another thing to note here.

If you have an unsecured wireless access point and somebody is grabbing your data it’s your fault. Wireless data is broadcast out for all to hear. Treat it like yelling, if you and your significant other get into a yelling argument you can’t blame your neighbors for hearing what you two were screaming at each other. Wireless data is the same way. If your wireless signal enters my property then I have every right to eavesdrop on it. If you don’t want me to be able to do this you need to encrypt the data or shield your house well enough where your wireless signal isn’t entering my property (or in Google’s case public property where there is no expectation of privacy).

Instead of wasting time with this case I’d love to see these State Attorney’s deal with some real issues.

He Gets an ‘A’ for Effort

Sometimes criminals deserve a little nod for creativity. Take Daryl Simon who was a fraudster and facing prison time. In the hopes of getting leniency in his sentencing he tried showing the court he was a good Samaritan by photoshopping himself helping people attending physical therapy.

That takes balls… and a heaping helping of stupidity. It appears his Photoshop-fu is weak as he was caught. For punishment at being bad at Photoshop he received an additional 50 months to his sentence. Still funny though.

Papers Please

Yeah the title I chose is way overboard for this little post but I thought it was funny so that’s what I used.

Some stores like to check your receipts when you leave their establishment. Best Buy is notorious for doing this, almost more-so than pushing their shitty “extended warranties” on customers. Well it appears Bitter over at Snowflakes in Hell got the special treatment from Wal-Mart.

I’m pointing this out to point out something else people don’t often know. When you are leaving a store with your purchased goods and you are asked for a receipt you are under no obligation to show it. The burden of proof that you’ve stolen something (because somebody who just payed for something obviously is in the business of theft as well) if they want to get the police involved. Funny enough the only way they can detain you is if they get the police involved… which requires them to provide the police with above mentioned evidence.

There are two ways you can think about this. The first is checking the receipt it little hassle and is easier than fighting over it. The other way of thinking about this, which is what I believe, is a store has no right to accuse a paying customer of theft. That’s what they are doing when they ask to check you receipt; telling you they believe you’re a crook. It’s a practice that pisses me off and frankly is the reason I rarely shop at stores such as Best Buy.

I Doubt this was Caused by Availability of Guns

We all know the anti-gunners like to claim the high availability of guns in the United States is the reason for our crime rate. They claim nations with stronger gun control laws are safer. Personally I think violence has more to do with social strife than laws and Mexico is a good example. Another violence incident occurred in Mexico. This time 17 people attending a birthday party were gunned down in the country dead south of us.

Whenever a spree shooting occurs here the anti-gunners bitch and moan about how we need stricter gun control laws and had such laws been on the books the spree shooting wouldn’t have happened. The bottom line is Mexico has some pretty strict gun control laws and they experience enough violence every day for several industrial countries. The problem is they are a failing state with a government more corrupt than Chicago’s politicians.

Which brings up to the fact most of the violent cities in the United States have a combination of strong gun control laws and social strife. Minneapolis for instance doesn’t have that horrible of a crime rate until you get into the northern territories where the slums are. Much of Chicago’s violence is in South Chicago. New York has the Bronx which is pretty well known for being a shit hole.

Violent people will be violent. Criminals will be criminals. If there is a law preventing a criminal from getting a gun they will ignore said law and get the gun. Those of us in the pro-rights community keep bringing this up and presenting our evidence yet the anti-gunners keep putting their fingers in their ears and screaming “LA LA LA” at the top of their lungs.

A Ban by Any Other Name

McDonald vs. Chicago struck down the unconstitutional firearm ban in that forsaken city. Now that they’re little ban has been struck down the officials who run that prison city are looking at ways of banning firearms without actually banning them.

As Snowflakes in Hell points out they’re doing it using the same method they used to ban them in the first place, the city gun registration system.

In order to obtain a permit to purchase a firearm you must fill out five pages of unintelligible paperwork, have vision good enough to obtain a driver’s license (sorry those of you who are blind or otherwise have poor vision you don’t have any rights), show up between the hours of 8:30 and 15:30, and pay a $100 fee.

Yup it’s so easy! Well so long as you can fill out paperwork, have good eye vision, don’t have a day job, and have enough money! Obviously those who work during the day, have less than ideal vision, and the poor need not apply. Likewise if you are in any of the three mentioned categories of people please go kill yourself now as you have no right to self-defense should an attack chose to kill you later. You’ll be saving yourself, the attacker, and the police a lot of time.

Also as a person with horrible vision without my glasses I can tell you that you can see an attacker just fine unless you’re practically blind. Without my glasses I can’t read anything on my laptop screen when the laptop is on my lap with my right eye. With my left eye I can’t read the title of any book on my bookshelf which is no more than 10 feet away. Even with my horrible vision I can see people well enough to shoot them at self-defense ranges if they are attacking me.

Needless to say I know what it’s like having bad vision. So even if you’re vision isn’t correctable to a point you can drive there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t be able to own a firearm.

That’s Quite a List

Here’s something funny found via Say Uncle. The Chicago Police Department has made a list of “unsafe” firearms [PDF] that can not be registered in the city of Chicago. It’s pretty long but alas with few exceptions (Smith and Wesson for instance) the list is of manufacturers not firearms.

There are some real WTFs on that list. For instance the Sig Sauer Mosquito is on the list because as we all know the .22LR is one bad ass mother fucker.

Seriously that is a city that just tries too hard at being complete ass hats.

Don’t Bother Calling the Police

Us gun bloggers have said it again and again but I’ll say it again; police are under no legal obligation to protect you. In fact according to Dvorak Uncensored the Oakdale Police Department has made a list of crimes they will no longer respond to should planned layoffs occur. I might add this isn’t even a short list:

  • burglary
  • theft
  • embezzlement
  • grand theft
  • grand theft:dog
  • identity theft
  • false information to peace officer
  • required to register as sex or arson offender
  • dump waste or offensive matter
  • discard appliance with lock
  • loud music
  • possess forged notes
  • pass fictitious check
  • obtain money by false voucher
  • fraudulent use of access cards
  • stolen license plate
  • embezzlement by an employee (over $ 400)
  • extortion
  • attempted extortion
  • false personification of other
  • injure telephone/ power line
  • interfere with power line
  • unauthorized cable tv connection
  • vandalism
  • administer/expose poison to another’s

Oh and this golden:

Chief Anthony Batts listed exactly 44 situations that his officers will no longer respond to and they include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism. He says if you live and Oakland and one of the above happens to you, you need to let police know on-line.

So if you get into a car wreck you better hope your phone has a data plan because you need to e-mail that situation.

This is a rather dirty thing by Mr. Batts to say. Why? Because it’s an underhanded threat. He’s pretty much saying give his department money or they’ll stop protecting you. This is the exact same scheme used by the mob (say you have a nice store there, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it). Seriously it’s just dirty. I understand without the police officers who will be laid off the Oakdale Police Department will be unable to do as much as they currently do but to outright phrase it and give a list of things the department will no longer respond to is just plain fear mongering.

That’s Odd it Appears the Evil Belgians Found Something

I’m still doing this on the phone so bear with me and realize the grammar and spelling in this post may be a little worse than usual which is already pretty bad.

Remember a short while back when the Belgian police raided the local Catholic diocese? Remember how outraged the Vatican was at this terrible atrocity and complete disrespect for sacred ground? Remember all the people outraged that this happened? Well it appears that the Belgian police found something rather strange:

The confidential court documents were found in recent days among the many documents on June 24 seizures were made in the archbishop’s palace in Mechelen. These reports among magistrates was only intended for the court.

The same goes for hundreds of photos from the Dutroux investigation and large parts of the court record of the victims Julie and Melissa. The investigators were in the archbishop’s palace, dozens of photographs of the ruins of their cells, to allow autopsies.

Some internal court documents, which were found to have conversations of an agent with a coded informant – an informant who registered with the police investigation and the actions that followed. Informant who claimed that Julie and Melissa were kidnapped and murdered by the Mafia Liege, but investigation by the investigators that the track was not credible. It’s a mystery what the researchers that documents in the basement of the archbishop did.

I’d say that’s was worth the raid and investigation right there. Let’s see how this one turns out.

Also yes I realize both links are run through Google Translate and therefore could be inaccurate but I originally came across these via episode 215 of No Agenda. One of the hosts is fluent in Dutch and provided the original information, hence I believe it’s accuracy.

Security is Only as Strong as Its Weakest Link

And that weakest link always proves to be people. Bruce Schneier points out that the recently arrested Russian “spies” used stenography to secure their messages but they had one flaw:

“Law-enforcement agents observed and forensically copied a set of computer disks” when searching some of the defendants’ residences, according to a statement from FBI agent Maria Ricci. “Based on subsequent investigation as described below, I believe that the password-protected disks contain a steganography program employed by the SVR and the Illegals.” SVR stands for Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency and the successor to the foreign operations arm of the KGB.

Ricci said the steganographic program was activated by pressing control-alt-E and then typing in a 27-character password, which the FBI found written down on a piece of paper during one of its searches.

Sounds like a strong password. It’s a good thing they wrote it down… oh wait.