Superdickery – Page 53 – A Geek With Guns

The Pervasiveness Of Government Databases

Let’s discuss government databases. The United States government maintains numerous databases on its citizens. Many of these databases are populated, if not entirely, in part by algorithms. And unlike Amazon’s recommendation algorithms or Google’s search algorithms, government algorithms have real world consequences. Because government databases have become so pervasive these consequences can range from being barred from flying on a plane to signing up for the latest video game:

Last weekend Muhammad Zakir Khan, an avid gamer and assistant professor at Broward College in Florida, booted up his PC and attempted to sign up for Epic Games’ MOBA-inspired Paragon beta. Unbeknownst to Khan, however, was that his name name—-along with many others-—is on the US government’s “Specially Designated Nationals list,” and as such was blocked from signing up.

“Your account creation has been blocked as a result of a match against the Specially Designated Nationals list maintained by the United States of America’s Office of Foreign Assets control,” read the form. “If you have questions, please contact customer service at accounts@epicgames.com.”

There’s an interesting series of connections here. The first connection is Mr. Khan’s name appearing in the Specially Designated Nationals list. The second connection is the database, which is used to enforce the United States government’s various sanctions, applying to the Unreal 4 engine. The third connection is the game utilizing the Unreal 4 engine. In all likelihood Mr. Khan’s name was added to the database by an algorithm that adds anybody who has an arbitrarily selected number of characteristics that include such things as last names and religions.

So, ultimately, Mr. Khan was being prevented from signing up for a game because the government believes if they prevent modern video game technology from entering Iran, North Korea, or other countries under sanctions that the citizenry will start a revolution. Being human (or at least somewhat close approximations thereof) the agents charged with enforcing these sanctions chose to automate the process as much as possible, which resulted in a database likely automatically populated algorithmically.

It’s Always About The Money

Late last year the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declared that all personal drones must be registered. This declaration was sold as a means to attach accountability to mishandling drones but as with all government declarations it was about the money. The FAA came down on a hobbyist drone operator because he posted his footage on YouTube. Because the operator allows YouTube to display ads on his videos the FAA said he was flying his drone for commercial purposes:

If you fly a drone and post footage on YouTube, you could end up with a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Earlier this week, the agency sent a legal notice to Jayson Hanes, a Tampa-based drone hobbyist who has been posting drone-shot videos online for roughly the last year.

The FAA said that, because there are ads on YouTube, Hanes’s flights constituted a commercial use of the technology subject to stricter regulations and enforcement action from the agency. It said that if he did not stop flying “commercially,” he could be subject to fines or sanctions.

Now the operator has a choice. He can either buy whatever license the FAA requires for commercial drone operations or he can pay a hefty fine. I guess he can also be a good little slave to turn off YouTube’s monetization option since the State is only unhappy with you making money if it doesn’t get a cut of the action.

As always, when the State wants to establish accountability it means it wants to make the people accountable for handing over a chunk of their income.

The Voice Of The People Will Not Be Tolerated

Democracy is supposedly our species’ greatest invention since sliced bread. It’s sold as way for the voice of the people to be heard. In reality democracy, at best, enforces the will of the majority (which is why democracy has never been an effective tool for defending the rights of minorities). But when you boil it down the State is an institution of violence and it’s will is always guided by those with the largest capacity for force.

Venezuela’s latest election was cheer by many because the socialist party lost its majority in the National Assembly. Much to the chagrin of President Maduro, this was supposed to mean an end to the country’s failed socialist policies. But Maduro just won a trump card. The military of Venezuela has sworn undying allegiance to him:

Caracas (AFP) – Venezuela’s military pledged loyalty to President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday, ramping up a high-stakes standoff between his socialist government and a center-right opposition that has vowed to use its new legislative powers to oust him.

[…]

Venezuela’s defense minister and armed forces chief, General Vladimir Padrino, weighed in, saying the military was unwavering in its backing for Maduro — who has vowed to resist “with an iron hand.”

“The president is the highest authority of the state and we reiterate our absolute loyalty and unconditional support for him,” said Padrino, after the under-pressure government sued to stop the emboldened opposition using its newfound powers to kick out Maduro.

Which will win? The National Assembly and its votes or President Maduro and his guns? My money is on the latter. Government votes are powerless without guns to back them up. If, for example, there were no law enforcers in the United States nobody would care what Congress voted on because there would be no means to enforce its decrees. The reason people become so passionate about what Congress votes on is because they know, whether consciously or subconsciously, that those decrees will be ruthlessly enforced by law enforcers.

Even if the National Assembly votes to oust Maduro they have no way of actually ousting him. He, on the other hand, has the ability to round up all the “counter-revolutionaries” and either “reeducate” them or outright execute them.

Democracy is an illusion. It only offers the majority a voice so long as that voice is deemed acceptable by the State. The State, having the highest capacity for violence, can render the voice of the majority irrelevant rather quickly.

We’re All Libertarians Now

One of my friends came up with a phrase that has become quite popular amongst the circles I travel in: we’re all libertarians now. It brings to light the fact that many people call themselves libertarians without actually believing in the philosophy of libertarianism. Gary Johnson, who lost the last presidential election as the Libertarian Party candidate and announced his intentions to lose again this year, is an example. While many of his stated beliefs in the past have been fairly freedom oriented he is adopting a new strategy this year by going authoritarian:

Surprisingly for a libertarian, Johnson, who recently resigned as the CEO of Cannabis Sativa, a marijuana marketing form, said that he would sign a bill banning the wearing of burqas in America. Sharia, he insisted, was not an expression of religion but of “politics” and hence many of its practices could be banned or limited without running afoul of the Constitution.

“Under sharia law,” he argued, “women are not afforded the same rights as men.” Under a burqa, how do you know if a woman has been beaten?, he asked rhetorically. “Honor killings are allowed for under sharia law and so is deceiving non-Muslims.” Likening followers of sharia to members of the Ku Klux Klan, Johnson said that he wouldn’t censor the speech of people promoting sharia law but would mount a cultural campaign to counter its growth here. He said the Islamic terrorism proceeds directly from the same sources as the thinking behind sharia and that the United States government must make sure it is not inadvertently funding sharia overseas.

Libertarianism is a philosophy built around the non-aggression principle, which simply states that it’s wrong to initiate force. How can one claim they are opposed to the initiation of force when they’re openly supporting laws that threaten anybody wearing a burqa? They can’t. Two the are mutually exclusive.

I also find his opinions about sharia rather hypocritical since he’s running to become part of a government that operates under very similar principles.

While women are not afforded the same rights as men under sharia nobody is afforded any rights under United States law. Rights, by definition, cannot be taken away. But the United States government can legally take any so-called right away. When something can be taken away it’s called a privilege and to quote George Carlin, “That’s all we’ve ever had in this country; a bill of temporary privileges.” Because even the enumerated privileges in the Bill of Rights, which have all be violated by federal law, are a single constitutional convention away from being entirely removed.

Sharia allows honor killings? So does United States law. The terminology is different. Instead of honor killings United State law calls it war. But when somebody offends the honor of the United States they end up at the business end of the world’s largest military, which usually makes them very dead.

And United States law allows the government to deceive nongovernmental entities. Cops can lie to you (but you can’t lie to them because that’s a crime). Every politician can lie to you. Basically anybody employed by the government can lie to you. Hell, the government lies to its allies. In fact I’m not aware of a single entity the United States government doesn’t lie to.

By Gary Johnson’s own criticisms of sharia he should be working to abolish the State, not become part of it so he can do the very things he is criticizing Islam for doing.

This is a common problem amongst statist libertarians (a term I personally find oxymoronic). They aren’t interested in being a force of liberation for all and their acknowledgement of the non-aggression principle only extends as far as the people they like. I’m not sure why they desire to label themselves libertarians, it’s not like there are any cool points attached to the term, but they do and it has rendered the term nearly useless.

David Chaum Becomes A Quisling

Online anonymity is important. In fact it’s the difference between life and death for many political dissidents around the world. Recognizing this many developers have put their efforts into developing effective anonymity tools such as Tor and I2P. But what makes an anonymity tool effective? An effective anonymity tool is one designed in such a way where a third party cannot utilize the tool itself to discover the identity of a user (no tool, however, can be designed in such a way to stop a user from voluntarily revealing identifiable information about themselves).

One of the downsides of the current slew of popular anonymity tools is they tend to be slower than tools that don’t attempt to maintain anonymity. Accessing a website over Tor usually takes longer than accessing that same site over the regular Internet. David Chaum, a well-known and previously (I’ll get to that in a second) well-respected cryptographer is promising a new “anonymity” tool that doesn’t suffer from the performance issues of popular tools such as Tor:

With PrivaTegrity, Chaum is introducing a new kind of mix network he calls cMix, designed to be far more efficient than the layered encryption scheme he created decades ago. In his cMix setup, a smartphone communicates with PrivaTegrity’s nine servers when the app is installed to establish a series of keys that it shares with each server. When the phone sends a message, it encrypts the message’s data by multiplying it by that series of unique keys. Then the message is passed around all nine servers, with each one dividing out its secret key and multiplying the data with a random number. On a second pass through the nine servers, the message is put into a batch with other messages, and each server shuffles the batch’s order using a randomized pattern only that server knows, then multiplies the messages with another random number. Finally, the process is reversed, and as the message passes through the servers one last time, all of those random numbers are divided out and replaced with keys unique to the message’s intended recipient, who can then decrypt and read it.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Chaum even claims PrivaTegrity is more secure than Tor. But as it turns out this “anonymity” tool isn’t effective because it allows third parties to unveil the identity of users:

On top of those security and efficiency tricks, PrivaTegrity’s nine-server architecture—with a tenth that works as a kind of “manager” without access to any secret keys—also makes possible its unique backdoor decryption feature. No single server, or even eight of the nine servers working together, can trace or decrypt a message. But when all nine cooperate, they can combine their data to reconstruct a message’s entire path and divide out the random numbers they used to encrypt it. “It’s like a backdoor with nine different padlocks on it,” Chaum says.

[…]

“It’s like the UN,” says Chaum. “I don’t think a single jurisdiction should be able to covertly surveil the planet…In this system, there’s an agreement on the rules, and then we can enforce them.”

One Key to rule them all, One Key to find them, One Key to bring them all and in the darkness spy on them.

You know who else had an agreement on the rules? The Nazis! Put down the Godwin brand pitchforks, that was purposeful hyperbole. My point is agreement on the rules is meaningless fluff just as his claim that no single jurisdiction should be able to surveil the planet. By implementing a backdoor he has made his network a single jurisdiction capable of surveilling everybody who uses it. His network is also the rule maker. The only reason I would shy away from calling PrivaTegrity a government is because it still outsources enforcement to the State by handing over identifiable information of users deemed guilty by the Nazgûl. PrivaTegrity isn’t about protecting the identity of every user, it’s about protecting the identity of favored users.

This backdoor capability also means PrivaTegrity is less secure than Tor since Tor doesn’t have a built-in method to reveal the identity of users. Every major government in the world will try to compromise PrivaTegrity if it every comes into wide usage. And due to the existence of a backdoor those efforts will bear fruit. Whether compromising the servers themselves, buying off the administrators of the servers, or by other means it will only be a matter of time until governments find a way to utilize the built-in backdoor for their own purposes. That is why the mere existence of a backdoor renders an anonymity tool ineffective.

The only upside to PrivaTegrity is that the existence of a backdoor almost guarantees nobody will adopt it and therefore when it’s compromised nobody will be put in danger.

This Was Always The Plan

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was sold as legislation that would guarantee every American enjoyed health insurance. Anybody who looked at the methodology would be lead to question the sales pitch though. What the ACA did was require anybody who didn’t have health insurance to pay a fine. As the New York Times has noticed many people are opting to pay the fine rather than health insurance premiums because the former is cheaper:

Mr. Murphy, an engineer in Sulphur Springs, Tex., estimates that under the Affordable Care Act, he will face a penalty of $1,800 for going uninsured in 2016. But in his view, paying that penalty is worth it if he can avoid buying an insurance policy that costs $2,900 or more. All he has to do is stay healthy.

“I don’t see the logic behind that, and I’m just not going to do it,” said Mr. Murphy, 45, who became uninsured in April after leaving a job with health benefits to pursue contract work. “The fine is still going to be cheaper.”

Two years after the Affordable Care Act began requiring most Americans to have health insurance, 10.5 million who are eligible to buy coverage through the law’s new insurance exchanges were still uninsured this fall, according to the Obama administration.

It seems many people are mistaking this for an unintended failure when in fact it was the plan. The ACA, like all legislation, was passed to transfer wealth from the people to the State. The health insurance industry is one of the State’s larger partners. By requiring people to do business with insurance companies the ACA funnels money into the health insurance industry where a portion of it is funneled back to the State (in the form of taxes, lobbying efforts, regulatory compliance fees, etc.).

But some people are too poor to afford health insurance or too stubborn to buy it even when it’s mandated. In order to squeeze money out of those two categories of people the ACA also created a middle tier. You don’t have to buy health insurance but you also won’t be kidnapped and locked in a cage if you’re willing to pay the State a small fee directly. The trick is the fee is lower than buying health insurance but high enough to look favorable compared to being kidnapped and locked in a cage.

Manufacturers have long understood the importance of a middle tier. Apple, for example, prefers you buy the top of the line iPhone but makes lower tiers available because it realizes not everybody can afford or is willing to pay for the top of the line. The difference between the market’s middle tier products and the State’s is the former’s lower tier doesn’t involved armed officers kicking down your door at oh dark thirty, murdering your family dog, and kidnapping you.

So the ACA creates a three tier system. The upper tier is buying health insurance, the middle tier is paying the fine, and the lower tier is being a slave laborer for Federal Prison Industries (also known as UNICOR) for a number of years. It’s a piece of legislation designed specifically for the purpose of extracting more wealth from the public. What may appear to be a failure, the fine being lower than buying health insurance, is in fact part of the design meant to maximum the law’s effectiveness.

Smith And Wesson Don’t Believe You Own Your Gun

Update: Smith and Wesson has apologized for being legal cunts. I guess they didn’t have their lawyers on a short enough leash, which is a problem common to most companies. Glad to see they backed off.

My original article is below for preservation purposes.

For years now I’ve been contemplating buying a Smith and Wesson M&P. They’re wonderfully designed pistols. The only thing I don’t like about them is the trigger doesn’t have a tactile reset. Fortunately Apex triggers add that functionality so I need only buy one and drop it in, right? Wrong. According to Smith and Wesson making such modifications violates their precious intellectual property rights:

That’s one of Brownells’ series of ‘Dream Guns‘ (above), highly customized, one-off project guns Brownells gins up as examples of what’s possible if you want to put some money, time and love into your stock pistol. They use these as come-ons for trade shows and such, as attractions to get passers by to stop and check out their wares. Their latest effort, a Smith & Wesson M&P, wasn’t well received by the venerable Springfield gun maker…

They had their IP attorneys send a love letter to Brownells and the other aftermarket companies who collaborated on the M&P Dream gun.

There is a picture of the legal threat Smith and Wesson mailed to Apex, Brownells, DP Custom Works, Blowndeadline Custom, and SSVi. Although I find this entire situation ridiculous I do appreciate Smith and Wesson going out of its way to save me the money I would have otherwise dropped on one of their pistols.

I believe it’s perfectly valid to void the warranty if a customer makes a modification to a product. But threatening a lawsuit over imaginary property being violated is absurd. But this is becoming more common. John Deere already claims farmers don’t own the tractors they purchase because those tractors contain software and that software implies the entire piece of machinery is being licensed. Automotive manufacturers are also using intellectual property laws to justify preventing customers from making certain modifications to their vehicles.

What’s interesting about Smith and Wesson’s case is that it doesn’t involve software, which is the goto excuse used to claim owners don’t actually own the products they buy. Instead it’s claiming that displaying its logo on one of its own guns violates the company’s trademark. I guess anybody who modifies a Smith and Wesson firearm is supposed to file off any logos.

While I fully admit I haven’t purchased a Smith and Wesson firearm in years, the last time I did I didn’t sign any contractual agreement to remove all of the company’s logos if I modified the firearm (if such an agreement were demanded I wouldn’t have bought the gun). Since there is no cause for Smith and Wesson to claim I don’t own the pistol and I didn’t sign a contract making me responsible for removing its logos I’m curious on what grounds they plan to enforce this newfound legal power trip. Granted, I won’t have to worry about it because this kind of nonsense will ensure I take my money elsewhere.

Post Office Censoring Speech

The United States Post Office had decided to get into the censorship of speech business. Cannabis is legal in several states now. Not surprisingly this legalization has created a desire by cannabis related business to advertise their goods and service. Nothing illegal is being advertised so everything should be cool, right? Wrong. The Post Office is claiming that since cannabis is still illegal on a federal level it’s illegal to mail any advertisements for cannabis, even if those advertisements don’t cross state lines:

The confusion started in Portland, Ore., where local newspapers have been running ads for dispensaries and manufacturers in the state’s now-booming weed industry after voters legalized recreational pot for adults last year, following medical pot in 1998.

In November, Portland’s postal district issued a memo to newspaper publishers, telling them they are breaking the law by running ads for pot and using the U.S. mail to deliver their papers.

The reason? The U.S. Postal Service is a federal entity. Even though Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Alaska have legalized recreational marijuana and 23 other states have legalized medical pot, any newspaper running ads in those states violates a federal law preventing advertising for illicit goods.

Since the Post Office still enjoys a monopoly on delivering first class mail it would also be illegal for some of these advertisements to be shipped through another company. With that said, this would make a hell of a good act of civil disobedience. There is one bright side though, the Post Office is apparently unable to enforce this censorship:

But there’s a twist. The Postal Service apparently has no authority to stop the mailers if their publications contain pot ads. The new policy directs postmasters to send a report to the local U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service.

The matter would, in theory, then be turned over to a law enforcement agency for prosecution, although it’s unclear whether this kind of crime would be prosecuted. Federal authorities have generally not cracked down on pot sales in states where they’re legal.

This does show one of the major downsides of any monopolization in the mailing market. A mailing agent with a monopoly can end up becoming a censor. Either by refusing to deliver certain goods or material containing particular forms of speech a mailing agent, without any competitors, can create a prohibition without even having to go through the usual legislation process.

Demanding The Benefits Of The Monopolized Legal System But Not Accepting The Detriment

Black Lives Matter is planning another protest at the Mall of America. After losing court battles over last year’s demonstration due to incompetency the Mall of America is obtaining a restraining order against the organization this year:

The protesters want to demonstrate at the country’s biggest mall to draw attention to the Nov. 15 police killing of a black Minneapolis man, Jamar Clark, and to ramp up the pressure on investigators to release video of the shooting. Authorities say they won’t release it while state and federal investigations are ongoing.

The mall wants to avoid the type of disruption caused by a Christmas-time demonstration last year, when thousands of protesters angry over the absence of charges involving police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City forced the temporary closure of mall stores. Dozens of people were arrested.

This case is particularly amusing to me because the Mall of America is relying on the very monopolized legal system is willfully ignores. In this case the it’s trying to get the monopolized legal system to issue a restraining order because it doesn’t want protesters on its property (although I might argue that the special privileges it receives from the State invalidate any claims it might have to being private property). But the Mall of America willfully ignores the law prohibiting land lords from banning the carrying of firearms:

Both Cornish and Strawser said Minnesota law prohibits a landlord, such as the Mall of America, from restricting the “lawful carry or possession of firearms by tenants or their guests.” Strawser added, “carrying at the Mall of America does not violate the law, only the mall’s wishes.”

There are few things I dislike more than hypocrites. If you support the State’s monopolized legal system then you should abide by it entirely. On the other hand, if you don’t support the State’s monopolized legal system then you should avoid utilizing as much as possible. You shouldn’t expect to have your cake and eat it too.

Political Victories Are Only Temporary Victories

I hate redoing work. This is part of the reason I don’t pursue politics. Any political victory is only a temporary victory. At some future point the victory you achieved will be undone. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) is just the latest example of this. If you go through the history of the bill you will see it was introduced and shutdown several times:

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act was introduced on July 10, 2014 during the 113th Congress, and was able to pass the Senate Intelligence Committee by a vote of 12-3. The bill did not reach a full senate vote before the end of the congressional session.

The bill was reintroduced for the 114th Congress on March 12, 2015, and the bill passed the Senate Intelligence Committee by a vote of 14-1. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, (R-Ky) attempted to attach the bill as an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act, but was blocked 56-40, not reaching the necessary 60 votes to include the amendment. Mitch McConnell hoped to bring the bill to senate-wide vote during the week of August 3–7, but was unable to take up the bill before the summer recess. The Senate tentatively agreed to limit debate to 21 particular amendments and a manager’s amendment, but did not set time limits on debate. In October 2015, the US Senate took the bill back up following legislation concerning sanctuary cities.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This time the politicians attached CISA to the budget, which as we all know is a must pass bill:

Congress on Friday adopted a $1.15 trillion spending package that included a controversial cybersecurity measure that only passed because it was slipped into the US government’s budget legislation.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican of Wisconsin, inserted the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill—which includes some $620 billion in tax breaks for business and low-income wage earners. Ryan’s move was a bid to prevent lawmakers from putting a procedural hold on the CISA bill and block it from a vote. Because CISA was tucked into the government’s overall spending package on Wednesday, it had to pass or the government likely would have had to cease operating next week.

Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, said the CISA measure, which backers say is designed to help prevent cyber threats, got even worse after it was slipped into the 2,000-page budget deal (PDF, page 1,728). He voted against the spending plan.

All those hours invested in the political process to fight CISA were instantly rendered meaningless with the passage of this bill. However, the bill can be rendered toothless. CISA removes any potential liability from private companies that share customer data with federal agencies. So long as private companies don’t have actionable information to share the provisions outlined in CISA are inconsequential. As with most privacy related issues, effective cryptography is the biggest key. Tools like Off-the-Record (OTR) messaging, OTR’s successor Multi-End Message and Object Encryption (OMEMO), Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), Transport Layer Security (TLS), Tor, and other cryptographic tools designed to keep data private and/or anonymous can go a long ways towards preventing private companies from having any usable data to give to federal agencies.

In addition to effective cryptography it’s also important to encourage businesses not to cooperate with federal agencies. The best way to do this is to buy products and services from companies that have fought attempts by federal agencies to acquire customer information and utilize cryptographic tools that prevent themselves from viewing customer data. As consumers we must make it clear that quislings will not be rewarded while those who stand with us will be.

Effective cryptography, unlike politics, offers a permanent solution to the surveillance problem. It’s wiser, in my opinion, to invest the time you’d otherwise waste with politics in learning how to properly utilize tools that protect your privacy. While your political victories may be undone nobody can take your knowledge from you.