Your Government Doesn’t Love You – Page 130

I’m Just Declaring Today Stupid Wednesday

That’s it, I’m declaring today Stupid Wednesday. There’s just so much idiocy in the news that I’m left wondering how many humans remember to breathe, let alone function at a high enough level to make the news. The City of St. Paul is looking to set a minimum price on tobacco products. But that’s not the dumbest part. As hard as it may be to believe the justification for this plan is even dumber than the plan itself:

“I’ve seen people come in — of age, because they’re purchasing in front of a police officer — but they simply throw down change on a countertop,” Gannon said. “And they have enough change in their pocket to buy a single cigarillo. And I just wonder where that cigarillo ends up at. Does it go out to somebody who may be younger who can’t afford more expensive cigarettes.”

Where does one even come up with such a conclusion? Just because somebody plunks down a bit of change to buy some cheap tobacco doesn’t mean, or even remotely imply, that they’re buying for underage individuals. And it gets dumber:

For law enforcement, limiting access to cigars can be important, because cigar wrappers also can be used to smoke marijuana.

Yup, cigar wrappers have to be controlled because they can be used to smoke weed. Because there’s no other possible way for somebody to smoke weed other than using an old cigar wrapper. No siree!

And just think, these are the people tasked with running your life. These are the people that make up the institution known as government. Your lives are in the hands of total fucking morons.

A Bigger Domestic Abuse Problem

Thanks to the National Football League (NFL) domestic abuse is on the front page of many news outlets. It’s quite sad that the only time people care about domestic abuse is when celebrities are involved but that’s the way it is. But since the topic is being discussed I think it’s worth bringing up a larger source of domestic abuse issues than NFL players:

And there is another American profession that has a significantly more alarming problem with domestic abuse. I’d urge everyone who believes in zero tolerance for NFL employees caught beating their wives or girlfriends to direct as much attention—or ideally, even more attention—at police officers who assault their partners. Several studies have found that the romantic partners of police officers suffer domestic abuse at rates significantly higher than the general population. And while all partner abuse is unacceptable, it is especially problematic when domestic abusers are literally the people that battered and abused women are supposed to call for help.

I’m not surprised that studies are showing that domestic abuse rates amongst police families are higher than average families. As I’ve noted before the primarily job of modern policing is extortion in the form of fines, citations, and civil forfeiture. That’s why you can find police officers with radar guns on most major highways and more police resources put towards enforcing the prohibition on unpatentable drugs than solving murders, burglaries, and assaults. The problem with focusing on extortion instead of protection is that it attracts a different kind of person, namely a kind of person who has no moral issue with hurting others. If your police force is made up of enough people who enjoying hurting people then chances are high that you’re also going to have a notable rate of domestic abuse amongst them.

Columbus Day

For a few years now there has been a lot of outrage of Columbus Day. Some regions in the United States have even begun renaming the day Indigenous People’s Day to avoid associating the holiday with Columbus.

I don’t understand why people are surprised, shocked, or outraged by the fact that the federal government declared a holiday to celebrate Columbus. Christopher Columbus sailed to a random plot of land, stuck a flag in it, declare the land and its inhabitants property of the Spanish crown, and started killing them and taking their shit. Let’s face it, this single man embodies everything that a government wants to do.

Even today the United States government tries to emulate its hero, Columbus, by sailing aircraft carriers around the world, sticking American flags in Middle Eastern land, declaring the land and its inhabitants the property of whatever puppet government the United States actually controls, and killing those inhabitants and taking their oil. The only thing that surprises me is that Columbus’s face isn’t on the flag of the United States.

Bloomington Police Spying on Shoppers at Mall of America

The Mall of America is one of those places I try to avoid like the plague. I don’t like shopping in meatspace on the best of days so throwing me into a vast complex of clothing stores is basically torture. Combine that with mall security that does its best to make mall ninjutsu a real thing and you get a recipe for bad times. Now I have another reason to avoid that hellhole, the Bloomington police are spying on everybody who shops there:

License plate readers are cameras that capture your license plate information just driving by. They record the plate number, the date, time and location of your vehicle. The information is then checked against a “hot list,” which includes license plates of people suspected of various crimes.

At the meeting, law enforcement officials from St. Paul, Duluth, Mendota Heights and Ramsey County all said the technology has helped them solve crimes.

You can add Bloomington to the list too. In their case, they have an agreement with Mall of America. According to Bloomington Police Chief Jeff Potts, the mall is allowed to access the data, although they have yet to do so.

“It’s solely for the purposes of safety, security and traffic management. Not marketing, not other things that were discussed here just a few minutes ago,” Potts explained. “We’re just using these cameras to try to keep the mall safe. The scans, the license plates that we read, are bounced against a database of known vehicles that are either stolen, wanted persons, people with warrants.”

I like how the Mr. Potts first says that the scanners are meant to keep the mall safe and immediately admits that the scanned license plates are being bounced off of a database of wanted persons. Which of the following scenarios is likely to be safer? An individual with a warrant out for his arrest goes to the Mall of America and while there buys (or even steals) a shirt and grabs some lunch or an individual with a warrant out for his arrest goes tot he Mall of American and his license plate informs the Bloomington Police Department to gear up, head to the mall, and have a wild shootout with the suspect. I’m much rather see the latter since modern policing seems to be entirely unconcerned with innocent bystanders.

As the article says, license plates scanners are used throughout Minnesota to violate what little privacy we still have. Because of this it’s difficult to avoid a place simply because you don’t want some nosy police officer stalking you via their license plate scanners. But when a place I already don’t like to go to admits to using these devices it just gives me more reason to avoid it.

Civil Forfeiture Laws Apparently Cover Your Identity

The war on unpatentable drugs has seen the state sink to lower and lower levels in its pursuit to arrest anybody who might challenge their corporate pharmaceutical partner’s monopolies. Civil forfeiture laws are one of the lowest levels. But it seems that civil forfeiture laws don’t just cover cash and cars. If you are suspected of being involved in a drug crime or charged with a drug crime the state can now confiscate your identity:

The Justice Department is claiming, in a little-noticed court filing, that a federal agent had the right to impersonate a young woman online by creating a Facebook page in her name without her knowledge. Government lawyers also are defending the agent’s right to scour the woman’s seized cellphone and to post photographs — including racy pictures of her and even one of her young son and niece — to the phony social media account, which the agent was using to communicate with suspected criminals.

All this, the start argues, is legal and moral as is anything that helps it fight the war on unpatentable drugs. As Radley Balko points out the state is effectively arguing that it can put people individual in very real danger if it means catching drug offenders:

The DOJ filing was in response to Arquiett’s lawsuit. Consider what the federal government is arguing here. It’s arguing that if you’re arrested for a drug crime, including a crime unserious enough to merit a sentence of probation, the government retains the power to (a) steal your identity, (b) use that identity for drug policing, thus making your name and face known to potentially dangerous criminals, (c) interact with those criminals while posing as you, which could subject you to reprisals from those criminals, (d) expose photos of your family, including children, to those criminals, and (e) do all of this without your consent, and with no regard for your safety or public reputation.

It’s funny, in a twisted way, how fervent the state has been in fighting its war on drugs at the expense of its reputation (it’s hard to believe now but before the war on drugs the state had a much higher reputation), the lives of the citizenry, and having to arm almost every police department with enough equipment to qualify them as military forces in most countries. However it can barely find the time, and often can’t, to protect the people, which we continue to hear is the primary job of the state (which is laughable to say the least).

Technology is Trumping Statism Again

Regardless of the laughable claims made by an author at Daily Kos, market anarchism is showing how practical its rhetoric is once again. This time the place is Venezuela, the problem is currency controls and economic collapse, and the solution is Bitcoin:

(Reuters) – Tech-savvy Venezuelans looking to bypass dysfunctional economic controls are turning to the bitcoin virtual currency to obtain dollars, make Internet purchases — and launch a little subversion.

Two New York-based Venezuelan brothers hope this week to start trading on the first bitcoin exchange in the socialist-run country, which already has at least several hundred bitcoin enthusiasts.

While the Venezuelan government continues its attempt to control its population through economic controls its power is quickly fading as its economy collapses and more people turn to the “black” market for basic necessities. This is similar to what happened during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Once the state’s controls have been circumvented its death is inevitable.

Here’s Some Compromise

Most people have probably heard that Apple is no long able to bypass a device’s encryption and Google has announced the same feature will appear in the next release of Android. Anybody with a modicum of intelligence is glad to hear this but there are a few dipships who think this is a bad feature. Take this fool for example:

How to resolve this? A police “back door” for all smartphones is undesirable — a back door can and will be exploited by bad guys, too. However, with all their wizardry, perhaps Apple and Google could invent a kind of secure golden key they would retain and use only when a court has approved a search warrant. Ultimately, Congress could act and force the issue, but we’d rather see it resolved in law enforcement collaboration with the manufacturers and in a way that protects all three of the forces at work: technology, privacy and rule of law.

So a police back door is undesirable but Apple and Google could perhaps implement a police back door. Idiot. Do you know what I think about that idea? This is what I think about that idea:

That’s right, fuck this guy and his idea. There is no magical security mechanism that can allow only legitimate bypasses. If there is a back door then it can, as a matter of fact, be abused. Even if malicious third parties were unable to access the system it would still be ripe for abuse by law enforcement agents, which have a notable history of abusing power.

Here’s my idea for a compromise. Apple and Google should not implement any back door and in return law enforcement agents can deal with the fact that they can’t access our personal data on our devices. How’s that for a compromise?

Double Rainbow

A double rainbow!

What does it mean?

Turns out it means that your goddamn sword has arrived from Japan.

I’d apologize for the shitty photo but I never claimed to be a photographer. Just know that the picture doesn’t do the actual sword justice.

And I’m just going to take the double rainbow in front of the UPS store as a positive sign because the surprise $25.00^[1] Fish and Wildlife clearance certainly wasn’t. Fun fact, my sword was delayed for a day due to a Fish and Wildlife hold:

On the upside, thanks to the fine men and women in charge of fish and wildlife, I am now sure that my three foot metal stick isn’t some kind of fish or other form of wildlife. I only needed to have my package delayed for one day, be required to pick up my package at the UPS office, and pay $25.00 to get that assurance. Talk about a deal!

Seriously, shit like this is why I’m an anarchist.

^[1] Here’s a fun fact. The UPS office only accepts money orders of personal checks. If you show up with cash or a credit card you won’t be able to pay your brokerage fee.

Never Trust a Cop

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a valuable lesson for us: never trust a cop. OK, I’m putting words into the EFF’s mouth. But after it uncovered something nasty in a software package being given out to parents by police departments under the auspices of protecting the children I think my sentiment is fair:

Police chiefs, sheriffs, and district attorneys have handed out hundreds of thousands of copies of the disc to families for free at schools, libraries, and community events, usually as a part of an “Internet Safety” outreach initiative. The packaging typically features the agency’s official seal and the chief’s portrait, with a signed message warning of the “dark and dangerous off-ramps” of the Internet.

As official as it looks, ComputerCOP is actually just spyware, generally bought in bulk from a New York company that appears to do nothing but market this software to local government agencies.

The way ComputerCOP works is neither safe nor secure. It isn’t particularly effective either, except for generating positive PR for the law enforcement agencies distributing it. As security software goes, we observed a product with a keystroke-capturing function, also called a “keylogger,” that could place a family’s personal information at extreme risk by transmitting what a user types over the Internet to third-party servers without encryption. That means many versions of ComputerCOP leave children (and their parents, guests, friends, and anyone using the affected computer) exposed to the same predators, identity thieves, and bullies that police claim the software protects against.

That’s right at least 245 agencies spanning 35 states have been giving parents a malware package under the guise of Internet safety software. Parents who were suckered into installing it got to enjoy a keylogger sending everything typed on the computer across the Internet. Adding insult to injury the transmitted keystrokes weren’t even encrypted. I’m sure the National Security Agency (NSA) has an erection because of this.

It’s unlikely that every police departments that was peddling this software is directly at fault here. They were probably naive and got suckered in by the company that, as the article points out, used fraudulent endorsements to encourage police departments to buy its software. But the bottom line is still that the departments were distributing malware, which demonstrates that they don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to software and therefore shouldn’t be trusted with such matters.

I said that not every police department is directly to blame. There is one department headed by a real asshole that is directly to blame. That department is the Limestone County Sheriff’s Department. After this news broke the Limestone County sheriff, Mike Blakely, decided that the EFF’s claims were incorrect. In fact he had some pretty harsh words for the EFF:

Sheriff Blakely said, Computer Cop is spyware designed for parents to watch and protect their kids but said the system has been vetted.

“We have had the key logger checked out with our IT people. They have run it on our computer system.” He said. “There is no malware.”

Blakely referred to the EFF criticism politics as an “Ultra-liberal organization that is not in any way credible on this. They’re more interested in protecting predators and pedophiles than in protecting our children.”

You read correctly. According to Sheriff Blakely the fucking EFF, the organization that has a long and proud history of fighting for the rights of computer users, isn’t credible on this. Furthermore he claims that the organization is interested in protecting predators and pedophiles, which would be a laughable claim if it wasn’t obvious that Blakely is trying to poison the well.

If what he said is true, if his department did check out the software, then it is directly at fault for knowingly distributing malware to unsuspecting parents. Were I a parent that received a copy of ComputerCOP from the Limestone County Sheriff’s Department I would seriously consider filing a lawsuit.

Bombing Made Easier

Some time ago Obama declared stricter criteria for deciding who was going to get bombed and who wasn’t. This declaration was made under the auspices of reducing civilian casualties. That was then. This is now:

The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.

A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria’s Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

This is why you don’t give any credence to anything politicians say. They will tell you what you want to hear and even pass regulations that make it look like they’re giving you what you want but when those regulations hinder their desires they will vanish in a puff of smoke. Keep this in mind when a politician promises you something because that promise is empty.

I wonder if Obama wears his Nobel Peace Prize when he orders bombings just for the irony.