Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Only The State Can Sue You For Being Clever

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is brining a lawsuit against Volkswagen:

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in the fallout since the EPA published a notice of violation in September accusing Volkswagen of installing software on many of its diesel vehicles that would stop the car’s emissions control system from working properly during normal driving, but engage the emissions control system while the car was being tested in a lab, effectively helping Volkswagen cheat air quality regulators in the US.

A press release from the EPA said that approximately 499,000 diesel cars with 2.0 liter engines were found to have defeat devices, and some 85,000 cars with 3.0 liter engines were similarly implicated. The complaint filed by the Department of Justice suggests that the software to defeat the emissions control system in 2.0 and 3.0 liter cars was slightly different, however.

According to the complaint, during federal emissions testing, 2.0 liter engines from Volkswagen “run software logic and/or calibrations that produce compliant emission results” which the car’s onboard system calls the “dyno calibration,” referring to the dynamometer that’s used during emissions testing.

What makes this lawsuit noteworthy is that it demonstrates yet another double standard between private companies and the State. Although the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to bypass means of preventing the copying of data there is no such law for defeating physical systems. If, for example, you take apart your television, wristwatch, or automobile the manufacturer can void the warranty but it cannot sue you. Likewise, if you buy one of those terrible Masterlock padlocks and pick it open Masterlock cannot sue you for bypassing its system. And while Microsoft may be able to sue you for bypassing the copy protection used on the Xbox it cannot sue you for taking the physical system apart. In other words manufacturers cannot sue you for being clever with hardware.

Yet the EPA is free to sue Volkswagen for bypassing its very poorly designed system. Volkswagen didn’t bypass a means of prohibiting the copying of data as is covered by the DMCA. It wrote a piece of software to detect conditions associated with the EPA’s standardized testing system and present the system with what it expected. A more accurate way of explaining this lawsuit would be to note that Volkswagen is being sued because the EPA is too inept to design a test that’s difficult to detect. Volkwagen was clever and the State can sue you for being clever.

Obama Boosts The Agorist Gun Market

And so beings yet another period of standard capacity magazines becoming as rare as credibility in politicians. Obama has issued a series of arbitrary decrees that are likely to bolster the agorist gun market:

President Barack Obama directed federal agencies Monday to carry out a series of steps to reduce gun violence, including measures to restrict sales by unlicensed dealers — sometimes called the gun show loophole.

Regulators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will clarify that anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms must get a federal firearms dealers license and check the backgrounds of all buyers.

You have to appreciate a governmental system with so many checks and balances that one man can arbitrarily rewrite the rules. More importantly, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has become much stingier about who they will issue Federal Firearm Licenses (FFL) to. If you are somebody who sells a gun every couple of years it’s unlikely the ATF will issue you an FFL and therefore your act of selling is now criminal. Don’t let that get you down though, operating in the black market is far more rewarding than operating in the white market. Not only do you get to keep all of your money since you don’t have to declare the income but your customers don’t have to deal with the hassle of filling out a Form 4473 and submitting to an instant background check. Agorist gun deals and buyers win whenever additional burden is placed on commerce.

“The goal is keeping bad actors away from firearms,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

So these rules are going to keep guns out of the hands of police officers and other government agents?

ATF will also notify firearms dealers that they must file a report when guns from their inventory are lost or stolen, including those in transit. A White House statement said an average of 1,333 guns recovered from crime scenes in each of the past five years were traced back to dealers who never received them.

Another burden and another win for the agorist gun market. Who wants to make themselves a target by filling for an FFL when it carries ridiculous requirements such as constantly informing the government of the status of their inventory? It’s far better to not officially be in the business of selling guns so the ATF won’t decide to perform “random” inspections on their place of business because it suspects they haven’t been properly keeping the State informed about their inventory.

White House officials said the administration would seek funding from Congress to allow ATF to hire 200 new agents and investigators to enforce gun laws.

Excellent! There wasn’t enough agents arming Mexican drug cartels already. This should give the agency more staff so they can arm their cartel partners even faster.

There you have it, Obama is working hard to make the black market an attractive alternative to his white market. You have to appreciate a man who makes business for you at the expense of his own.

People Have Strange Fears

When police continue to kick in doors at oh dark thirty, shoot the family dogs, and desperately scour homes for hours hoping to find something illegal to justify terrorizing the occupants at an incorrect address many people seem perfectly content with the situation. In fact they continue to be apologists for the police and remind us that police are necessary (their words, not mine) for our safety.

But when a group of dip shits occupy an empty government building the previously mentioned people flip their shit. Supposedly these militia members, who haven’t even hurt anybody as far as I know, are to be feared:

Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven, 46, were convicted of arson in 2012 but a court ruled their original sentences were too short.

They said they lit the fires to reduce the growth of invasive species and protect their land from wildfires.

The case has riled right-wing activists who resent government interference.

Those occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge centre in Burns say they plan to stay for years and may use violence if police try to evict them.

Apparently a court system that can extent your sentence on a whim is also not worth fearing since nobody seems to bring that fact up.

I’m not a fan of the various militia movements. Militia groups, more often than not, are statist in nature. They usually want to change the government into their particular belief of how it used to be. But I have a hard time fearing them. Very few of these groups have ever actually initiated violence. Meanwhile the State’s law enforcers initiate violence on a daily basis throughout the country. Of the two groups the latter scares me a hell of a lot more than the former.

Furthermore, I don’t understand why anybody really cares about this occupation. The building they occupied was empty and, more importantly, unowned since the State cannot legitimately own property. All they’ve done is taken ownership of an unowned building.

Yet I keep hearing people tell me I should be afraid of this militia group. I really don’t understand the fear most people have.

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.

I’m A Good Little Slave And You Should Be One Too

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has decreed that anybody who owns a drone must register. Sally French, a reporter for Forbes, registered herself and wrote an opinion piece encouraging others to do the same. It’s titled “I registered my drone. Here’s why you should too” but it might as well be titled “I’m a good little slave who rolls over on command and you should too!”

I logged onto the site and entered my name, home address and email address.

There is a registration fee, so I also had to enter my credit card information. The registration fee is $5 per drone owner — the same $5 processing fee charged for any aircraft registration — but the FAA says it will refund the $5 fee for drones registered through Jan. 20 to encourage participation.

Once I hit the “next” button, I received a personal identification number and certificate to print out (though like most millennials, I don’t have a printer). I did write the identification number on a sticker, which I then pasted on my drone, an original DJI Phantom that I have been flying since early 2013.

[…]

Registration is intended to force some education upon pilots who may not have malicious intent, but also may not have read the “Know Before You Fly” guidelines included with most drone purchases in the U.S. It also means that government and law enforcement officials will be able to track down reckless drone operators — something that, until now, they haven’t been able to do.

The fool! Registration is not intended to educate drone pilots, it’s meant to rake in a little extra cash for the FAA. Although $5 per operator, a fee that’s being refunded until January 20th, doesn’t sound like much when you consider the FFA estimates one million drones will be sold this Christmas alone you can see the cash, which requires the FAA to do almost nothing, becomes a tidy sum. And anybody familiar with how government extortion works knows that the initial $5 fee is just the bait and the price will only go up. But the registration fee isn’t the real money maker. There is an up to $250,000 fine for anybody who flies a drone without registering with the FAA by February 19th. Since a lot of drone owners will likely remain unaware of the FAA regulation there a large pool of suckers the FAA is going to be able to extort some money out of.

Now let me explain why you shouldn’t register your drone. If you do your name and home address will be made publicly available:

The FAA finally confirmed this afternoon that model aircraft registrants’ names and home addresses will be public. In an email message, the FAA stated: “Until the drone registry system is modified, the FAA will not release names and address. When the drone registry system is modified to permit public searches of registration numbers, names and addresses will be revealed through those searches.”

Sounds like a public wall of shame to me. But you know this list will be abused. Most likely drone manufacturers will use it to send you unwanted advertisements via snail mail (hey, look, the registration system raises some money for the Post Office too). And anybody looking to steal a drone knows exactly where to go.

In this day and age it has become obvious that publicly releasing personal information is dangerous. The fact the FAA’s official policy is to public release the names and home addresses of every registered drone pilot is reason enough not to register. If the FAA isn’t willing to protect the privacy of its “customers” then nobody should do business with it.

So instead of being a good little slave who rolls over on command think about giving the FAA a giant middle finger.

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.

Petty Tyrant Syndrome Leads To Gentrification

I’ve found another outbreak of Petty Tyrant Syndrome. This time it’s happening right here in the Twin Cities. The overlords of Columbia Heights are tired of all the blue collar workers on Central Avenue. Why? Apparently blue collar workers give off the wrong image. Instead of having the street populated with productive people the overlords wants people unproductively sipping lattes in coffee shops. In order to bring up this unproductive utopian vision the overlords have banned any new automobile related business from opening on the street:

Columbia Heights residents can buy an oil filter on nearly every corner of Central Avenue. But there’s no coffee shop where they can linger over a newspaper and sip a latte.

That’s a problem, city leaders say.

Fearful that a glut of mechanics, auto-parts stores and gas stations along Columbia Heights’ main drag is pulling down the city’s image and muscling out other businesses, the City Council is banning new auto-related businesses for up to six months.

City leaders figure that will be enough time to tighten up zoning regulations and set more design controls with an eye toward attracting a more eclectic mix of restaurants, shops and small service businesses along Central Avenue.

You thought I was joking about that sipping lattes remark, didn’t you? Here again we have a handful of people using their power to force everybody to comply with their vision of what is best. Because they’re unproductive bureaucrats who have time to sip lattes in a coffee shop for hours they are forcing everybody else to go along with their plan. I can’t help but think that there’s also a desire to see auto shops booted from the street because they’re run by people who get dirty doing their job. As we all know, people who get dirty are better heard, not seen, at least when you’re a petty bureaucrat trying to foster an image of sterile sameness.

Even more important to the overlords than their vision is the issue of income. Not for the businesses but for the city. Trendy hipsters with more money (technically it’s their parent’s money) than brains are cruising around on their brakeless fixies so they have no need for automobile related businesses. They’re also a major part of the group dumb enough to pay the stupidly high rental rates of high-density luxury apartments. So without them it’s hard to attract developers of said apartments, which means the city doesn’t get to collect absurd amounts of property taxes. Gentrification exists because cities want to increase their income and the easiest way of doing that is to replaces the lower and lower-middle class with the upper and upper-middle class. And in the end that’s what the result of this ban and rezoning scheme will be, gentrification.

To Save The Fish We Must Kill The Fish

In the neighborhood of Bristol some people decided that they wanted to stop fishing in one of the local lakes to prevent wildlife from being harmed by lines and hooks. Tot his end they banned fishing in the lake. But that apparently want’s enough. Now they are moving forward with a plan to save the local wildlife by killing it:

Last year, the local Neighbourhood Partnership voted to ban fishing at St George’s Park lake to stop wildlife being harmed by fishing line and hooks.

It has now approved an option proposed by Bristol City Council to destroy the fish rather than relocate them.

It’s a solution only the combination of well meaning idiots and government could support. Of course some of the loonies have said they don’t want to kill all of the fish; only enough to protect the fish from fishers.

Few things are more stupid than well meaning people with the power to force their will on others.

A Problem Only Government Could Create

The International Business Times has an article discussing the limited liability granted to gun manufacturers:

As the United States grapples with a rash of mass shootings, some are calling for tighter laws limiting who can purchase firearms — a politically controversial subject that has yielded more rhetoric than legislation. But another, lesser-known dynamic effectively shelters gun manufacturers from government oversight: Under legislation dating back to the 1970s, Congress has consistently adopted positions championed by the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association, writing special provisions that have effectively exempted firearms from regulation by consumer watchdog agencies.

Of course the article insinuated it is the fault of the National Rifle Association (NRA), which lobbied for the grant of limited liability:

Cementing these exceptions to safety oversight constituted a significant political victory for the National Rifle Association in the 1970s and helped pave the way for high-profile gun rights battles to come. Gun owners themselves, however, are left with little recourse to hold companies accountable for faulty products outside the civil court system. Whether gun manufacturers choose to recall a firearm is entirely at their discretion. If they do, there is no mandatory protocol to follow to alert owners, and no official repository of recall notices.

But this isn’t a problem created by the NRA, it’s a problem created by the State. The reason gun owners are generally oppositional to attempts by the State to regulated any aspect of firearms is because those regulations ultimately get used as a form of gun control.

The ongoing smartgun debate is a classic example of safety being used to justify a prohibition. Instead of acknowledging access control technology as something worth investigating the gun control community wants to mandate its use. That adds costs and unreliability, both because the technology is in its infancy, to firearms. And since the technology cannot be retrofitted into older firearms mandating its usage can remove all existing firearms from the market.

Safety regulations always sound good on paper, especially if they’re for protecting the children, but it’s only a matter of mandating too many safety features to make a production functional or cost effective to create a ban.

When the State passes a law it’s not a contract. The State can change the terms at any moment without the consent of the people. A law passed under the auspices of consumer protection has no clauses guaranteeing it won’t be used to create a legal prohibition. There’s also no recourse if a consumer protection law ends up being used to create a ban.

One has to be a fool to willingly enter a binding agreement without recourse that authorizes the other party to change the rules whenever they want. If people want to pursue improving the safety of firearms they should start an independent non-governmental entity to certify firearms much like Underwriter Laboratories. That would allow for safety certification that allows for recourse, namely ignoring the standard, if it’s used outside of the initial scope it was created for.