Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

If You Don’t Want To Be Treated Like A Criminal Don’t Buy A Blackberry

I know what you’re thinking, you weren’t planning to buy a Blackberry anyways. The company is so far behind the technological curve that it has become almost entirely irrelevant. But I know two people who purchased Blackberry phones within the last five years so I assume there may be a few other people who have been using the platform for ages and want to continue doing so. For them this post is a warning. Don’t buy a Blackberry unless you want to be treated like a criminal:

John Chen, the Blackberry chairman and CEO, is ripping Apple’s position that granting the authorities access to a suspected criminal’s mobile device would “tarnish” the iPhone maker’s image.

“We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good. At BlackBerry, we understand, arguably more than any other large tech company, the importance of our privacy commitment to product success and brand value: privacy and security form the crux of everything we do. However, our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals,” Chen wrote in a blog post titled “The encryption Debate: a Way Forward.”

What Apple has promised customers is it is unable to gain access to user data under any circumstances. In other words Apple is promising users that it utilizes cryptography that isn’t compromised in such a way to allow a third party access. Blackberry, on the other hand, is stating it will cooperate with law enforcement requests for user data. To do that it must utilize cryptography that is compromised in such a way to allow third party access. Such a scheme, if used under the auspices of giving law enforcers access to criminal data, necessarily treats all users as potential criminals.

Furthermore, what is the “greater good”? That’s such a nonsensical term. It requires the person uttering it to be so egotistical that they believe they know what’s best for everybody. I doubt anybody has knowledge so perfect that they know what is best for all seven billion people on this planet. Realistically it’s just a euphemism for what is best for the State, which is always at odds with what is best for the individual.

You don’t have to take my word for it though. The people have a voice in this matter through the market. Anybody who truly believes Apple is being detrimental to society by not cooperating with law enforcers can buy a Blackberry device. Something tells me this statement by Chen isn’t going to cause an uptick in Blackberry sales. If anything it will likely cause a drop (if it’s even possible for Blackberry sales to drop any lower) since most people don’t seem overly enthusiastic about being spied on.

Tools Of Your Subjugation

Some fools believe domestic surveillance is about fighting terrorists. Everybody else realizes it’s about subjugation. People are more easily kept in line when they believe they’re constantly being watched. Although much of the State’s surveillance capabilities are shrouded in secrecy The Intercept managed to get its hands on a rather interesting catalogue of government surveillance tools:

THE INTERCEPT HAS OBTAINED a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. The document, thick with previously undisclosed information, also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States.

The catalogue includes details on the Stingray, a well-known brand of surveillance gear, as well as Boeing “dirt boxes” and dozens of more obscure devices that can be mounted on vehicles, drones, and piloted aircraft. Some are designed to be used at static locations, while others can be discreetly carried by an individual. They have names like Cyberhawk, Yellowstone, Blackfin, Maximus, Cyclone, and Spartacus. Within the catalogue, the NSA is listed as the vendor of one device, while another was developed for use by the CIA, and another was developed for a special forces requirement. Nearly a third of the entries focus on equipment that seems to have never been described in public before.

[…]

A few of the devices can house a “target list” of as many as 10,000 unique phone identifiers. Most can be used to geolocate people, but the documents indicate that some have more advanced capabilities, like eavesdropping on calls and spying on SMS messages. Two systems, apparently designed for use on captured phones, are touted as having the ability to extract media files, address books, and notes, and one can retrieve deleted text messages.

The catalogue is fully of very interesting gadgets. In fact it demonstrates the fact that technology in the hands of government is a bad thing. While the market has used cellular technology to bring us wonderful gadgets that improve our lives the State only sees cellular technology as another means to subjugate its people.

Fuck Your Censorship

After flat out stating that you don’t have a right to free speech it may seem odd to see a post arguing for free speech. This is because yesterday’s post touched on organizations censoring speech within their own property. Today’s post touches on legal censorship. Slate, not surprisingly, has an article that claims the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is such a tremendous threat that the First Amendment must finally be eliminated:

But there is something we can do to protect people like Amin from being infected by the ISIS virus by propagandists, many of whom are anonymous and most of whom live in foreign countries. Consider a law that makes it a crime to access websites that glorify, express support for, or provide encouragement for ISIS or support recruitment by ISIS; to distribute links to those websites or videos, images, or text taken from those websites; or to encourage people to access such websites by supplying them with links or instructions. Such a law would be directed at people like Amin: naïve people, rather than sophisticated terrorists, who are initially driven by curiosity to research ISIS on the Web.

The law would provide graduated penalties. After the first violation, a person would receive a warning letter from the government; subsequent violations would result in fines or prison sentences. The idea would be to get out the word that looking at ISIS-related websites, like looking at websites that display child pornography, is strictly forbidden. As word spread, people like Amin would be discouraged from searching for ISIS-related websites and perhaps be spared radicalization and draconian punishment for more serious terrorism-related crimes.

Fuck you, Eric Posner, and the horse you rode in on. This is another example of Petty Tyrant Syndrome. Eric has seen something he doesn’t like, ISIS, and has decided the most expedient way to deal with it is to punish everybody. Since ISIS is using the Internet to spread its message Eric believes every user of the Internet must have a gun put to their heads so their brains can be immediately blown out if they post something that isn’t to his liking. And make no mistake, even though he tries to conceal the ultimate outcome of his proposed law by using euphemisms like “graduated penalties” this law, like all laws, would ultimately result in death by law enforcer. That’s because laws don’t recognize proportional responses.

If you break a minor law, are issued a citation, and fail to pay the State doesn’t throw up its hands in frustration and say, “Fuck it. It’s not worth the trouble to make you pay.” It issues an order to men with guns to hunt you down and kidnap you if you comply or murder you if you don’t.

Yesterday I mentioned that your right to free speech ceases to exist the second you enter somebody else’s property. But Eric isn’t proposing to censor people only on his own property. He’s proposing to censor people on everybody’s property. Under the lens of libertarianism he’s proposing to violate the shit out of everybody’s property rights. Therein lies the difference between censorship based on property rights and censorship based on legal decree. And that is why Eric Posner is a fucking cunt.

Laws Are The Problem; Laws Are The Solution

One of my socialist anti-gun friends posted this article on Facebook. It’s a fascinating article not so much because of its content but because of the cognitive dissonance the author, Chauncey Devega, openly displays:

When the New York Times editorial board issued its powerful condemnation of America’s gun culture, they went beyond mere outrage in response to the recent murder sprees in San Bernardino, California, and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Times went so far as to suggest that “assault rifle”-style weapons should be banned from civilian ownership. As is our national ritual, President Obama also condemned gun violence, and just as he has been forced to do too many times during his tenure, pleaded that Americans must find a way to stop killing each other. The American people do in fact support stronger gun control laws; the NRA, functioning as the lobbying arm for the gun industry, opposes even the most basic common sense gun laws. The NRA wins while the American people die.

Devega disparages the fact gun control hasn’t been a political success as of late. As an author for Salon this probably doesn’t surprise anybody. What is surprisingly is the fact he then notes the fact that gun control in the United States is founded on racism:

After the Civil War, white Southerners desperately tried to snuff out the freedom dreams and democratic power of now free African-Americans. Once Reconstruction was betrayed, white Southerners would launch a reign of terror where it is estimated that approximately 50,000 black Americans were killed by whites. White elites understood the practical and symbolic power of the gun. As such, they passed laws that made it illegal for black Americans to own firearms. African-American Civil War veterans, a group that had earned their full citizenship as men via martial prowess, would be made the focus of special violence by white Southerners.

[…]

The notion that gun ownership should be exclusive to white people would be asserted once more. Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, worked to pass stricter gun laws because of the Black Panthers using open carry laws. Robert Williams would be forced into exile in Cuba. Black people who fought back against white racial terrorism were killed by white mobs, police, and other State actors.

Laws are the problem! Laws are the solution! This article is a self-contradictory mess, which is unavoidable when one is arguing democracy is the solution to minorities being oppressed. Democracies are based on the will of the of the designated voting bodies. Here in the United States the designated voting bodies include the Congress of the United States, the congresses of the individual states, the councils of incorporated cities, the school boards of each school district, and so on. Most of them operate under majority rules. Therefore the laws passed will inevitably reflect the will of the majority of those bodies. Congress is made up predominantly of white Christian males.

Voting bodies are just half of the equation though. The other half is law enforcement. It wouldn’t matter what any designated voting body decreed if it didn’t have a means of enforcing those decrees. In this country there are very powerful police forces whose primary job is to enforce the will of the designated voting bodies. Like the designated voting bodies, law enforcers are predominantly white.

Some of you are probably wondering why I’m making a big deal out of race. Since I don’t subscribe to collectivism I don’t believe membership in a category, such as race, is a valid indicator of their behavior. I mention it because it is the crux of Devega’s article:

There will be no effective gun control in the United States, even in the aftermath of horrific events such as Sandy Hook, the Planned Parenthood Shooting, or the San Bernardino massacre, until politicians, pundits, and analysts realize that the gun is a type of totem or fetish object for too many white men. As such, when we try to talk about gun control in America, a centuries-deep sense of white masculinity that understands the gun as its exclusive right is made to feel imperiled and upset.

If guns are a type of totem or fetish object for white men why does he think a voting body make up predominantly of white men is going to overcome their fetish? Why does he believe law enforcement bodies, against predominantly made up of whites, are going to fairly enforce the laws? Hell, we know for a face law enforcers don’t fairly enforce the laws. Although the laws passed today aren’t overtly racist, in fact many of them appear to be quite the opposite on the surface, the results indicate that they are either crafted to be covertly racist or the enforcers are enforcing the laws in a racist manner unchecked (in the case of the latter it would be necessary for the designated voting bodies to either be directly or implicitly accepting of such enforcement).

Devega claims that guns interfere with democracy. If that’s the case then he should support repealing every single gun law because democracy is the problem. It established a power hierarchy. One group of people are able to create and enforce laws while the other group of people cannot. That means the first group gets to make the rules and the rules it makes, due to human nature, favor the members of that group.

Until that power hierarchy is abolished cities will continue passing laws criminalizing homelessness, poor neighborhoods will continue to be demolished and replaced with more valuable properties that pay high property taxes, intellectual property laws will continue to serve the politically connected at the expense of their competitors, and gun control laws will target non-whites. That’s because the homeless, poor, small businesses, and non-white population are minorities not only in our society but especially in our designed voting bodies.

Still No Due Process

People often argue when I point out that the Republican and Democratic parties are the same. After the San Bernardino shooting the Democrats rekindled calls to ban people on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing firearms. The Republican Party, hoping to prove it’s the opposite of the Democratic Party, proposed the same thing with a minor, and entirely irrelevant, difference:

What’s been lost in the debate is the fact that Republicans have an alternative to the Democratic proposal. Under Republican legislation sponsored by Senator John Cornyn, the federal government may delay the sale of a firearm to someone on the watch list for up to 72 hours. During that time, if the government can show a judge there’s “probable cause”–the same legal standard used to obtain a search warrant–that the individual is plotting terrorism, then the gun sale is denied outright. The measure received 55 votes in the Senate. It it secured the backing of staunch conservatives like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio as well as moderate Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and moderate Democrats Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly. The only Republican to oppose it was Mark Kirk.

Since there appears to be some confusion of what due process entails I will give an outline. Due process, on a very high conceptual level, first requires an accusation to be made based on credible evidence. After the accusation has been made an impartial body must be assembled. In front of this body the accuser must present their justification for the accusation and the accused must be given an opportunity to defend themselves against the accusations. Finally the impartial body, based on the arguments of the accuser and accused, must make a decision on whether the accusation is true. Unless that entire process is met due process is nonexistent.

Probable cause as you can see is not due process. Under the Republican Party’s scheme the accused isn’t given an opportunity to defend themselves nor is the final decision made by an impartial body that has heard both the accuser’s and accused’s arguments. Instead a secret government list is used to initially delay the purchase so another government employee, a judge, can order the purchase permanently barred. And make no mistake, any judge who has such a decision brought before them will almost certainly approve the ban because they don’t want to risk being the judge who approved the purchase of a firearm by a terrorist (this is called covering your ass).

The fact neither party has made a proposal that involves actual due process just demonstrates there isn’t a lick of difference between them. Both of parties are fascist parties.

Petty Little Tyrants

Do you know who amuses me? People who complain about government control only when it’s not working for their interests. In other words, almost everybody. Case in point, one of my socialist friends (believe it or not, I have those) posted this article that complains about the San Francisco Planning Commission’s plot to bulldoze a bunch of existing property in order to replace it with more expensive property:

For the good of the City, your old apartment building could be torn down! You’ll be figuring out the next few years living elsewhere, while some developer builds a new “affordable” unit for you. You will have to wait a few years to move back, if the new building even gets built.

Don’t worry, though. This isn’t just about you. It’s your neighbor’s place too. And your whole neighborhood. In fact, the San Francisco Planning Department has placed a developer “incentive” bullseye on nearly 31,000 parcels in every corner of the City. Colored blue on their maps, these vast areas also include your neighborhood corner store, produce market, pub, and restaurant. These homes and businesses are standing selfishly in the way of progress according to the proposed Affordable Housing Density Bonus Program.

I agree that this is pretty shitty. And the article correctly points out that a bait and switch similar to this proposal has been done in the city before:

Remember that Redevelopment of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s promised “one for one” replacement. People who were displaced from their Victorian style homes in the Fillmore were told they could return after the Redevelopment Agency built new co-op and other BMR housing. The new housing was promised to be modern and price controlled– an upgrade from the aging Victorians considered by the Agency to be blight. However, in reality, this was the demise of the thriving African-American communities in San Francisco.

This is exactly the same rationale being applied in 2015. At the latest presentation to the Planning Commission on December 3, Planning staff told them that displaced tenants would be given priority to return, and that the new housing would be more affordable than the rent controlled units they currently live in.

Obviously the Planning Commission can’t be trusted and should be disbanded, right? Not so much. Although the author correctly points out that this proposal is little more than a land grab he concludes that the problem isn’t the existence of the Planning Committee, but that they aren’t using their powers the way he wants them to:

What can we do instead? […] There are surface parking lots, large and small, that could be developed as affordable housing. The parking would not be lost because it could be incorporated into the new building.

The City should be using its Housing Bond and Housing Trust Fund dollars to buy as many of these sites as it possibly can– or purchase the air rights like what Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center and Bridge Housing did to create affordable senior housing over existing retail with parking. The only way to achieve the Housing Balance is to stop the loss of rent controlled units and to build 100% new affordable housing. This is true development without displacement which is what San Francisco desperately needs!

He’s such a petty little tyrant that somehow knows what everybody in San Francisco needs. This guy is a prime example of somebody just smart enough to identify a symptom of a problem but too stupid to identify the problem itself. The problem isn’t the proposal itself, it’s the existence of a body that can make and enforce such a proposal. Theft shouldn’t be legal just because some government body approves it.

What needs to be done? Abolish the San Francisco government, including the Planning Committee. People need to get over their petty desires for power and work together. If you don’t like how your neighbor is utilizing their property then try to work out a deal with them. Propose another idea and see if they’ll take you up on it. If all else fails make them an offer for their property. I know, that’s not as easy as siccing a government agency on them to force them to do what you want. But government agencies are funny things. One moment they’re doing what you want and the next moment they’re doing what you don’t want. Unless you want guns pointed at your head in the future you should abandon your petty tyrannical ways and try to work with your neighbors instead of against them.

Government: Where Customer Service Is Nonexistent

Here in Minnesota we’re required to renew our driver’s license every four years. What should, at most, involve submitting a simple online form requires one to physically go to a licensing center, wait in line, fill out a form, and receive an absurdly large piece of paper that you have to carry around for the next month until your new license arrives by snail mail. What makes this process even more miserable is that the only criteria that seems to be on a licensing center’s application is “Are you a miserable fuck who will take out your misery on our customers?”

I had to visit two licensing centers. The first one I visited is a licensing center I had visiting a few years ago to get a passport. While its website claimed it did passports when I finally got to talk to an employee, after waiting for half an hour in line, I was told that the center no longer does passports. This time I decided I would ask the information desk before waiting in line. Instead of answering my simple question the lady working the information desk simply kept repeating, “Sir, you’ll have to take a number.” It would have taken no time to say either “Yes” or “No”. But she’s a government employee and has no motivation to provide customer service since I am legally required to do business with her employer. Needless to say I wasn’t going to wait for half an hour to ask a question just so I could wait for another half an hour to get my stupid license so I went elsewhere.

The second licensing center wasn’t a whole lot better. Fortunately the lady working at the information desk wasn’t a total dipshit and handed me a driver’s license renewal form to fill out. Why I have to fill out a physical form when they could simply pull up my information and ask if there are any changes that need to be made is beyond me. But I filled it out and was given a number. From there I proceeded to wait… and wait… and wait. When my number was finally called I had the fun of forking over the renewal fee (licenses only exist to extract wealth from people so there’s always a fee attached), waiting for five minutes while the clerk entered the information I wrote on the form into the computer, doing an absurd vision test, and getting my picture taken all so I could receive my new license in two to four weeks.

Licensing centers are perfect examples of government idiocy. Customer service is nonexistent and their technology is never updated to improve the process. Any sane place would have simply brought up the data that’s already in the database, asked if anything has changed, made any needed changes, and printed out a new license on the spot. Instead you’re subjected to the same process that has been used since driver’s licenses became a thing, which doesn’t scale with population growth. Physical forms have to be filled out, even though your data is already in their database, only so a clerk can reenter that data into their database. Instead of receiving your new license on the spot you have to carry around a giant carbon copy of the form you filled out, complete with your social security number printed on it, for a few weeks while somebody somewhere prints your license and mail it to you. But the worst part is the rude employees who seem to enjoy their tiny bit of power far too much. If you’re lucky you might find a licensing center that employs a decent human being or two. However, since you’re required to do business with them, there’s no motivation by the State to reprimand or fire rude employees so they become the norm.

Licensing centers truly are some of the vilest places on Earth.

Bigotry By Any Other Name

To the cheers of neocon everywhere Donald Trump said he wanted to prohibit all Muslims from entering the United States. Those of us who would rather not see a future where we have to hide Muslims under our floorboards to prevent the Gestapo from finding them Trump’s announcement was much reviled. Hoping to capitalize on those of us who found Trump’s announcement disgusting, the Rand Rapid Response Rangers quickly moved in to promote their messiah. There’s just one problem though. Rand Paul also wants to use his collectivist beliefs to discriminate against an entire group:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Tuesday that rival Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the country was a “mistake,” even though it was similar to a plan Paul already proposed to halt immigration from the Middle East.

Trump had said Monday that he wanted to implement a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the U.S. Paul was asked to respond to Trump’s statement during an interview with New Hampshire radio station WGIR.

“I think it’s a mistake to base immigration or moratoriums based on religion,” Paul said. “But you know, I’ve called for something similar, which is a moratorium based on high risk.”

When somebody proposes to discriminate against people based on religion everybody loses their head. But when somebody proposes to discriminate against people based on imaginary lines on a map everybody seems totally fine with it. Imaginary lines, like religion, tell us nothing about specific individuals. Prohibiting people from a specific country is no different than prohibiting people of a specific religion. Flags are no better indicators of a individual’s character than holy books.

The Unpayable Debt To Society

The United States has reached the logical conclusion of the tough on crime mentality. This country has become so tough on crime that even a wrongful conviction and ruin somebody’s life:

Simmons, at the time a contract systems analyst making $90 an hour, was arrested in Seattle’s University District in 2006 and charged with selling crack as well as resisting arrest. He was convicted of the drug-dealing charge and sentenced to a year in prison.

Three months after his conviction, though, the King County deputy whose testimony led to Simmons’ conviction, James Schrimpsher, was fired for dishonesty in a different drug case. That the deputy was being investigated for lying at the same time as Simmons’ trial had not been disclosed to Simmons’ attorneys.

Simmons insists he didn’t sell drugs and believes he was profiled. Save for a marijuana possession charge from the 1990s in Tennessee, he has no criminal convictions before or since. Regardless, he served the full prison term at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, plus a year of probation when he got out.

[…]

What’s alarming about Simmons’ story is that his drug-dealing conviction was eventually stricken from the record. He was retroactively exonerated in 2010 because the testimony that convicted him was no longer considered credible. Yet he struggles to get a job because the story stalks him on the Internet.

Based on the job offers Simmons has received he’s a very capable individual. What he was original charged with, selling crack, wasn’t even a crime (because crimes require victims). But now, even after he has been exonerated, he cannot get a job.

Sadly this is exactly what the tough on crime crowd wanted. In their pursuit of an impossible goal, a society free of crime, they demanded harsh punishments be issued. The politicians, always happy to take up the cause of fear mongering, acted on these pleas and passed harsher laws. When the new harsher punishments failed to bring about Nirvana the the cycle continued. Now we’re at a point when anybody who has been incarcerated, regardless of the offense, is nearly unemployable.

Fascism Returns To Europe

I know what you’re thinking, fascism never left Europe. It’s true but it has been hidden under euphemisms like emergency powers, social democracies, and parliamentary procedures. But France is finally throwing off the visage of liberty, equality, and fraternity. With the Paris attacks as the excuse the French government is moving to silence those who would question it:

According to leaked documents from the Ministry of Interior the French government is considering two new pieces of legislation: a ban on free and shared Wi-Fi connections during a state of emergency, and measures to block Tor being used inside France.

The documents were seen by the French newspaper Le Monde. According to the paper, the new bills could be presented to parliament as soon as January 2016. The new laws are presumably in response to the attacks in Paris last month where 130 people were murdered.

The first proposal, according to Le Monde, would forbid free and shared Wi-Fi during a state of emergency. The new measure is justified by way of a police opinion, saying that it’s tough to track people who use public hotspots.

The second proposal is a little more gnarly: the Ministry of Interior is looking at blocking and/or forbidding the use of Tor completely. Blocking people from using Tor within France is technologically quite complex, but the French government could definitely make it difficult for the average user to find and connect to the Tor network. If the French government needs some help in getting their blockade set up, they could always talk to the only other country in the world known to successfully block Tor: China, with its Great Firewall.

This is just another feather in the hat of fascism that already includes detaining activists in their homes so they can’t exercise their supposed right to free speech and targeting members of a minority religion. But the target of these measures is very clear: removing the anonymity of the people the French government wishes to target.

Fortunately the French government is setting itself up for failure. Tor has proven to be a difficult target for tyrannical governments to suppress. Every time an effective means of censoring Tor traffic is implemented a workaround is also implemented. Open Wi-Fi access points are easy to shutdown until the network is decentralized. Finding and shutting down every node in a large mesh network would be extremely expensive. In addition to taking a great deal of time and money it would also divert a sizable amount of labor from other suppression activities. And there’s no guarantee the French government would be able to find and tear down new nodes faster than activists could replace them. If the people of France are smart they’ll start working on their own version of Guifi.net.