Tag: You’re Doing it Wrong

A New Low for Gun Control Advocacy

The gun control battle was put to bed some time ago. Time and again the end of the world scenarios gun control advocates predicated failed to come to fruition. In fact violent crime rates have continued to decline even as gun restrictions have been loosened. Even though one could argue that the declining violent crime rate is unrelated to the loosening of gun restrictions the claim that gun restrictions reduce violent crime has been proven false.

Maybe it’s because they never learned critical thinking in school or it may be related to the fact that there’s a lot of money in shilling for gun control thanks to big money tyrants like Michael Bloomberg but gun control advocates can’t admit that their claims are wrong. So what’s a gun control advocate to do? Make shit up, obviously! And not just a handful of minor fabrications. The time has come for some new level bullshit. Now to prove gun control works real states must be compared to entirely fictitious states:

The state in question is Connecticut. In 1995, Connecticut tightened its laws for handgun purchases. It raised the age requirement from 18 to 21, thus cutting off part of an age group that’s statistically prone to violence. It also required purchasers to apply for a permit at their local police station, which would perform a more extensive background check. Finally, the permits would not be approved without proof of attendance of an eight-hour safety course.

So, there was a clear before-and-after the implementation of these laws to track gun-related homicides. The question is how to find an appropriate population to serve as a control for Connecticut.

Quite cleverly, the authors created one. Rather than looking for a single state that matches Connecticut’s demographics, they performed a statistical analysis that created a synthetic state that tracked Connecticut’s pattern of firearm homicides before the law’s passage. This state was composed of a weighted rate from a number of different states. So, for example, neighboring Rhode Island accounts for about 70 percent of the synthetic state’s composition, Maryland another 15 percent. Then the authors created a similar synthetic state that tracked Connecticut’s non-firearm homicides.

(Because the study period overlapped the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, where a number of Connecticut residents worked, that year was dropped from the non-firearm analysis.)

The synthetic state analysis also took into account a large number of factors that tend to influence rates of homicide, such as the percentage of the population at or below the poverty line, the percent between 15 and 24 years of age, and the number of police per unit of population.

For homicides from all causes other than guns, the synthetic state tracked Connecticut both before and after the passage of the 1995 gun control law. A few years after the implementation of implementation of the law in late 1995, however, firearm homicide rates diverged, with Connecticut’s continuing to drop along a previous trend, while the synthetic states (like the national average) saw this rate stabilize.

This is a level of fail that’s almost impressive. Gun control shills are so desperate that they’re now claiming gun control works because statistical studies of make-believe states say so. I could also prove whatever point I wanted if I based my claims on the results of a statistical study of a state I made up.

Go home gun control shills, you’re drunk.

Apparently Selling the Same Thing for More isn’t a Viable Business Strategy

I have a fairly sizable firearm collection. In addition to a plethora of other firearm models my collection includes a few AR-15s and 1911s. None of those AR-15s or 1911s are Colts though. With so many manufacturers building AR-15s and 1911s I never understood paying such a premium for a Colt. As it turns out I wasn’t the only one. Apparently charging twice as much for the same thing isn’t a viable business strategy:

Gun maker Colt Defense LLC plans to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection by Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, amid business-execution issues and a heavy debt burden.

The company has secured financing from its existing senior lenders to continue operating while in bankruptcy and expects to remain in business after the restructuring, the people said.

Colt fell into the same rut as many other well-known manufacturers. Instead of continuing to innovate Colt tried to skate by on its name. The last new firearm Colt announced, the 901, was still little more than an AR-15 that could be converted from 5.56x45mm to 7.62x51mm. Colt’s strategy wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t felt that its name justified such a hefty price tag.

It’ll be interesting to see whether or not it came claw its way out of this mess.

Making It Doubleplus Illegal

Everything can be solved by a prohibition. At least that’s what the statists believe. Back in the day the movie Die Hard had everybody convinced that a Glock handgun was made of plastic and porcelain and could therefore get past metal detectors. Although this was entirely fabricated the politicians latched onto it and pass the Undetectable Firearms Act, which requires the inclusion of at least 3.7 ounces of steel in any firearm so it can be detected by metal detectors. With the advent of 3D printed firearms many politicians again have their panties in a bunch. Several of them have taken action and introduced a bill that would require metal be included in any firearm design:

Plastic guns can be even more dangerous than traditional firearms because they’re harder to detect, says Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.).

The Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act, backed by Israel and several other Democrats, would prohibit the manufacture of entirely plastic guns. The legislation would require a major component of every gun to contain enough traces of metal to be detected.

Israel plans to unveil the legislation Tuesday during a press conference at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, where he will draw a connection between his bill and recent high-profile airport security lapses.

“If detectable weapons can make it through security checkpoints, how can we expect to catch wrongdoers carrying undetectable plastic firearms?” Israel told The Hill. “What could be worse than a gun that can be used on an airplane, but cannot be detected on the security line because it’s plastic?”

“It’s time to modernize our airport security so the American people can count on it,” he added.

So entirely plastic guns will now be doubleplus illegal! That will obviously solve the problem!

The number of laws on the books is now so extensive that even the politicians don’t know them all. Manufacturing entirely plastic guns has been illegal for a long time. In addition to the fact this bill is entirely redundant we also have the fact that 3D printed firearms still fire regular cartridges, which are made of metal. A plastic firearm with no ammunition is a worthless weapon. There is also the problem of who is administering airport security:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) failed a recent sting operation in which undercover agents sneaked fake explosives and weapons through airport security in 67 out of 70 tests, or about 95 percent of the time.

According to Israel (the politician, not the country) TSA’s 95 percent failure rating is one reason to pass this bill to make what is already illegal illegaler. I’m not sure how that makes sense since TSA hasn’t been missing plastic guns but actual metal guns. Something tells me Israel isn’t the sharpest tool in the congressional toolbox (but he is a tool).

It would be improper of me to not point out the most obvious flaw in Israel’s clever plan. Anybody who is willing to sneak a weapon onto a plane to kill people is not going to comply with a law that requires them to include metal in their 3D printed firearm. This law is therefore pointless on two levels.

Anything the Private Sector can Screw Up the Government can Screw Up Better

There have been numerous major data breaches in recent times that have compromised a lot of credit card numbers. The reaction from those breeches ranged from anger to outright demands that the government get involved to ensure another one never happens. As if trying teach that last crowd a valuable lesson fate has shown us once again that anything the private sector can screw up the government can screw up better (which is impressive because the private sector and really fuck some shit up):

A giant hack of millions of government personnel files is being treated as the work of foreign spies who could use the information to fake their way into more-secure computers and plunder U.S. secrets.

Millions of personnel files, including Social Security numbers, were acquired by an unknown attacker. This makes the compromise of credit card numbers look like amateur hour by comparison! But it gets better!

Federal employees were told in a video Friday to change all their passwords, put fraud alerts on their credit reports and watch for attempts by foreign intelligence services to exploit them. That message came from Dan Payne, a senior counterintelligence official for the Director of National Intelligence.

Emphasis mine. How in the hell is a regular low-level federal employee supposed to watch for attempts by foreign intelligence agencies trying to exploit them? Does the United States government honestly think other intelligence agencies are so inept as to have a guy with a strong foreign accent call up federal employees and say, “Hello, I’m a Nigerian prince…”? The average person has no idea how to defend themselves against a specialized spook (if they did spooks wouldn’t be very effective at their job).

Both the breach and the response are ridiculous. However this points to something more concerning. If the government can’t keep its personnel files safe or detect a major breach for months (the story notes the breach occurred in December but wasn’t discovered until this month) then why should we have any confidence in its ability to keep our personal information secure? Everything from tax records to our phone calls (thanks National Security Agency) are being held by the federal government and could be up for grabs by any competent attacker. Imagine the wealth of information that could be acquired if an attacker managed to breach one of the NSA’s databases. This is another reason why allowing the government to store personal information is so dangerous.

If You Defend Eric Casebolt You Are an Idiot

I haven’t discussed the event in McKinney, Texas because, sadly, stories of police abuse are so frequent that it’s hard to say anything new about them. But idiots rising to defend badged abusers have managed to piss me off enough to write a post. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the situation this video will explain everything:

Thank the gods for people who record the police.

The officer who threw the girl to the ground and kept her pinned is Eric Casebolt. He recently resigned from the force in the hopes of dodging any consequences for actions. That hardly seems necessary though when so many neocons are willing to rise to his defense. Believe it or not there are a lot of people justifying what Casebolt did.

What could possibly justify an officer rushing into a crowd of non-threatening teenagers, run around like a rabid dog, and toss an obviously unarmed girl to the ground? That depends on which idiot is defending him. One of the most common justifications given is the number of teenagers present.

Apparently there is some number, one that none of these abuse apologists will provide, of people present where an officer can transition from a calm and collected professional into a psychotic abuser. It doesn’t matter that the teenagers in the video are obviously non-threatening. It doesn’t matter that the attire of most of the teenagers, especially the girl thrown to the ground, makes it almost entirely impossible for them to conceal a weapon. The simple fact that there are so many of them gives the officer justification to abuse that girl according to these boot lickers.

A lot of abuse defenders have been making a point of the teenagers failing to cooperate with the officers. Failing to cooperate in this case must mean failing to kowtow immediately because none of the teenagers appear to be engaging the officers. Standing idly by as a psychotic nutball runs around screaming threats of violence is not failing to cooperate; it’s actually an exceptionally polite way to deal with the situation. Those teenagers had every right to tackle that officer to the ground as soon as he began assaulting that girl.

“Totality of the situation” is a phrase being favored by these boot lickers. What particular aspects of this situation when combined justify this situation? Who knows. I honestly suspect “totality of the situation” is code for “too many black youths being present” because I can’t see any justification for the violent displayed by the officer in that video.

Simply put, everybody who has been defending Casebolt is an idiot. They are the reason for this country has become a tyrannical police state. Coldbolt should be arrested and tried for assault just as anybody else not wearing a badge would have been in that situation. He should compensate the girl he assaulted an amount agreed upon by a jury because she is the victim and deserves redress. Unless the law applies to everybody equally and wrongs are expected to be righted as much as possible a society cannot consider itself free.

TSA: Protecting You from Terrorists Five Percent of the Time

The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) was established shortly after the 9/11 attacks to provide better airplane security. At least that’s the official story. So far the TSA has proven to be incredibly incompetent at its job. Wannabe terrorists have managed to get explosives on board airplanes by hiding them in underwear and shoes. Fortunately the bombs failed to go off but not because of anything the TSA did. However even I never expected a failure rate this absurdly high:

A recent internal investigation by the Department of Homeland Security has found security failures at dozens of the nations’ busiest airports—breaches that allowed undercover investigators to smuggle weapons, fake explosives and other contraband through numerous checkpoints.

In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat down, the screening officer failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover agent’s back. In all, so-called “Red Teams” of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past Transportation Security Administration agents in 67 out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials.

A 95 percent failure rage? From a glass is half full perspective I guess the TSA will protect us from an average of five percent of terrorist attacks though!

Only a government agency could demonstrate this level of incompetence and still exist. Failing to fulfill your mandate 95 percent of the time requires shielding from liability that only the state can offer. Imagine hiring a private security guard who only stopped five percent of shoplifters. You’d toss his ass out in a second and maybe hire an investigator to see whether that guard was colluding with the shoplifters since that level of failure almost necessitates him being in on the scam.

The big question is what will come of this. My prediction is a whole lot of nothing. A few senators will use the investigation’s findings to do a big of grandstanding, the higher echelons of the TSA will get shuffled around a bit, and nothing noteworthy will change. I’m sure there will be several congressional grillings of high level TSA officials where we’ll hear excuses about lack of funding, inability to force people to go through body scanners (I’m sure the TSA would love to eliminate opt-outs), and agents not having full enforcement powers (TSA agents can’t arrest you and this really pisses many of them off). The congress critters doing the grillings will likely yell loudly, make some snide remarks, and little else. Air travelers will likely find themselves subjected to more draconian police state nonsense in the name of safety.

On the upside if you want to carry a firearm on board to protect yourself there’s a 95 percent chance you won’t get caught. Every storm cloud has its silver lining, I guess.

Like You and Me, Only Better

I don’t consider myself anti-union per se. There’s nothing wrong in my book with workers coming together to support one another. But most unions today aren’t really groups of workers fighting for better pay and benefits. Instead they’re a few well paid individuals who agitated relationships between employers and employees to ensure an environment exists where their six figure salary can continue to be justified. In fact I’d argue that most unions today don’t give two shits about the workers they supposedly represent. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Los Angeles:

Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces.

The push to include an exception to the mandated wage increase for companies that let their employees collectively bargain was the latest unexpected detour as the city nears approval of its landmark legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020.

The union heads have been pushing for these $15.00 per hour minimum wage laws in various municipalities under the guise of fighting for the workers. But now they’re turning around and exempting the very employees they supposedly represent from the new minimum wage increases. I guess they feel that union laborers aren’t as good as non-union laborers, which is a strange attitude for a union boss to have.

This move does make sense though. If union shops are allowed to pay less than $15.00 per hour it encourages more companies to utilize union labor. More union labor means more employees giving a percentage of their paycheck to the union itself and that means the higher ups can bump up their six figure salary. These unions aren’t fighting for workers, they’re fighting for union executives.

Paying Taxes is Dangerous to Your Personal Information

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is one of the, if not the, best examples of government incompetence. Almost all of us are required to interact with the IRS. Our interactions, unfortunately, involve handing over a great deal of personal information. This is a major problem since the agency has a poor security track record. Recently it has admitted to losing control over the personal information of 100,000 tax victims:

The IRS announced today that criminals used taxpayer-specific data acquired from non-IRS sources to gain unauthorized access to information on approximately 100,000 tax accounts through IRS’ “Get Transcript” application. This data included Social Security information, date of birth and street address.

These third parties gained sufficient information from an outside source before trying to access the IRS site, which allowed them to clear a multi-step authentication process, including several personal verification questions that typically are only known by the taxpayer. The matter is under review by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration as well as the IRS’ Criminal Investigation unit, and the “Get Transcript” application has been shut down temporarily. The IRS will provide free credit monitoring services for the approximately 100,000 taxpayers whose accounts were accessed. In total, the IRS has identified 200,000 total attempts to access data and will be notifying all of these taxpayers about the incident.

Perhaps I’m hypercritical but it seems to me that we shouldn’t have to submit any of this information to an agency that has demonstrated a complete disregard for keeping it safe. I mean, the IRS’s website doesn’t even have a valid means for users to securely connect to it. If the IRS doesn’t care enough to pull a valid Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate to protect users then why are we supposed to trust it to store our personal information?

The worst part about this is that the 100,000 people who just had their personal information accessed have no recourse. Since the IRS is the government it is shielded from liability and accountability. That makes matters worse since an organization that is shielded from liability has little motivation to invest resources into fixing its mistakes.

Watching Cronies Fail

A major benefit of providing solutions to government meddling is watching as the government’s cronies fail. Cab drivers in Mexico, as cab drivers in much of the world, are unhappy with ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. Their unhappiness is understandable since they’ve been shielded from competitors by their government for decades. When you haven’t had to compete in a market it can be scary facing competition because it makes you realize that you have to actually provide a superior service if you want to thrive.

On Monday cab drivers in Mexico went on strike to protest Uber. The protest was a plea for the Mexican government to ban Uber. The end result was to give Uber a great dead of publicity and convince a lot of people to try Uber since they couldn’t get around using traditional cabs:

Monday’s protest from Mexican Taxi drivers, against ride-sharing mobile apps such as Uber, has proved a boon for the San Francisco-based company. After offering a protest-edition special with two free 10-dollar rides, downloads of the app rose by 800 percent, Uber Communications Director for Mexico Luis de Uriarte said on Tuesday.

Unlike Uber, the signs of regulated taxis were off in Mexico on May 25, as some 5,000 drivers took to the streets of Mexico City. Chanting “Get out Uber!” union leaders demanded the government impose a ban on the smartphone-based service.

With the hashtags #UberNoPara (Uber doesn’t stop) and #MexicoNoPara (Mexico doesn’t stop), Uber launched a campaign offering two MEX$150 (US$9.8) fares for free between 7:00 a.m. and 9:59 p.m. on Monday. The initiative not only have become a commercial success, it brought PR blowback on the taxi drivers.

Uber and Lyft are providing a solution to a market that has been crippled by government regulations for decades. Many localities put an artificial cap on the number of legal taxi cabs that can operate. Other localities, while not putting an artificial cap in place, require potential taxicab drivers to pay a licensing fee, which adds a barrier to entry. The result has been lackluster taxicab services in much of the world. With ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft anybody can act as a taxicab. Suddenly cronies that have been protected from competition are facing the competition of anybody with a vehicle and they’re floundering.

Providing solutions to government create problems weakens its grip by showing how unnecessary it is. While government protected taxicab drivers were refusing to provide services ride-sharing swooped in to save the day. Because of this people are unlikely to accept any prohibition against ride-sharing services.

United States Government Looking to Repeat Security Blunder

As we’re recovering from two vulnerabilities caused by old export restrictions on strong cryptography tools the United States government is looking to repeat that failure:

The U.S. Commerce Department has proposed tighter export rules for computer security tools, a potentially controversial revision to an international agreement aimed at controlling weapons technology.

On Wednesday, the department published a proposal in the Federal Register and opened a two-month comment period.

The changes are proposed to the Wassenaar Arrangement, an international agreement reached in 1995, aimed at limiting the spread of “dual use” technologies that could be used for harm.

Forty-one countries participate in the Wassenaar Arrangement, and lists of controlled items are revised annually.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is proposing requiring a license in order to export certain cybersecurity tools used for penetrating systems and analyzing network communications.

Another great example of the state making the same mistake, only harder. Restricting the export of strong cryptographic tools put everybody at risk of attack and an export restriction against penetration testing tools would put everybody at risk of missing basic vulnerabilities in their networks.

Penetration testing tools, like any technology, can be used for good and bad. If you properly utilize the tools on your network you can discover vulnerabilities that are exploited by those tools and patch them. Not utilizing these tools allows an malicious actor to exploit your network using those tools. Any restriction on exporting these tools will leave networks vulnerable to them.

Why would the United States government propose implementing restrictions that put the entire world at risk? Most likely it’s because government agencies utilize penetration testing tools to exploit networks and would therefore gain considerably by making defending against them more difficult. This proposal shows just how self-centered the state really is because it’s willing to put billions of people at risk just to make its task of exploiting networks a little easier. Its narcissism is so bad that it doesn’t even care that this restriction would also make every network more vulnerable to exploitation by its enemies (if the United States can hack your network then foreign countries such as North Korea can as well).

Fortunately we learned what happens when restrictions are placed on ideas during the crypto wars. Even though the United States restricted the export of strong cryptographic algorithms the knowledge spread quickly. It’s pretty hard to restrict something that can literally be printed on a t-shirt, especially when you have a worldwide network that specializes in information sharing. If this restriction is put into place it will be entirely ineffective at everything but giving the state justification to put several very intelligent people in a cage for the crime of making our networks safer.