Author: Kim du Toit

Surveillance

Asshole Cops, Government Thugs, Surveillance Society

Seems as though you can’t do anything these days without being spied on by the fucking Government:

Recent revelations confirm that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has been aggressively expanding its use of facial recognition technology, raising significant concerns about mass surveillance and unconstitutional tracking of law-abiding gun owners.

For years, gun rights advocates have warned that the ATF’s use of facial recognition would lead to mass surveillance of American citizens—particularly those who exercise their Second Amendment rights. Despite repeated claims that the ATF doesn’t engage in biometric tracking, a 2021 Government Accountability Office report revealed that between October 2019 and March 2022, the ATF conducted at least 549 facial recognition searches.

Of course, it’s not actually the ATF doing this (a.k.a. plausible deniability):

The technology was largely powered by third-party vendors, including Clearview AI and Vigilant Solutions, both of which have amassed vast databases of billions of images scraped from social media, DMV records, and security footage. This means the ATF has been leveraging private sector databases to track and identify gun owners without their consent.

The full scale of this surveillance remains unclear, but newly surfaced documents indicate that the ATF has been working with FBI fusion centers, state and local law enforcement, and even foreign intelligence agencies to develop more comprehensive tracking capabilities.

Here’s the thing:  I don’t want to be spied on by anyone, let alone these government thugs.

I don’t care that it helps “security” or any other such panacea.  Take your snooping devices and go fuck yourselves.

That said:

Oh, and new-FBI Director / ATF Acting-Director Patel?  Take a long, hard look at those “FBI fusion centers” and make them less malevolent — lest you too be labeled as just another government thug.

Information, we’re always being told, is power.  And I want the government to have a lot less of both.

Some Detail Required

Law and Order, Surveillance Society

In the above post, I refer to the FBI “fusion centers”.  For those who went “Huh?” at the term, here’s a good background piece, framed inside an overall theme of the militarization of the police (which I’ve ranted about often before, as it happens).  Here’s an excerpt:

Fusion Centers are hubs for local, state and federal police to share information. They’re effectively intelligence-gathering done by various police agencies who pool their resources. While this isn’t an uncommon practice, the Fusion Centers have virtually no oversight and are filled with zeal for the War on Terror. While its primary existence was to surveil in the fight against terrorism, Fusion Centers have quickly ballooned to gather intelligence on just about anything – and it’s not just the police. The military participates in Fusion Centers, as does the private sector, which means they’re a privacy nightmare.  

The federal government has pushed Fusion Centers and largely bankrolled them. Hundreds of FBI agents work with Fusion Centers, with the federal government providing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid. In the case of the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, the federal government created a Fusion Center at the state level, only eventually turning control of an ostensibly state agency to the state. 30 percent of these “state” agencies are physically located in federal office space.

Private sector companies collect, store and analyze data for Fusion Centers. This would be dangerous on its own, but the lack of any oversight makes it particularly troublesome. Even if a private sector has the best of intentions, malicious third-party actors could access some of your most sensitive data if it’s been datamined by a Fusion Center. A company without the best intentions can do all kinds of “government-approved” snooping into your personal affairs.

And there you have it, in a nutshell.

Read the whole thing, because while it may contain a whole bunch of stuff you already know about, there’s no harm in being reminded about it, as I was.

Prediction

Politics

Oh, here’s a headline which grabbed me:

Political guru predicts Trump White House will COLLAPSE within 30 days

Wait… what?  And which political guru?

Oh, wait… it’s James Carville.

Never mind.

But the best part:

The veteran Democratic strategist told Mediaite’s Dan Abrams that Trump’s popularity is sinking*, and he believes the administration will implode from a lack of public support.

‘I believe that this administration, in less than 30 days, is in the midst of a massive collapse and particularly a collapse in public opinion,’ Carville said. 

I believe he’s getting his dipstick into such “public opinion” sources like the Democrat National Council, or Kamala Harris’s pollsters.  In the meantime:

I’d be very curious to see how many people believe and support the above, as opposed to the “public support” that Gollum sees.  Oh, and Mediaite?  You have got to be kidding me.

Whatever, let’s see if his prediction outlasts the next thirty days… and no, I’m not taking bets nor offering odds.

*“Trump losing support among voters”  is just the new talking point for the Socialists.  Like so much of what they say, it’s not based on any kind of reality, but on wishful thinking.

Oh FFS

Housekeeping

Late Sunday night I saw a message in my “Notifications” that my Windows 11 needed an update, in that the “Security” was old or some damn thing.

I’d missed it because I’d ported a whole bunch of files onto my new laptop from the old, and over the past week or so I’ve been updating many, many files — deleting old ones, refreshing others, downloading newer iterations, you know the drill.  For ease of access, I’d stored most of the files on my Desktop

So I clicked on the “UPDATE” button, and seeing as the thing as going to take ages to complete the task, I went to bed.

When I logged on this morning, my Desktop was completely empty except for the Recycle bin, and I cannot find those files anywhere.

RCOB

All that work… vanished into the ether.

I actually don’t know what to do now.

Try to imagine that you have done a whole lot of research (back in the day before computers), and all your stuff is stored on bits of paper, some filed away, some properly typed out and filed properly — you know, the  way we used to do stuff.

Then some cleaning service offers to tidy up your room, and when you come back the next day, all the stuff you’d not yet filed away has been shredded.

I’m going to take a day or two to process what’s happened, and maybe try to re-create some of the work.  But if this is going to happen each time I subject myself to a Win11 upgrade, I’m just not going to do it, ever again.

I am so angry I could bite the head off a puppy.

Oh, and by the way:  OneDrive was re-installed.

Also, posting will be light for a couple of days.  Sorry, but that’s where I am right now.

Quote Of The Day

Bureaucracy, QOTD

“25 million individuals over age 100 remain in the Social Security database even though there are fewer than 100,000 people aged 100 or older alive in the U.S. today.” — DOGE

Let’s hear it for Gummint efficiency.  And if it’s not inefficiency… then it’s fucking fraud, and the recipients of said fraudulent payouts need to go to jail.

And while we’re there, the people responsible for checking for and preventing such anomalies should be fired.

Okay, Congressman

Anti-Gun Nannies, Resistance

Here’s an interesting take:

Congressman Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) reminded the country last week why the Second Amendment is so vital to the United States.

The former Long Beach mayor called on the Democratic Party to “bring actual weapons” in the “fight for democracy.”

So you’ll bring your “actual” weapons to fight for democracy — what you call democracy, at any rate.

Challenge accepted.  Be White, and make the first move.  We’ll see how this plays out.

Are they really this stupid?