Category: Gummint

So Much For Privacy

Big Brother, Government Thugs, Technology

Here’s one guaranteed to make us all feel better:

Dubai police snooped on a private WhatsApp group to snare an airline worker who shared images of a building damaged in the Middle East crisis.

Authorities accessed a closed chat between colleagues, downloaded evidence and then lured the man to a meeting and arrested him.

He is in custody facing charges including publishing information deemed harmful to state interests which carries a maximum sentence of two years.

Radha Stirling, chief executive of Detained in Dubai, said: ‘Dubai Police have now explicitly confirmed they are conducting electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages.

‘Individuals are being tracked, identified, and arrested not for public statements, but for private exchanges between colleagues.

‘Companies like WhatsApp must answer urgent questions about user privacy.

‘If private communications can be detected and used as the basis for arrest by overreaching or hypersensitive states, users worldwide need clarity on how their data is being accessed.’

According to the police report, authorities stated the clip was detected ‘through electronic monitoring operations’.

So much for “privacy” and “end-to-end encryption”.  The question — now that the cat’s out of the bag — is quite simple:  did the Dubai feds hack into WhatsApp, or did WhatsApp just hand the encryption key over to them?

We all know that in Arab nations, personal freedoms have about as much permanence (and relevance) as an ice cube in the desert when it comes to their governments.

But lest we get all smug and complacent, I’m willing to bet that a similar situation is in place pretty much everywhere — and the United States is no exception.

Wine Lakes, Butter Mountains

Bad News, Eco-Crap, Gummint

Thanks (once again) to The Divine Sarah at Insty’s, we have this brilliant analysis of how government can totally fuck up the market — any market — by ignoring the effects of pricing, deficits and surpluses.

Now, I know it’s about Britishland, and I know that just this is going to cause some of my Murkin Readers to roll their eyes, mutter something about “foreign entanglements”, and go off to wank over Megyn Kelly’s latest nutjob rant or whatever..

Don’t.

As I have said countless times before, I always look over The Pond to see what the Euros and Brits are doing, because they provide at worst an object lesson on what not to do, and at best a warning that we should never allow our own Gummint to repeat their mistakes Over Here.

And I also don’t want to hear bullshit like “Oh, this could never happen here” because not only can it happen, it’s already happening at the state level (cf. California, New York, Illinois and most recently, Virginia).  All it takes is one general election which sweeps the Socialists into power, controlling House, Senate and the White House, and everything bad that is happening in Yurp and Britishland will absolutely happen here, just on a national scale.

So follow the above link, read it, learn from it, and let’s make damn sure that such fecklessness and idiocy can never happen here.

“Bannings”

Anti-Gun Nannies, Rights

Ran into this little A.I. video SOTI, and while none of it concerns me — yet — I think there are a couple of things worth noting.

The “12 Guns Being Banned in 2026” are interesting, although none of them fall within my “I Want This Thing In My Gun Safe” parameters, mostly because they are chambered in calibers that don’t interest me (although that new Zastava M70…hmmm), too expensive (e.g. Daniel Defense) or else I’m just not interested in that type of gun (e.g. Tavor 12ga multi-tube shotgun).

However, what does interest me is that the GFW state legislators — all the usual suspects, plus Vermont (!!! WTF?) — have decided that if they can’t ban a gun just because it’s a gun, they’re going to ban it because it’s “military-specific” (like that matters), “common sporting purposes” (ditto), “concealable” (ditto) or, more worryingly, because of various features that they don’t like.  In other words, the guns are becoming too efficient and reliable, and only the military should have access to these features (again, bullshit, but it’s what they’re running with).

It’s a long video and both boring and/or irritating (#A.I.narration), but like I said, what it reveals is the ways with which the GFWs are targeting guns.  And my Virginia Readers should pay special attention because that’s the direction your state is heading if it’s not there already (ditto Colorado, a.k.a. Eastern California).

Of course, the Second Amendment Foundation will get involved at some point, and maybe a few of these abuses will reach the Supreme Court to have their pee-pees whacked;  but that’s leaving our fate in the hands of lawyers, which is always a risky proposition.

However, there may come a time when some guy (or guys) will get sick of all this bullshit and say “Come and get them” to which the state will reply “Challenge accepted” and the whole thing will end in tears.  I should point out that this is precisely the outcome these totalitarian bastards are hoping for.

Be careful out there, buy more ammo, and practice a lot.  And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.

Afterthought:  I think it’s time I should look at one of those FRT (forced recoil trigger) thingies, just because I suspect that they will soon be a definite target for the GFWs.  Which is why I should get one, most probably for the FrankenPoodleShooter.

Likewise, as soon as I can buy a moderator (“silencer”) over the counter without paperwork, that too will be added to the above.  Not because I especially want one, but because they don’t want me to have one.

Motive Laid Bare

Budgets, Gummint, Taxes and Theft

Ambrose Bierce once said something along the lines of:  “Whenever politicians talk, no matter what the topic, it’s always about money.”

In that spirit therefore, I offer up this little piece of shit masquerading as a pearl:

Democrats have moved to enact legislation that would establish retroactive liability for American energy producers through so-called “climate superfund” laws which penalize companies for lawfully providing energy that Americans rely on every day.

Beyond potential political challenges, the Democrat plan to punish energy producers also faces significant legal hurdles.

The Justice Department and Vermont in late March faced off in the federal courts over the 2024 climate superfund law that would require fossil fuel providers to pay for the alleged costs of climate change. The Trump administration has sued to block the law, claiming it violates the Constitution. The administration believes that climate superfund laws are unlawful attempts to regulate emissions that cross state lines. API and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have filed their own lawsuit against Vermont.

Jonathan Rose, who represented Vermont at the late March hearing, said, “We don’t need to convince the court that climate change presents serious challenges to the state of Vermont. The act is intended to recover some of the costs it’s going to need to adapt to climate change,” he said. “What it doesn’t do is, it doesn’t try to mitigate climate change, stop climate change, or otherwise impact global emissions or anything like that.”

Yeah, it’s not even attempting to paint itself as having “noble” intentions (i.e. staving off Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©);  it’s a naked grab for money, pure and simple.  The accepted “fact” that Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© is actually a thing simply gives the theft a foundation.  (Corollary:  if Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© is not real — it isn’t — then all this bullshit should go away — it won’t — because they’ll always clamp onto some other imaginary catastrophe as a pretext for their theft.)

A cursory look at a couple of other states trying to do similar:  New York and Hawaii.  Both Bluer than Paul Newman’s eyes, both stuck with massive Democrat government-created spending deficits.

Taking Away The Bennies

Gummint, Illegal immigrants, Subsidies

Stephen Green points me at this:

Republican lawmakers in Texas have spent the past year implementing regulatory changes to limit access to services for the estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrants residing in the state, prompting both support from state officials and criticism from activist groups.

A report by the Texas Tribune detailed the steps taken, which include tightening eligibility requirements for occupational licenses, restricting access to commercial driver’s licenses, and limiting who can qualify for in-state tuition at public universities. According to the report, more than 6,400 refugees and DACA recipients have lost their commercial driver’s licenses. Additional restrictions are expected to affect non-citizens working in licensed industries such as construction and medicine.

State officials are also examining the 1982 Supreme Court ruling Plyler v. Doe, which requires public schools to educate non-citizens.

In a sane world, none of this would even be a topic under discussion.  Of course illegal immigrants should not get any kind of state (or federal, for that matter) benefits whatsoever.  Tax-based (i.e. government) funds should be spent exclusively on the citizens who paid those taxes, and not just on anyone who happens to be standing there.

I know, I know:

“That’s Krool & Hartless, Kim.  Why would you deny education to the CHIIIILDREN?  It’s not their fault their parents brought them here;  why would you punish them so?”

Ask their parents that question:  why would you bring your children with you and involve them in your criminal enterprise?  (Yes, illegal immigration is a crime, ipse facto.)

No.  Nobody deserves to be rewarded for criminal behavior — which is what all this is — and while I agree that it would indeed be cruel and heartless to deny medical care to anyone, it still doesn’t make it right that our hospitals treat illegal immigrants for their ailments and injuries, especially when it is precisely that (free) treatment which gives them an incentive to come over here in the first place.  Ditto child education.

Here’s the thing.  What did people think was going to be the result of our government actually following and enforcing immigrant law to its proper extent and function?  Of course this was going to create hardship on the illegal immigrants and their families — in the same way, incidentally, that sending a criminal to jail for, say, armed robbery creates hardship for their family.  That should be part of the deterrent.

But guess what?  Failure to enforce the law — as the Biden government failed to do — simply creates an incentive to break the law.  If you are not going to prosecute people for the crime of shoplifting, for example, then don’t be surprised when shoplifting becomes endemic.  We’ve seen this happen in cities governed according to this foolishness — why would we think it would be any different for any other kind of crime, such as in this case illegal immigration?

I’m really glad that Texas legislators are doing what they’re doing — what they’re supposed to be doing — which is to take away incentives for people to break the law and suffer no consequences.  And ignore idiots like this squish:

“These all represent a broader and more coordinated shift … to create a pipeline of exclusion that stretches from limiting access to K-12 education, all the way into participation in the workforce and basic mobility through the state,” Corinne Kentor, with the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, told the outlet.

Yup.  Keep going, guys, and get rid of the benefits of criminal behavior;  this is what we voted for.