Category: Gummint

Sighting In On The DOJ

Gummint, Hunting, The Gun Thing

I can understand why people are getting all bent out of shape about this atrocity:

Own a rifle?  Got a scope to go with it?  The U.S. government might soon know who you are, where you live and how to reach you.
That’s because the government wants Apple and Google to hand over names, phone numbers and other identifying data of at least 10,000 users of a single gun scope app, Forbes has discovered.  It’s an unprecedented move:  Never before has a case been disclosed in which American investigators demanded personal data of users of a single app from Apple and Google.  And never has an order been made public where the feds have asked the Silicon Valley giants for info on so many thousands of people in one go.
According to an application for a court order filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 5, investigators want information on users of Obsidian 4, a tool used to control rifle scopes made by night-vision specialist American Technologies Network Corp.  The app allows gun owners to get a live stream, take video and calibrate their gun scope from an Android or iPhone device.  According to the Google Play page for Obsidian 4, it has more than 10,000 downloads.  Apple doesn’t provide download numbers, so it’s unclear how many iPhone owners could be swept up in this latest government data grab.
If the court approves the demand, and Apple and Google decide to hand over the information, it could include data on thousands of people who have nothing to do with the crimes being investigated, privacy activists warned.

What I don’t  understand is why people would want to get this poxy app in the first place, because of all the things you’re going to do with your hunting rifle, zeroing the scope is one of the easiest.  No?  Allow me to explain.

Step 1:  Remove the bolt from your rifle so you can see clear through the barrel.

Step 2:  Wait for nightfall.

Step 3:  Line your barrel up with a light source (street light, neighbor’s porch light etc.) that’s between 50 and 100 yards distant.  (If the latter light source, try not to let your neighbor see you pointing a rifle at his house;  for some reason, people get upset by this.  Sit back from the window.)

Step 4:  Anchor the rifle down so that the rifle is straight upright (i.e. the vertical line of the stock is at right angles to the floor).

Step 5:  Install your scope onto the rifle, making sure that the vertical line in the scope points straight up and down (i.e. that it corresponds to the vertical line of the stock).

Step 6:  Make sure that you can still see the light source through the barrel, and then zero the scope’s cross-hairs onto the same light source.  Re-install the bolt.

Your rifle is now guaranteed to “print onto the paper”, i.e. your shots will all fall within a 6″ square at 25 or 50 yards.

Step 7:  Zero your scope onto the bull, trying to get a 1″ minute-of-angle (MOA) at the distance you will most likely be shooting at (or just use 100 yards, as most do, and make further adjustments in the field as needed).

Now I know that this may seem a lot more tiresome a routine than just holding up your phone to the scope and letting some system do all the work for you, but as we are all fast learning in today’s world, what makes things more convenient is often either part of someone else’s profit margin (e.g. automatic gearboxes) or else malevolent (e.g. self-driving cars and, to whit, this scope zeroing app).

Giving your data to someone else has always been fraught with risk.  With this Obsidian 4 thing, it seems as though Gummint has found a great way to identify a large proportion of gun owners, simply by leaning on a couple of phone companies (who are always at the beck and call of gummint bureaucrats anyway).  What makes things easy for you makes things even easier for Gummint, as it turns out.

Caveat emptor, my friends.

Oh, and fuck the DOJ.

Another Fucking Nanny

Business, Gummint, Health, Technology

In Britishland, there’s a grocery delivery service called OCADO, and just to set this rant up, here’s a customer’s story:

Ocado, the online supermarket, had a suggestion for me recently. I’d got to the point of paying for my weekly groceries when a suggestion popped up on the website page.
‘Swap the products below and you could save 1,216 calories,’ it promised, suggesting I substitute ordinary coconut milk for a reduced-fat version.
It wasn’t the only ‘handy’ tip. I’d need to run for just over two hours, or walk for more than six hours to burn off the calories I’d be consuming should I stick to my original choice, I was reliably informed.
Of course, Ocado isn’t unique. It’s almost impossible to walk down the high street without seeing something suggesting we’re all too fat and need to eat less. Wetherspoons, Pizza Express, Nandos and Wagamama now display calorie counts on their menus.
In May, the Government announced that this scheme would be extended to smaller local restaurants and popular takeaway joints.

And the word “Government” is what triggered me.

Because I think (and I don’t think I’m being overly suspicious here) that with this kind of fucking intrusive software, it’s only a question of time before the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) incorporates snooping software into your household purchases and as with All Things Government, what starts off as a “guideline” somehow always seems to end up “compulsory”.

We all know that Corporate America is only too ready to lick the hands that enslave others, so if HHS (or the poxy CDC — talk about mission creep) decides, For Our Own Good (of course), that we should be hectored into reducing this or that in our diets;  or that (even better) we should be prevented from buying  doubleplusungood products (e.g. cigarettes, booze or Hostess Twinkies) — why, it would be A Good Thing.

Just not for us.  But Visa/MasterCard/Amex/Shylock Inc. would be glad to oblige the Gummint, lest said Gummint do things with laws that take chunks out of the banks’ bottom line.

I’m not ready for that Big Brother shit, and I suspect I’m not alone in this.

And by the way, when I wrote Prime Target  in 2012, I tried to imagine the most outrageous, far-fetched and outlandish government-run data mining scenario possible.  Less than two years later  it was out of date, and the federal alphabet agencies (along with their lickspittles at Google and FaceBook) were strip-mining the most intimate details of people’s lives for their own advantage.

So here’s a little warning to all of these cocksuckers:  the minute I see this shit starting in my private affairs, I’ll quit using the service altogether, no matter what the inconvenience may be.

I also need to start stockpiling cash and other kinds of currency against the day.  Fuckers.

Not For Sale

Gummint, The Gun Thing

Several years ago, one of our county sheriffs was running for reelection, and was asked his opinion about federal attempts at gun confiscation.  His reply was simple:

“They’ll have to get past my deputies first.”

He won by a landslide.

Here’s a little something for the Socialists to chew on while they make their little totalitarian schemes:

“Mandatory gun buybacks” is an imported idea that Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke supported after the mass shooting in El Paso. The idea comes from Australia where the government instituted a mandatory buyback program following a mass shooting in 1996.
Liberals swoon at the results: suicides and homicides plummeted. But in addition to the mandatory buyback program, there was radical gun control legislation, making it much more difficult to own any kind of firearm.
Nevertheless, gun confiscation is no longer a scare tactic used by Republicans to get elected. It’s here. And it’s real.

Not gonna happen.  You can call it whatever you want, but we know what it is:  confiscation.

Good luck with that.  Bring body bags.  Oh, and send that little fucker “Beta” O’Rourke in first.

Go Boris!

Crime, Good Stuff, Gummint

When I saw this sentence from BritPM Boris Johnson, my heart sank:

You can’t just arrest your way out of a problem.

Then he redeemed himself:

It certainly helps, but it is only part of the answer. You need to tackle all the causes and incentives that are encouraging the criminal mentality, and that means first of all exploding any sense that the law is weak, or that criminals can get away with it. When the police catch a violent criminal, it is vital they get the sentence they deserve.
At present, there are too many serious violent or sexual offenders who are coming out of prison long before they should.
In the past five years, we have seen literally hundreds of convicted rapists who have come out of prison commit another sexual offence. There are thousands of ‘super prolifics’ – criminals with more than 50 convictions to their name – who are being spared jail altogether.
This cannot go on. I am afraid that as a society we have no choice but to insist on tougher sentencing laws for serious sexual and violent offenders, and for those who carry knives.
Our first duty is to protect the public in the most basic way – and that means taking such people off the streets.

[pause to let the applause and cheering die down]

Of course, policies like “stop and search” are going to cause palpitations amongst the liberals and criminal-symps [lots of overlap], but the plain fact is that when the police can do their job — i.e. try to prevent crime before it happens — and the justice system is allowed to work — i.e. impose jail sentences that keep criminals off the streets — society as a whole improves.

Just ask the denizens of NYFC when Mayor Giuliani and Police Chief Bratton did just that, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  And if it made it worked there, it can make it work anywhere.

And to let the BritPM have the last word:

Yes, in the short term it will mean more pressure on our jails, and that is why today I am also announcing that we are creating another 10,000 spaces in our prisons. The Chancellor, Sajid Javid, has agreed to invest up to £2.5 billion to deliver this commitment.

Get going, Boris.

When “Free” Becomes Rationed

Gummint, Health

Yet another horror story from Britishland’s NHS:

The absurdity is part of the recent NHS drive to limit the number of pricey, unnecessary operations.
GPs must apply to a body of health chiefs – called the Procedures of Limited Clinical Effectiveness panel, or PoLCE – before they can refer patients for certain procedures.
But what began as a sensible process to stop people getting breast enhancements and eyelifts on the NHS has snowballed into a deliberate ploy to deny genuine patients essential treatment.
It seems a the NHS is doing everything it can to stop doctors giving treatment that we know works.

Why are these opaque and unelected assholes doing this?  Here’s all you need to know:

Another local authority approved just 46 of the 1,162 hernia operations requested last year, according to NHS figures.

You don’t have to be a cost accountant to see the savings involved in denying over eleven hundred surgeries per annum — and that’s just for hernias.  Apply this ratio to all the other types of medical procedures, and the “savings” would add up to billions.

And screw the pain-wracked patients.  They’re just an annoyance to government employees, and their problems are just a line in the budget.

Remember:  whenever you’re faced with some tool who advocates “single-payer” medical care, kick them in the ass.  Hard.  Wear boots.

Third World Adventure

Behind Enemy Lines, Gummint

I once knew a German professional photographer (let’s call him Georg) who, along with a fellow German photographer (“Klaus”), decided to do one of those photo safaris — driving from Cairo to Cape Town, snapping pics along the way — that sounds so good back in Hamburg, but is completely foolish in reality.  Anyway, driving a mil-surp G-Wagen (not a bad choice, BTW), they set off and made it through Egypt without incident.  At the border, they had to get a “passing through” visa to get across the Sudan, which essentially allowed them to be in the country for three days.  When they got to Sudan’s southern border, however, the sole guard at the border post (just a hut) wouldn’t let them leave the country because they had the “wrong visa” — and they’d have to drive back to Khartoum (a two-day drive) to get the right one.  When Georg pointed out that their existing visa would expire en route and they would, in essence, be in the country illegally and imprisoned if caught, the guard just shrugged.  Not his problem.

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.  Last week, faced with a looming legal deadline, I had to fly up to Chicago to get a legal document out of the Cook County Court archives.  (Why I was unable to access the document online, or even manage to talk to someone in the County Clerk’s office to send me the document is a story all by itself.)  Anyway, after having had my 5am flight canceled (thank you, American), I made the 7am flight only by dint of paying the full fare (don’t ask) and arrived at the Cook County courthouse (2nd District in Skokie) at about 11am, with all the data needed for the request on my trusty laptop..

Of course, there’s TSA-type security at all these places these days, which is where I had a Sudan-type encounter of my own.  Reason?  No laptops allowed in the courthouse by members of the public.  I know, it’s inexplicable but hey, Cook County.  I looked around for any storage lockers:  none.

“So where can I store my laptop?”
“You’ll just have to take it back to your car.”
“I don’t have a car;  I just flew in from Dallas.  So what can I do?”
Like the Sudanese border guard, the fucking security guard just shrugged.  “Not my problem.”

At this juncture, I should point out that every single glass window and door at the courthouse has one of those idiotic little “No Handgun” stickers displayed.

I’m not saying that I would have shot someone — in fact, I absolutely would not have, even if I’d been able to bring the 1911 with me — but let me tell you, after a day which had begun at 3am, experienced a canceled flight and a massive fare surcharge along with all the other hassles of modern-day travel (full flight, idiots with too-large bags, crowded train from the airport into the city etc.), only to be faced with indifferent bovine officialdom at the end of it, I can quite believe that some other guy  might  have dropped the hammer.

Which, by the way, is what Klaus did at the Sudanese border.  He told the guard that he had the correct visa back in the car, fetched his gun instead and shot the guard dead.  Then he and Georg got in their G-Wagen and raced off into Uganda.  A real African tale, that one.

And now, the rest of my  story. Read more