Data Brokers, Gun Owners, and Consumer Privacy 95
New submitter FreaKBeaNie writes "Earlier this month, the FTC issued 9 orders to data brokerage companies to learn more about their privacy practices. Data brokers are skilled at connecting quasi-private data with publicly available data, like voter rolls, housing sales, and now gun ownership records. Unlike merchants or business partners, these data brokers may or may not have had any interaction with the 'subjects' of their data collection."
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This post belongs in a fan, if you catch my meaning.
Oh, now I get it! It's a joke about shit hitting a fan. It's funny because it's true!
</family_guy_ESL_foreigner_voice>
Re:Uhh... So? (Score:5, Funny)
This Japanese student had trouble understanding the meaning of the American expression, "The shit hits the fan."
What could it mean, he thought -- is it the contrast between a delicate beautiful fan, compared to a lowly earthy excretion?
Then he got it -- an electric fan.
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Hah! What a sight picture!
For a dramatic rendering of the phrase, see the movie "Airplane".
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We need to build our own Slashdot! With blackjack and hookers!
Re:Uhh... So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, forget slashdot. And the blackjack.
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So what? There is no story here. I understand that you want to promote your blog, but it pisses me off that Slashdot facilitates you.
How about some "news for nerds" stuff that splatters less would be nice. This post belongs in a fan, if you catch my meaning.
Except that slashdot often posts articles about privacy related problems such as this one. I, for one, am glad it was posted. QQ
Enough to make a fraud out of honest men (Score:1)
"Fraud" is illegal but being criminally careless with this "protected" data is commonplace and is often nearly unpunished.
CS Code of Ethics? (Score:2, Interesting)
None of this would be possible without the right algorithms. I'm sure that there are coders who will always do such things, just like there are medical doctors who engage in borderline therapies; but, shouldn't the rest of us have a Code of Ethics against it?
what about a engineer like Code of Ethics for code (Score:4, Interesting)
what about a engineer like Code of Ethics for code that for stuff like autopilots / medical hardware needs engineer like sign offs with the power to SAY NO to the PHB who wants to push out poor code just to meet a deadline.
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Until software engineers have the same kind of code of ethics and sign offs that other engineers have I don't think they are really engineers.
Right now if you are a software engineer and you say no to something you are very likely to be fired. If you are a chemical engineer and you tell your boss no for something then they can't do it without some pretty severe legal consequences and if they fire you the consequences are even more severe.
Score one for the FTC. (Score:2)
Re:Score one for the FTC. (Score:5, Interesting)
The addition of gun-owner data might help to make it more of a bipartisan issue. Privacy protections are typically (though not exclusively) supported by liberals and opposed by anti-regulation conservatives, who see them as too much an EU-style approach. But gun owners are very wary of this kind of stuff and a significant GOP constituency.
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The addition of gun-owner data might help to make it more of a bipartisan issue.
Car data. That'll do it. Right wing, left wing, smack in the middle . . . when push comes to shove, they all still drive cars.
An interactive map showing where expensive cars are parked in the driveways? Maybe some anti-SUV folks would like to put up a map like that.
Now we'll get privacy (Score:1, Troll)
Once this starts hitting gun owners, we'll hear screams for stronger privacy legislation.
Dear Mr. Savage: As an AR-15 owner, you need the best magazines and ammo! Stainless steel 30 round magazines for your assault rifle [ammunitiontogo.com]! Great deals on bulk ammo! This is the good stuff [brownells.com], military grade Federal XM855 Green Tip Steel Penetrator! Made in USA! 500 rounds per box! Check out our ammo can bundles! Order today! And don't forget your AR-15 cleaning kit. [amazon.com] (Expect delays due to high order volume).
(There's been
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People can be unjustly discriminated against, or unjustly harassed, for many reasons. Therefore, keeping the kinds of information that are likely to elicit such discrimination or harassment private is important.
Gun owners, no matter how proud they are of their rights and heritage, are justified in wanting to keep their purchase history just between them and the seller. More so now, since there is widespread animosity towards gun owners even if they never have and never will do anything evil or irresponsib
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Why gun owners and not everybody else?
Zillow is a hugely effective tool to help prospective home purchasers understand the market value of houses in a neighborhood, disclosing sales history for nearly every property in the US. I can know know exactly what my landlord paid for the property I rent, what he pays in taxes, and comparable data for my neighbors.
Great. Not so much privacy though.
If Brownells sells their customer sales history (which the credit card companies already give, albeit with less detail),
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Thanks for the AR magazine link. You can't find those things anywhere.
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Here [themakogroup.com] is one in stock for $10 less - unlike others, Mako hasn't been price gouging. And they claim they have enough in stock [ar15.com] to fulfill orders for the foreseeable future, with no size limit on them etc. Look up for discount codes in that thread, as well (free shipping, among other things).
Re:Now we'll get privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Christ. No one is selling assault rifles in the US. No one. They're already illegal. Even the media is starting to say, "assault-type" rifles, which is just as misleading because it is a pointless term, but at least it implies that they know that no one is actually firing an actual assault rifle, even in school shootings.
Assault rifles are either full auto or multi-round burst. Every single weapon in the US that is called "assault-style" is a semi-automatic. All the AR-15's for sale are semi-autos. The fact that they are the basis for the M-16 and the M-4 does not make them any more lethal than any other semi-auto. In fact, they are less lethal than many hunting rifles because they use smaller caliber ammo that tends to make clean holes. And few to none of them are using drum or other high capacity magazines. I assure you, you can fire as much ammo as you like with one weapon and the ability to drop a clip and reload another one.
The problem with the weapons is not the type of weapon, its the fact that it's being fired at unarmed people in situations where they were not expecting to be shot at and so were unprepared and unable to respond. Any weapon at all will do for that, even a knife.
That said, I'm not entirely against sane gun laws, but when the media keeps pointing to types of guns that don't even really exist as a separate class as being the problem, it's starting to sound more like it is trying to make headlines instead of promoting accuracy.
The real problem with these shootings isn't guns, it's the crazy people behind them, more to the point, the crazy people that everyone knew were nuts, but no one knew what to do with. If you think this is a wake up call for gun control, you're 100% wrong. This is a wake up call for better mental health care and screening.
And I don't know what planet you are from, but I don't know a single gun owner or conservative who is happy with the idea of the government or companies getting more information. You act as though they were perfectly glad that spam existed until they started to get it now, as if they weren't getting it in their email, mailbox and telephone for everything else already.
Re:Now we'll get privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire post reveals that your knowledge of guns comes from either Hollywood or your dreams. Either way, it has no relation to reality. You cannot kill anything close to 30 people under any realistic situation with 30 rounds. Trained police officers miss more than 50% of shots fired even in close range engagements. In any case, one of the main purposes of gun ownership in this country, as per SCOTUS, is self-defense. The gun of choice of criminals in over 90% of cases is a semi-automatic. If you are willing to go against a 15 round Glock or a 30 round AK, wielding your grandfather's bolt action hunting rifle you will be one very brave dead liberal.
As it happens an AR makes a safer home defense weapon than, say a large caliber revolver (which nobody wants to ban) as the tiny rounds they use are less likely to over-penetrate and go out to the street or into your neighbor's house, whereas a .44 magnum will go clean through couple of houses and still kill a passer by on the other side.
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As it happens an AR makes a safer home defense weapon than, say a large caliber revolver (which nobody wants to ban) as the tiny rounds they use are less likely to over-penetrate and go out to the street or into your neighbor's house, whereas a .44 magnum will go clean through couple of houses and still kill a passer by on the other side.
As it happens, any high-powered rifle has no problem penetrating walls. The best weapons for avoiding overkill are a moderate-caliber handgun with frangible ammo, or a shotgun loaded with anything but 00 or slugs. It doesn't matter if you're using .30-06 or .308, either way you can trivially overpenetrate and kill someone next door. The much larger magnum round is more likely to fragment before it gets there. It's still a retarded choice for home defense, because it's too much gun. You don't need that much
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A frangible .223 round is far less likely to overpenetrate then most handgun rounds - google it.
Nobody said frangible until I brought it up. Most handgun rounds aren't frangible, but I specified frangible handgun ammo. You coward.
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As it happens, any high-powered rifle has no problem penetrating walls.
That is true, but .223 is not really a "high-powered rifle" round, and it doesn't actually reliably penetrate walls - it often fragments. Not always, so it's not "safe", but often.
Generally speaking, higher-velocity and lighter rifle rounds fragment easier than lower-velocity heavier pistol rounds. Keep in mind that your typical 9mm bullet is twice as heavy as your typical 5.56 bullet, and .45 is heavier still. So they do penetrate walls much more reliably in tests.
IIRC, the only weapon/round combo that wil
Your ignorance is on full-display (Score:2)
Try READING what our founders actually WROTE! They wrote a LOT about this stuff ... it was VERY important to them.
The founders of the nation wanted the people to have both rifles AND pistols (Washington himself made this point in writing) and they wanted those to be the EXACT military weapons that the government had. They did NOT define a "militia" as an organized uniform-wearing national-guard-type force that was under ANY form of government control (if it's controlled by the government it can hardly be e
Re:Now we'll get privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
"Assault rifle" is a technical term.
Do.
Not.
Fucking.
Misuse.
Technical.
Terms.
FUCKING PERIOD, BUCKO. You don't fucking do that because it cheapens the actual legitimate definition of the term, which is used to refer to something specific.
Here's a fun fact for you. When the term "assault rifle" really began gaining traction amongst the news folk, afair, early/mid 90s. Clinton era. Brady Bill.
They were, and were not, misusing the term. They were calling any military-styled firearm an "assault rifle", and then looking up the definition of "assault rifle", and coming to the conclusion that these military-styled firearms -- your AR-15s or demilitarized AKs -- were in fact fully automatic. Even fucking 20/20, though I forget the chucklehead's name, explained the term for laypeople -- that these are guns you pull the trigger and they keep shooting.
No. They're semi-automatic. This is why you don't misuse technical terms, and this is why I tend to discount arguments for gun control. Many people in favor of gun control simply do not know what they're talking about. They don't know anything about guns. It's an emotional decision for them, and it's weighted on one side by this big scary thing they don't know, they don't understand, and *they don't want to know or understand*. Purely emotional. The media fed into that with their misuse of a technical term, and their outright lies about the difference between fully and semi automatic firearms.
PS: The part of shooting 30 rounds as fast as you can pull your trigger that isn't assault is any time you're either shooting at a target or in defense of your life or another's life. See? There is your bias. You can't imagine any use that isn't a violent unjust attack
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'Assault weapon' is a legal term. As in defined by a law.
Which law currently defines what an "assault weapon" is?
What about various state laws to the same effect, that all differ?
And why, exactly, is the presence of e.g. a bayonet lug or a barrel shroud making the rifle an "assault weapon"? I mean, sure, it's well defined, but when the definition itself is utterly meaningless, what's the point?
Compare - US, Japan, Austrailia.
Sure. But compare them all over - i.e. also compare their healthcare systems, wealth disparity etc.
Oh, give it a break... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, "Weapon of Mass Destruction" is a term-of-art, not a slogan. It specifically refers to a class of weapons designed so that a single device can wipe-out a large population - and the definition has always been: Nuclear, Biological or Chemical (NATO and US forces used to refer to this as "NBC warfare"). In the post-9/11 world, however, with new laws on terrorism, Orwellian politicians and activists of various stripes have all been calling anything they dislike "WMD"; the term is being watered-down by mis-use and de-valued just like the words "Holocaust" and "Racist".
Second, Nearly all firearms in the US are semi-automatic (technically even most revolvers are "semi-automatic" though the term is not usually stretched that far --- not yet). The fact is that most non-revolver pistols are every bit as "semi-automatic" as an AR-15 or an AK-47. Most civilians could not manage a completely manual firearm (not even a revolver), and the nation's founders never would have intended them to. The founders of the nation intended that the citizens would all be armed with front-line military weapons (both so that they could deter and repel and foreign invaders and also so they could deter and block any future American tyrant). George Washington specifically wrote that the citizens had a right to keep and bear both pistols and rifles and Jefferson (an inventor) was well-aware of automation, so the idea that guns would become automated would have been no surprise to him. The problem with firearms has NEVER been the inanimate object, just as neither alcohol nor cars are the cause of the annual 20,000+ drunk driving deaths. The problem in all these cases is the human being
All of the mass shootings in recent US history have involved [1] a border-line crazy person who had given previous warnings of extreme dysfunction and [2] a "gun-free zone" where the evil bastard could be confident that his targets were unarmed sheep ready for slaughter.
It's nearly comical to watch all the anti-gun activists go through various contortions to desperately avoid the facts in these arguments. The previous poster (like every pro-2nd-ammendment guy who tries to get a word in edge-wise with Piers Morgan) was correct on the FACTS; When a typical member of the public sees an AR-15 and hears the words "assault weapon" he thinks "machine gun" ... this is by design and it's pure propaganda (actual machines guns have been illegal for decades). There has never actually been a gun term "assault weapon" ... that's a synthetic propaganda term designed to convey impressions and distort debate, much like the words "hate speech", "homophobia", etc. It's also a fact that an AR-15 is less dangerous than many deer rifles (I have experience with both). The AR-15 might look "cool" (or menacing, depending on your political leanings) but it's real charm is simply that many Americans who have served in the military are comfortable/familiar with the overall design (which is solid and reliable), the rounds are common, and the thing looks intimidating to the sort of stupid thug one might want to deter with it. Nearly all other American weapons can fire rounds just as fast. If you have bought into the whole "assault weapon" thing, you have been manipulated; I prefer the U.S. Constitution including the 2nd amendment ... which is what guarantees the other amendments.
BTW: The NRA is wrong: the answer is not to have armed guards everywhere (though they do have an interesting point that we guard all sorts of things we value, like money, with armed guards while refusing such guards for the kids of the non-rich). Our founders never imagined a nation with armed guards in uniforms at every building; they presumed every citizen would be armed as appropriate to protect himself, his family and his business and crime would be low without a ubiquitous display of guns because
Your point? (Score:2)
Sure, the firearms were simpler then, but so were all the other things, like the vehicles (ride a horse, ride or sail a boat, or ride in a horse-pulled cart).
If you actually read all the other stuff our founders wrote, you see that the 2nd amendment had nothing to do with hunting or recreation; they assumed any free people could obviously do those things. Their reasons for the 2nd amendment were:
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I took a friend of mine who has never been around guns to the range yesterday, mainly because they didn't believe me about a revolver vs a semi auto pistol. Her position was that black semi-auto pistols had to go, but revolvers were fine. They were "old west guns".
For this i had my Walther PPS with a 6 round magazine vs a 6 shot S&W .38 revolver. Both go bang everytime I pull the trigger. In fact if I pull the trigger and it doesn't go bang on the revolver I just pull the trigger again (and had it h
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I am a 55 YO female target shooter. I am also a member of the NRA.
I have 2 semiauto rifles, both with hand grips AND bipods. Under the new rules they'd be classified as "assault" rifles. Biut I am a target shooter, my target is a plastic target at 100-150 yards. That's 300-450 feet for you. I hit a 2" target. I couldn't do that with out the modifications, lots of practice and good training.
Do you know what the NRA's charter is? Probably not. They are to teach safety, set safety standards and get people invo
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No one can kill as many people as quickly with a knife as one can with a semi-automatic gun. This is a fact. If you lined up 30 humans and had someone slit their throats as quickly as possible, it still wouldn't be as fast as a gun.
You are absolutely right about that, unfortunately your missing the point that its still some crazy person trying to kill 30 people not the gun. While its easier to sit and fire 30 rounds into the crowd I could just as easily run around slashing people with a knife [abc15.com] thankfully there are good people with the ability to contain the bad people because they have the same if not better force/weapon/abilities.
Bad guys will always always always find a way to get what they need (guns, drugs, whatever) regardless if
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Stop using the NRA's, manufacturer's and their lobbyists' terminology and start using your brain.
The manufacturers and the buyers are the ones who get to choose the terminology. If I make Widget-X and my customers want to buy Widget-X, there's nothing wrong with us coming to an agreement about the terminology used to refer to Widget-X.
This "assault weapons" bullshit would be akin to someone unilaterally choosing to call all cargo vans "rape mobiles". Call it a "rape mobile" all you want, but the makers and buyers of cargo vans aren't going to take you seriously.
LK
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Well, strictly speaking, yes it is possible to get them, but they much already have in place the gun control laws for actual assault weapons. The problem is that people want to apply the same requirements to "assault-style" semi-autos. The reason for that is people have this idea that actual assault weapons don't have rational requirements for obtaining them because they think that the lifting of the "assault-style" ban was the same thing as making actual assault rifles legal to sell freely, which it did
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Nuts shouldn't get guns easily. (Score:2)
The real problem with these shootings isn't guns, it's the crazy people behind them, more to the point, the crazy people that everyone knew were nuts, but no one knew what to do with. If you think this is a wake up call for gun control, you're 100% wrong. This is a wake up call for better mental health care and screening.
Nuts *might benefit* from better health care. But also, it would be best if nuts couldn't get easy access to guns.
If guns and ammos are available in supermarkets and if people can store any weapon they want at home, if a crazies snaps, he can immediatly grab the nearest weapon and go on a rampage.
An impulsive idea can immediately be but in action.
On the other hand, with gun control laws, the acquisition of weapon might require complex paperwork, and guns able to find big number of ammos might be required to
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Read the news much? The mom of the guy in CT was trying to get the paper work in order to get him committed for mental health problems. CT has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. His mother had jumped through all the hoops to acquire the guns legally. All her guns -- 100% legal in a restrictive state. The guy shot his own mother and stole her guns before she was able to get him help. Strict laws don't stop the mentally ill from shooting their own mother to steal their ammunition.
It's fair to
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Nuts *might benefit* from better health care. But also, it would be best if nuts couldn't get easy access to guns.
Yes, and if we had better health care, we'd identify them and mark them as being prohibited from owning firearms much more quickly, in the states where we already do that.
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We've tried the theory that gun ownership will make us safe from tyranny, it hasn't worked.
adam savage can just fire a cannon at you bisses (Score:2)
adam savage can just fire a cannon at you business with a cannon ball made from your junk mail.
Why Isn't My Data Copyrighted? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why don't I own the copyright to my own data? If it has commercial value, how is it that others are allowed to profit by buying and selling it without my permission?
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Re:Why Isn't My Data Copyrighted? (Score:4, Informative)
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Because it's not an expression of an idea that you created; it's facts about you and therefore not copyrightable.
PLEASE distinguish between privacy and anonymity (Score:5, Interesting)
Most articles that claim to be written on the topic of privacy are actually about anonymity - we in large civilizations have gotten used to being mostly anonymous in public. Not because it was ever really true, and certainly not because it was ever a right. Our public anonymity could always be punctured by anyone with enough of an interest - law enforcement, PIs, even plain old stalkers or nosey neighbors. Public anonymity is inversely proportional to how interesting you are.
It follows that there is no legal basis for preventing anyone (person or company) from collecting information from any legal sources, correlating it, building detailed profiles and behavioral models. If your CC agreement denys the CC company the right to keep and sell information about your purchases, good for you: otherwise, everything you do is being captured and sold. It's just too easy now (and that's the big difference from the public anonymity we all grew used to in the past.)
So what legal activity is actually justified in this context? For one, you should strictly defend any contract you have with your service providers - ensure that they are living up to their end of it. Second, we probably need a revamped libel law that will create significant punitive damages if any information broker promulgates false information about you (ie "slander"). It used to be that slander was primarily attached to public figures, but that was really just because they were the only ones anyone paid enough attention to. All that's changed is that there are now many companies publishing (in one form or other) information about virtually everyone. They all need to be held to high standards of integrity - this is not a case where we should let the market set price/quality punishment for bad behavior.
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That particular objection is irrelevant. It isn't the fact that some random person's anonymity can be broken by a sufficiently determined attacker with sufficient application of effort. It's the fact that nowadays, everyone's anonymity is being broken on an industrial scale and o
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In point of fact, of course, anonymity isn't a 'right' and never has been. In fact, the bulk of human history has been one in which people know the people around them very well (and by that I mean know them, their parents, their extended family, etc.).
In fact, anonymity was regarded as SUSPICIOUS. If nobody knew you at all, how could they know what to expect from you?
While I suspect that the bulk of /. modernistas would shudder at this level of 'public knowledge, personally, I strongly suspect that's one
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In most situations there is no need to differentiate between privacy and anonymity if we view anonymity as simply one aspect of a more general concept of privacy.
Most articles that claim to be written on the topic of privacy are actually about anonymity - we in large civilizations have gotten used to being mostly anonymous in public. Not because it was ever really true, and certainly not because it was ever a right.
The wording of your statement is unclear, what is "it" referring to?
If you are claiming that privacy is not a right recognized by the legal system that simply isn't true: the Supreme Court recognized a limited right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). Further, there are ideas about privacy going way back in English Common Law: you can us
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I can't tell. Are you being serious or sarcastic?
LK
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Logic fail (Score:2)
All terrorism is done by people ..... so by your thinking, we should ban people
First, WHAT people believe is every bit as important as THAT they believe. There are a great many religions (particularly when you count sects/denominations) and of those VERY FEW have any tie to violence.
Second, some violence commonly blamed on religion (like the violence in Ireland) is not religious at all. The troubles in Ireland fall along religious lines BUT these are actually political lines that line-up with religious line
rifles (including ARs) seldom used in crime (Score:1)
Too bad the very same government... (Score:2)
... did not also publish the data from the thousands of documents the Obama administration is hiding (and that Atty Gen Holder is in contempt of congress for withholding from a lawful subpoena) about the thousands of assault weapons they transferred to Mexican drug gangs
"We the people" need AR-15s, big magazines, hollow-point rounds and body armor etc .... to defend ourselves from the criminal gangs that our own federal government has been supplying with crate-loads of "assault weapons". These are the same