DOJ orders apple and google to hand over identifying data of every user of gun scope app

[dalekphalm]

11 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

The Federalist papers prove that malicious lie wrong.

Source for that?

 

i just read a huge analysis of the two essays about the 2nd amendment and they actually support my position.

 

The essays also apparently suggest that the definition of a militia is a body regulated by the state that meets once or twice a year. 

 

Now I haven’t read the entire papers nor am I an expert on it, so if you can quote specific excerpts that support your position, that’d be preferable. 

[spartaman64]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

Source for that?

 

i just read a huge analysis of the two essays about the 2nd amendment and they actually support my position.

 

The essays also apparently suggest that the definition of a militia is a body regulated by the state that meets once or twice a year. 

 

Now I haven’t read the entire papers nor am I an expert on it, so if you can quote specific excerpts that support your position, that’d be preferable. 

yep thats the well regulated part. theres nothing well regulated about a bunch of random people having guns sometimes with barely any training

[dalekphalm]

Just now, spartaman64 said:

yep thats the well regulated part. theres nothing well regulated about a bunch of random people having guns sometimes without the proper training

My understanding is that the counter argument is that a well regulated militia and the right to bear arms, despite being part of the same phrasing, aren’t actually contingent on each other. 

 

Which doesn't make any logical sense to me. 

[Trik'Stari]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

From memory the specific thing that is not allowed is a searchable electronic database so when the ATF wants to look up records it has to be done in the most idiotic and near impossible way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-databases/

 

TL;DR A lot of effort has gone in to making a key area of responsibility for the ATF as ineffectual and difficult to carry out, I won't go in to who and how they achieved that (but we all know). Just be aware I'm not typically one for slippery slope arguments, if there is a specific issue or fear of something like the misuse of the data make a specific law that prohibits it.

I have no doubt that such a database would be severely abused. We're already seeing Red Flag laws being abused horrendously in the west coast states.

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Source for that?

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-founding-fathers-explain-the-second-amendment-this-says-it-all

https://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2005/04/federalist_no_4.php

 

8 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

the two essays about the 2nd amendment and they actually support my position.

The Federalist Papers are all the writings elaborating the individual writings of the Bill of Rights. It's not a pair of essays.

 

4 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

yep thats the well regulated part. theres nothing well regulated about a bunch of random people having guns sometimes without the proper training

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

My understanding is that the counter argument is that a well regulated militia and the right to bear arms, despite being part of the same phrasing, aren’t actually contingent on each other. 

 

Which doesn't make any logical sense to me. 

The first half of the Second Amendment is the justification clause. It is the why to justify the second half: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

 

The Founding Fathers very explicitly phrased the second half in the way that they did. For, it is not the right of the militia or the state, but of the people.

 

Bear in mind, the American Revolution was a Militia fighting a tyrannical government.

[SomeLinuxPerson]

wait if they actually got a warrent for 10,000 users private information, is that leagal? If they didnt then hopefully apple and google doesnt coperate.

[Trik'Stari]

12 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-founding-fathers-explain-the-second-amendment-this-says-it-all

https://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2005/04/federalist_no_4.php

 

The Federalist Papers are all the writings elaborating the individual writings of the Bill of Rights. It's not a pair of essays.

 

The first half of the Second Amendment is the justification clause. It is the why to justify the second half: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

 

The Founding Fathers very explicitly phrased the second half in the way that they did. For, it is not the right of the militia or the state, but of the people.

 

Bear in mind, the American Revolution was a Militia fighting a tyrannical government.

The amount of people who fail to understand this is simply mind boggling.

 

The very point of it is that the government should NEVER be the sole proprietor of lethal force. We see how that works out in other place (HONG KONG FOR INSTANCE) and yet they still for some reason want that kind of situation.

[leadeater]

42 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

I have no doubt that such a database would be severely abused. We're already seeing Red Flag laws being abused horrendously in the west coast states.

Probably, but I also don't see such things as an unsolvable problem. Prohibit bulk searches, sharing of data between any federal/state/local authority, transferal of information through other official documents of the received information and aggregation of received data in another separate database. Also enforce strict auditing of the database and it's usage, by I'm assuming the GAO, to the degree such that all queries are given a tracking identification that is automatically sent to the GAO when they are made and they and the ATF must keep these audit logs and they must not have discrepancies. Additional to that the GAO must cite that this auditing is in place and that to disable it would also create an audit trail. I'd probably go as far as to have the database in synchronous real time replication to the GAO and mirror all the auditing there so each one is producing distinct and separate audit information in the same way so even if the ATF were able to some how disable the auditing the synchronous replication would have to be broken to do so which would trigger an alert along with an alert when it is restored which would require a data consistency check between the to databases. To alter the database as much as would be required would make it easy to see that it has been modified, same would be true if you restored it from backup plus the replication would have to be reinitialized and would alert you to the fact it had been restored.

 

That should leave the only issue being what you are allowed to request of the ATF in regards to that data, which I think is more to what you are pointing to? Checking it just for sales isn't the only thing that is done, it's also checked during criminal investigations unless I'm wrong about that? That's the usage I can see as to where it would be abused. But I don't see how you can't have a law that means for that usage you can only use it to check a gun that is evidence found already as part of a chain of history check, no actual gun no check allowed.

 

There should also be a destruction of data requirement in a situation like evidence being dismissed so no keeping on information found.

[Jito463]

On 9/6/2019 at 3:21 PM, spartaman64 said:

source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/09/06/exclusive-feds-order-apple-and-google-to-hand-over-names-of-10000-users-of-a-gun-scope-app/#2d3df2c61351

 

If they don't want people outside of the US to use the app can't they just request for google and apple to region lock it? Also google and apple can probably differentiate between the user data themselves so they could have ask them just for the data of people outside the US. Just like how the police can't get a warranty to search an entire city a crime was committed in, the government shouldn't be able to get data of every user of an app when they just want to find specific ones.

Sounds to me more like they want a database of people who have it, rather than trying to find people who got it illegally.  I'd like to say no judge would actually sign off on that, but there's too many activist judges who don't really care about the law.

On 9/6/2019 at 4:17 PM, mr moose said:

Don't they already know who has a gun?  I'd be very surprised if they didn't.

All they know is that a background check was requested, not what firearm was purchased or even if the transaction went through.  They could potentially get that from the FFL, but it's not part of the purchase process.

On 9/6/2019 at 4:24 PM, Zando Bob said:

California actually has a logical law for background checks (lol), where even on a private sale you have to go through a proper gun store. That actually makes sense, same as how online gun sales send the gun to a local gun shop and then they background check you and everything before they let you have it. 

There's nothing logical about it.  Without a gun registry (which admittedly, they've foisted upon the people in Commiefornia), they have absolutely no way of knowing that a private transaction has occurred.  If I meet up with a guy (let's call him Bob), and decide to sell my firearm to him: I hand it to Bob, Bob hands me money and we go our separate ways.  Unless someone records it, there's no way to prove it happened.

On 9/6/2019 at 4:32 PM, lewdicrous said:

True to some extent, you can still get a gun in some gun shows without needing a background check via a loophole.

https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-firearms-bankground-checks-state-laws-map.html

 

Edit: the article I sent hasn't been updated in a while, so some information may not be 100% accurate to today's policies/laws.

This was already addressed by @suits, but there is no loophole.  Meanwhile, private transactions make up only a small percentage of all firearm purchases each year.

8 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

This is what that site referenced.

https://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/background-checks/universal-background-checks/

See my reply above to Zando Bob.

On 9/6/2019 at 5:48 PM, Captain Chaos said:

No, but you can put lengthy jail sentences on illegal possession.    Give it a decade or two and the amount of gun-related crimes will drop dramatically.

Yes, which has worked out fabulously for the UK.  Now all they have to worry about is acid and knife attacks.  The people of the UK can rest easy, knowing they only face horrible disfigurement or being knifed to death, and not the possibility of being shot (except when they are).

On 9/6/2019 at 6:16 PM, colonel_mortis said:

Based on the article, it doesn't look like it has anything to do with gun use within the US. Instead, they are looking at where the scope is being used outside the US.

 

Weapons, weapon parts, and anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon (including encryption software for a period) is subject to strict export laws from the US (I don't know about other countries, but suspect that it is similar in most places), which I believe require the company to do a lot of paperwork to get approval for each country that they want to export to. If this scope is being widely used in countries that they have not received the necessary permissions, there must be a company that is exporting them in violation of US law.

 

This is definitely not a necessary or proportional way to go about doing that. If they had requested just the aggregated country data (how many downloads per country), that would allow them to achieve that goal without invading the users' privacy.

Yeah, this is very broad and most definitely an odd way of approaching the issue.  There has to be more that they're not telling us.

15 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

They know who has purchased guns legally. They (The federal government) claim there is no gun registry in the US, but any time you buy a gun from a gun store or a booth at a gun show (the gun show loophole is both a myth and a misnomer that means "private sales" in reality) you must fill out a background check and FFL transfer form which include the serial number of the firearm being purchased.

I'm pretty sure the ATF has to request that information, they can't just take it whenever they want.

[Derangel]

3 hours ago, Drak3 said:

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-founding-fathers-explain-the-second-amendment-this-says-it-all

https://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2005/04/federalist_no_4.php

 

The Federalist Papers are all the writings elaborating the individual writings of the Bill of Rights. It's not a pair of essays.

 

The first half of the Second Amendment is the justification clause. It is the why to justify the second half: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

 

The Founding Fathers very explicitly phrased the second half in the way that they did. For, it is not the right of the militia or the state, but of the people.

 

Bear in mind, the American Revolution was a Militia fighting a tyrannical government.

Something to keep in mind is that we're also talking about rights laid out when guns were muskets that took a long time to reload and were single shot weapons. Like any law made a long time ago, sometimes things need to be reexamined as time goes on to see what does and does not work or make sense in the modern era. While I believe in the right to bear arms I also believe that there needs to be some limitations on it.

 

As to the whole "the courts said it was legal so it is argument" from leadeater: I'd like to point out that during WWI the Supreme Court upheld the Espionage Act which, at that time, made it illegal to speak out against the war and created vast media censorship. This is a VERY clear violation of the 1st Amendment that was allowed to stand. The courts will not always fall on the side of "Constitutional" and instead go with the "political" result.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Derangel said:

rights laid out when guns were muskets that took a long time to reload and were single shot weapons.

That's not 100% true.

The Puckle gun existed.

So did the Lorenzonis 7 shot rifle.

 

And I recall Forgotten Weapons covering another repeating arm that held more ammo than those two.

[Derangel]

4 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

That's not 100% true.

The Puckle gun existed.

So did the Lorenzonis 7 shot rifle.

 

And I recall Forgotten Weapons covering another repeating arm that held more ammo than those two.

Thanks for the correction. Also, haven't heard of Forgotten Weapons before and now I'm going to look them up because the name alone gets me interested.

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Derangel said:

As to the whole "the courts said it was legal so it is argument" from leadeater: I'd like to point out that during WWI the Supreme Court upheld the Espionage Act which, at that time, made it illegal to speak out against the war and created vast media censorship. This is a VERY clear violation of the 1st Amendment that was allowed to stand. The courts will not always fall on the side of "Constitutional" and instead go with the "political" result.

That didn't stop the issue being remedied either. Things can and do go awry, which is one of the issues with court as it falls on the side with the best argument and not necessarily the correct side. But when talking about something like Hughes Amendment there's a very long period of time for this to be repealed through either the courts or law. Declaring that the court is or likely wrong because they have been wrong is breaking down one of the pillars of democracy.

 

If it were such obviously in violation of the Second Amendment then I would expect it to be easily struck down in court, and long ago. Similarly a law change proposed and passed, more than one way to remedy that issue.

[Nowak]

4 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

The amount of people who fail to understand this is simply mind boggling.

 

The very point of it is that the government should NEVER be the sole proprietor of lethal force. We see how that works out in other place (HONG KONG FOR INSTANCE) and yet they still for some reason want that kind of situation.

People asking for the government to buy back guns are just asking for state violence tbh. Even fucking Karl Marx argued against this.

[Trik'Stari]

8 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

My understanding is that the counter argument is that a well regulated militia and the right to bear arms, despite being part of the same phrasing, aren’t actually contingent on each other. 

 

Which doesn't make any logical sense to me. 

"well regulated" as far as I know, in those days, would have meant well trained and equipped. It's saying that in order to maintain a well trained and equipped militia, which is necessary to remain a free country, the peoples right to bear arms must not be infringed.

 

Note that it does not say who or what should command any such militia.

 

The overall point being "the people at one point might need to form a militia to fight an invading government, or potentially their own government, and to this end, their right to bear arms must not be infringed".

 

Also worth noting that our constitution, as it was written, does not "grant" us these rights". It presupposes we have these rights inherent from being born, and merely enumerates them and details the reason for them.

 

Personally, I'd argue that any politician suggesting undoing this state of affairs, is guilty of treason.