Big Data: Why the Government Doesn’t Need a Gun Registry Any More

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NSA Data Center Utah
By User: ParkerHiggins (Electronic Frontier Foundation) – Own work

By Christian Greiner

I am an Internet marketer by trade and in my industry it’s the companies with the most data that stand to make the most money. At my disposal I have over 200 million email addresses in the United Stated with over 3 billion points of data. From your email address alone there is a good chance I can tell you your age, sex, location, race, and interests. And yet my information pales in comparison to what companies like Google know about you.

If you use the Google Search Engine or Chrome Browser, Google knows everything you have searched for online. If you use Gmail they read contents of your inbox. If you use Google Drive they know the contents of your documents. The very reason they are so profitable is because they know so much about you.

Yet, as off-putting as it is to visit a website and have their ads follow me around all day via Google’s cookies AdSense, that’s not what I’m most concerned about.

What bothers me is the view from my bedroom window every morning. About a mile away from my home, the NSA has built the world’s most powerful data center. It’s heavily fortified, cost over $2 billion to build, and is five times the size of the US capital.

NSA Data Center
Courtesy Christian Greiner

According to Wired Magazine:

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’

In other words, if you’ve ordered a magazine for your AR-15 from Brownells there’s probably an order confirmation currently sitting in your inbox that the government has all the authority it needs to read. If you’ve performed a Google search for “AK47 replacement stock,” the government can easily gain access to that information. And what website are your reading right now? I believe that’s what’s known as a “red flag.”

Think the search engines will hold your data private? Not likely. Since 2001 Yahoo! has worked with the Chinese government in handing over user information on Chinese government critics, resulting in their trials and convictions.

In 2009 Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt offered some advice for all of us . . .

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

Technology has become an increasingly invasive aspect in our private lives. I doubt anybody believes the opposite. As a result, the government has access to ever increasing amounts of personal data.

I’m not suggesting they currently read all of your text messages and emails. But I’d argue the reason they aren’t isn’t because they don’t want to, have any moral qualms about it, or a law prevents them from doing so. Rather, it’s simply because they currently lack the required resources. New data centers will continue to be built, algorithms created, and the art of data mining will be continually improved.

My point is that if even Internet marketers like me have access to data that lets me know you like Jeeps, guns, and college football, I can’t imagine it would be too difficult for our friends in the intelligence community to piece together — with the help of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T and a 1 million square foot data center — which guns in particular you own.

If a law is passed outlawing a specific firearm I own and its confiscation is mandated, we’re not far from the point at which, whether or not my firearm is registered will be a moot point.

I will continue to oppose anti-2A policies, including universal background checks and registration. I can’t help but think, though, that in many ways these battles have already been lost. Moving forward, we must oppose laws that infringe upon our right to privacy and support laws that right these wrongs.

In this day and age we cannot separate our Second Amendment rights and our right to privacy. The destruction of either would lead to the downfall of both and eventually all our rights.

 

Christian Greiner is a digital marketing and SEO specialist.

This article was originally published in 2013.

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89 COMMENTS

    • Agreed, still, not overly concerned about what the gubmint knows about all 100+ million of us. We outnumber point of the spear officials at least 100 fold. Not overly concerned, will not comply.

      • I’m with you, Rad, and further, I’ve got ’em fooled by never keeping a gunm more than a week before selling it or losing it in a tragic boating accident. Wouldn’t it be a bit unbelievable if the government suddenly became competent at something?

      • You are correct that ‘we’ outnumber ‘them’ by at least a hundredfold; On the other hand, ‘they’ are not to be discounted and dismissed, as ‘they’ are vicious, crafty, devious, and intelligent, but ‘they’ are not stupid. Therefore ‘they’ will not go out en masse, but will instead attack smaller, more compact, easier individual targets, even one at a time, ‘pour encourager les autres’.
        Destroy one man’s life, business, home, and family, whether by direct assault or more subtle means (through electronics, such as banking, for example) and others may not be so quick to resist. Destroy a few more, and the lesson is suitably reinforced.

        ‘They’ know what they are doing; ‘They’ve’ done it overseas for years, but now ‘they’ have brought their skills and capabilities home for use against ‘domestic enemies.’

        No, don’t sell ‘them’ short.

  1. The NSA Has been listening to your thoughts & phone conservations since the 1970’s. They are the single largest employer in the state of Maryland with a massive data center at Ft. Meade. I Just wrote this to say Hi to all those back in MD & DC where I once lived.

    • Yep, I live NW of the center pictured in the article. the picture is facing roughly west. You’d be amazed at how much development has happened since that place was built and how many companies and people are moving to the area due to that Data Center. Plus the water consumption of the center in a desert. But it was chosen for the Fiber backbone of the internet that goes through that area and what they call “Silicon Slopes”. Adobe moved here along with a bunch of other tech companies. several huge Data Centers for Amazon, Facebook, and others are going in west of there behind the mountains in the background along that same backbone.

      All they do is collect everything and then sort through the “Data Lake” for what they need at the moment. But it is all there just waiting until they look. It is a Database of everything to include firearms ownership. personal movements, habits, consumption, relationships, everything.

      It would just be a matter of time before they ran across you because you “knew a guy” who “knows another guy”. The dystopian version of the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.

  2. The government issued our SSN, birth certificate, DL, DD-214, and everything we need to function. Hardly anything they don’t already know.

  3. The Far Right live in the past and I have pointed that out time and time again. Gun Registry is obsolete as the Government already knows if you have firearms and probably which kind as well. The Government has been caught more than once even photographing peoples license plate numbers at gun shows. Your internet chat sites, magazine subscriptions, book buys, as well as your gun and ammo purchases, hunting licenses, shooting club memberships all leave a paper and electronic trail as well

    And there is of course the severity of any new gun law that might be passed as ordinary law abiding citizens who have jobs and families are not about to risk not complying with any new gun laws as that would mean they would run the risk of being, jailed, heavily fined and of course imprisoned. All this hot air rectum gas about a new revolution is laughable since we live in a surveillance society that photographs you hundreds of times a day and tracks your every move physically and on line 24 hours around the clock. This not 1776 and will never be again.

    • Hey lil ‘d , I have it on very good authority that at this very moment there is an NSA spy satellite tasked on your mom’s house, with infrared downlooking capability copying the contents of your little black book. So, I guess that the information you thought you could use to barter on you and Miner’s sex ring charges just got nullified. Hopefully you planned your escape well… probably utilizing unicorns at nightfall ? Guess it’s probably a good thing that you’ve ass-kissed your way into all of those European socialist utopias, you’re not gonna be able to hide out in Capitalvay any longer….. hasta lavista Nazi.

    • And yet you were probably part of the collective crapping their pants back on 1-6.
      Should it come down to it wiil you be so confidant to volunteer to go on door to door confiscation raids? I doubt it.

      • To Astra

        Have your wife read my post and explain it to you. There is no need for door to door searches. I made that obvious in my post. Only a fool ignore the truth.

        • Nobody mentioned searches, are you coming to take my guns? That is a shortcut to the answer, which is “right! Neither is anybody else.”

    • Translation:

      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Nibh tellus molestie nunc non blandit massa enim. Ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit ut. Tincidunt arcu non sodales neque sodales ut etiam. Arcu non odio euismod lacinia at quis risus. Nunc mattis enim ut tellus elementum sagittis vitae. Imperdiet sed euismod nisi porta lorem mollis aliquam ut porttitor. Duis tristique sollicitudin nibh sit amet commodo nulla. Dui nunc mattis enim ut tellus elementum. Ornare aenean euismod elementum nisi quis. Id leo in vitae turpis massa. Egestas dui id ornare arcu. Vivamus arcu felis bibendum ut tristique et egestas quis ipsum. Maecenas accumsan lacus vel facilisis volutpat est. Amet consectetur adipiscing elit duis tristique sollicitudin. Maecenas sed enim ut sem viverra aliquet eget. In ante metus dictum at tempor commodo ullamcorper. Fermentum leo vel orci porta. Arcu cursus vitae congue mauris rhoncus aenean vel elit. Sagittis orci a scelerisque purus semper eget duis at.

      Metus aliquam eleifend mi in nulla posuere. Laoreet non curabitur gravida arcu ac tortor. Blandit volutpat maecenas volutpat blandit aliquam. Placerat vestibulum lectus mauris ultrices eros in. Aliquam etiam erat velit scelerisque in dictum non consectetur a. Mauris in aliquam sem fringilla. Elementum sagittis vitae et leo duis. Rhoncus dolor purus non enim. Nunc eget lorem dolor sed viverra. Ornare quam viverra orci sagittis eu. Amet nulla facilisi morbi tempus iaculis urna. Ac placerat vestibulum lectus mauris. Mattis rhoncus urna neque viverra justo. Nulla pellentesque dignissim enim sit amet venenatis urna cursus eget. Tristique risus nec feugiat in fermentum. Lacus vel facilisis volutpat est velit egestas dui id ornare. Convallis aenean et tortor at risus viverra. In iaculis nunc sed augue lacus viverra.

      There you go. Two paragraphs, completely meaningless, useless space-filling words and letters, worthless content with no purpose.

      Any number can play.

    • Right. All that surveillance will finally come in handy in a couple years, when we pass a new law making communist advocacy a capital offense, then begin public executions of all leftists. The lists are already being completed, only problem is that a majority of one or two age groups will suddenly disappear, but fortunately all their peers will be too busy playing games on their phones to much notice. If some do notice, they’ll just be added to the lists.

  4. Privacy is dead. That’s a fair assessment. However, it’s also true that gun control is dead.

    The same overreaching forces that are driving the spy network that oversees everything also drives the Defund/BLM/Antifa movement. People know that they aren’t safe and can’t count on the government to keep them safe, so they’re buying guns in record numbers. The Left pushed and pushed and pushed until Mr. and Ms. Average American started to push back. Unintended consequences indeed.

    We owe the communists an “attaboy” for killing their pet project — universal civilian disarmament.

    • The ability to have arms is more important than ever as the tools afforded to government become increasingly powerful.

    • To Ralph

      The people buying guns are a drop of water in a sea of Americans that do not own guns and therefore your fantasies about more gun owners are just that fantasies. Most purchases are not first time gun owners either further eroding your fantasies about a gun tsunami.

      • Translation:

        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Nibh tellus molestie nunc non blandit massa enim. Ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit ut. Tincidunt arcu non sodales neque sodales ut etiam.

  5. They know who and where the guns are.

    They also know from comments on the internet it will be bloody and they don’t have the people to kick doors. You would have to kick ALL the doors in days.

    Because? Now it’s Northern Ireland. Yes every official elected or unelected is not a target.

      • Not. Definitely not.

        I have never, ever thought about where any of these people live, who they associate with, or how vulnerable their families might be, because I’m absolutely sure none of them would think about trying to remove my natural human rights, erase the Constitution, or threaten my life, my family, or my livelihood.

        • to Thrasybulus

          You know zero about the history of gun control both in the past and present. The Supreme Court has made 4 major rulings trashing 2A not counting the trashing even Republican run states have done to 2A in the last 10years banning and restricting assault rifles and high cap magazines just to name a few of the anti-gun laws all of which remain on the books and blessed by the gun hating courts. And not a burp from the Far Right. None.

        • But as someone here already mentioned so perspicaciously, These Marxists and their absolutely required disarmament agenda to achieve their ‘destiny’ will literally stop at nothing in their insidious creativity and rabid desperation. Already they have fallen back a step from their attempt last year to press blatantly intimidate private unregistered gun acquisitions with 80% homemade kits and ghost guns and single non-firearm parts ordained, as if by God, as actual NFA MGs by police state decree and now regrouped to flank us from other angles of attack with devious target focused strategies and laws and mandates.

          Only now they have over a Trillion fucking dollars to make up for any temporary setbacks like misunderestimating the mentality of the average American citizen. Where it turned out that instead of intimidating us into fearfulness to acquire firearms, it backfired and almost doubled the supply in the private hands of the people!

          But we can’t let couple small gains lull us into a false sense of security. We cannot ever make the sometimes fatal mistake of underestimating them. We must keep up the pressure and keep the momentum going. Part of the insidious Marxist mentality is that they don’t comprehend or subscribe to cutting losses and conceding. And if they do get completely defeated, they’ll try to take everyone and everything down with them. This is historically an intrinsic part of the nihilist foundation of Marxist Totalitarianism. They burn it down to get it…and they’ll burn it down if they can’t get it.

  6. For those with limited financial resources you may be able to receive a free government cell phone.
    Download the app and apply today.
    .
    Buying gunms, gunm parts, emu nition online, weve got you covered.
    Download the app.
    .
    Are you concerned the milk in your refrigerator may be spoiled?
    Download the app.
    .
    Are you to fcking lazy to change the setting on your thermostat.
    Download the app.
    .
    Having difficulty in deciding what clothes to wear?
    Download the app.
    .
    As far as the government needing a registry of gunms bought and sold they’ve had that since the implication of the 4473 form.

  7. I dont care anymore – the government already has my DNA and they know I think they are a bunch of swine. If they could, half of America would be thrown in the ovens.
    Only FBI I ever trusted was Inspector Lewis Erskine, Special Agents Mulder & Scully – and they don’t work there anymore.

    • no one is invisible, they just blend better into the background. But if you know where and how to look, they stand out like sore thumbs because it becomes obvious they are different from their surroundings.

      • ^^Exactly this^^

        The Gray Man method is not the same as the Invisible Man theory. The whole point of Gray Man is to blend in with the crowd to appear uninteresting and avoid attracting unwanted attention, not try to completely “disappear”.

        • Gray man is effecrively impossible to pull off if the person looking has the right query to the proper database.

        • I know what its suppose to be. It has different meanings.

          The idea today is behind the “grey man” is someone who slips under the radar and blends into their environment.

          It means today someone who is forgettable, unassuming, they don’t stand out in anyone’s view as an oddity or being worthy of special notice.

          The radical right today ascribed qualities of the gray man as a term for the secret badasses of society with guns, like Jason Bourne or John Wick or a quiet unassuming kick ass attitude man or woman “wrecking machine” with guns.

          Radicals and gun people started ascribing all sorts of qualities to and uses of the “Gray Man” idea.

          The “gun” focused idea today is overall an over inflated fantasy sense of capability used by some sort of heavily armed “crusader” that lurks in the background shadows of every day society moving among us unnoticed ready to strike, then strikes and “vanishes” back into the background ground shadows of society.

  8. Our protection is:

    1. The guns we each own.
    2. The vast numbers of folk who own guns.
    3. Our willingness to defend our rights, forcefully, if necessary.
    4. Supporting gun rights organizations.
    5. Teaching our children to be honorable, to cherish the Constitution, to handle guns safely, and to use them with discretion and skill.

    • Their leverage is:
      Your job. Osha or whoever could be used to make employing a baddy with a gun extremely difficult.
      Your bank account. Think that whole conversation if the fed controlling all transactions was a coincidence?
      Your kids. We already see the pieces in the board and the trial run was if you don’t vax or mask your kids or if you oppose racism or pedophilia in schools then they want to raise your kids.

      How long before owning the wrong gun, supporting the wrong company or candidate, not liking pedophilia enough, or not wanting a clot shot will get your “smart” car turned off along with everything else that’s “smart”?

  9. It’s legal to take a whiz in public in my state as long as you’re outside of city limits and you make an effort to conceal yourself. I was out in a field the other day (not my property). I stand behind my truck to conceal myself from most of the houses in the area. I’m looking around as I’m relieving myself and see a solar panel on a fence. At first I thought it was power for an electric fence. Nope. It was a camera. Eh, I made an effort. Cameras are everywhere.

  10. The sooner you accept that your government whether rep or Dem views you as an enemy combatant the sooner you’ll come to peace with that fact and experience the first day of the rest of your life.

    • Meh…don’t care. I”m old and angry. Just got off fakebook where my Canadian friend had to kick out an Aussie azzwhole who looked down on Freed Kyle. Living on a continent sized prison. Once a penal colony
      …we are seriously close to a collapse of this world. The whole world wondered after the beast🙁

      • Leftists are everywhere, even downunder. But antifa would find their chapters down here to be underwhelming to disappointing.

        • “…ntifa would find their chapters down here to be underwhelming to disappointing.”

          Even the outlaw biker gangs manufacturing full-auto sub-machine guns?

      • former water walker,

        Not sure if you are a person of faith–if you are this will be relevant to you. In February of 2020 I had a very strong and clear revelation (for lack of a better word) that God has had enough of the commonplace evil in the United States and was therefore withdrawing the restraining force of his Holy Spirit on evil people.

        I will argue that events which have occurred since February of 2020 have confirmed the accuracy and authenticity of that revelation.

        • “In February of 2020 I had a very strong and clear revelation (for lack of a better word) that God has had enough of the commonplace evil in the United States and was therefore withdrawing the restraining force of his Holy Spirit on evil people.”

          *Not in any way discrediting your revelation*, but I imagine how the Jews in the late 1930s Germany felt as the Jews were being shipped off for ‘resettlement’ elsewhere.

          We are *vastly* better-equipped with knowledge and hardware than those poor people were… 🙁

        • I think God may be getting ready to see if we can stand on our own two feet and defeat evil or if evil will devour us. It’s too early to tell, but evil is showing itself to be a formidable foe.

  11. “I will continue to oppose anti-2A policies, including universal background checks and registration. I can’t help but think, though, that in many ways these battles have already been lost.”

    So just give up?

    Fuck that noise, Leftist. There is no mandatory registry where I live, and folks down here buy, sell, and horse-trade guns all the damn time ‘off-the-books’. Yeah, they know you bought a new Glock 3 years ago, but they have no idea who has it right now.

    Mandatory gun registries are the next big battle to fight, but it’s one we can win…

    • I sold most of my gunms to Richard, sadly he died of a heart attack two weeks later. His next of kin have no idea what happened to them, perhaps he did not inform them of his purchase.

      Obituaries

      • That’s a good way to do it, right there.

        Plus, is it safe to assume Marsupials can have more than one burrow, at any one time? 🙂

    • Actually Mandatory Gun Registrations of privately owned firearms of citizens by the Federal government are already prohibited under the ’86 Firearms Protection Act with the exception of NFA items. However, states can override that law either way. It’s about an even split about now I think. Some states prohibit any form of gun registration except for the NFA weapons, and others require that All private firearms be registered in some way.

      But of course, they get around it through the back door with the NICS checks. But it shouldn’t be that difficult to pull off since we at least got a foot in the door to ban registrations if we can take back the seats needed to control Congress and the Senate and this time make sure we get serious momentum to start prohibiting and eventually repealing most if not all Unconstitutional Gun Control Laws and even criminal prosecutions under the 2nd/A and the attendant Deprivation of Rights laws under USCC 18-241-242.

    • We’ve been fighting mandatory gun registries for decades already, which everybody would recognize as soon as they figure out that “universal background checks (also called common sense gun safety and such)” would never even possibly stop a single gun crime, under any circumstance. The ORIGINAL background checks were supposed to be universal, which was shut down *because* it would require a registry, which was of course the goal. Since then, every time a fun is used in a crime the screeching for UBC comes out again, even when the gun was purchased with a background check, or stolen, etc.

  12. People worry so much about this while logged into Facebook.

    I never cared what Trump said on Twitter. I would rather Twitter go away.

    People go crazy over Biden collecting records of gun sales but gun stores are all to happy to use electronic cloud based 4473’s. Then there is cloud based registries for suppressors.

    Sure, withhold money from the NRA and give it to a suppressor manufacturer calling it 2A support.

    This goes on and on…

  13. I am 98% confident that entities have Big Data such as this article represents. And I am 98% confident that those entities make their data available to fedzilla.

    What I really wonder about is whether or not fedzilla is competent enough to actually exploit that data. Remember, entities such as Google can justify paying talent upwards of $400k a year in Silicon Valley to accomplish their objectives. Fedzilla: not so much.

    Either way, our proverbial “ace in the hole” is the fact that more than 100 million of us have firearms and at least 25 million of us have the skills and determination to use them effectively if/when necessary. In some regards it is good that fedzilla knows that.

    • But as someone here already mentioned so perspicaciously, These Marxists and their absolutely required disarmament agenda to achieve their ‘destiny’ will literally stop at nothing in their insidious creativity and rabid desperation. Already they have fallen back a step from their attempt last year to press blatantly intimidate private unregistered gun acquisitions with 80% homemade kits and ghost guns and single non-firearm parts ordained, as if by God, as actual NFA MGs by police state decree and now regrouped to flank us from other angles of attack with devious target focused strategies and laws and mandates.

      Only now they have over a Trillion fucking dollars to make up for any temporary setbacks like misunderestimating the mentality of the average American citizen. Where it turned out that instead of intimidating us into fearfulness to acquire firearms, it backfired and almost doubled the supply in the private hands of the people!

      But we can’t let couple small gains lull us into a false sense of security. We cannot ever make the sometimes fatal mistake of underestimating them. We must keep up the pressure and keep the momentum going. Part of the insidious Marxist mentality is that they don’t comprehend or subscribe to cutting losses and conceding. And if they do get completely defeated, they’ll try to take everyone and everything down with them. This is historically an intrinsic part of the nihilist foundation of Marxist Totalitarianism. They burn it down to get it…and they’ll burn it down if they can’t get it.

  14. I think it goes further. Probably a private third party has a full personalized profile on each US citizen – of course available over the wall. The reason they haven’t already come for all the guns they already know you have, is because the 2A is doing what it’s supposed to do – somewhat passively.

    Keep it up America. Keep buying record numbers of guns and ammo. Stay Free.

  15. What the average Red Neck does not know is that anti-gun laws were on the books before the ill-conceived revolution and remained on the books after the revolution and since that time have been increasing at an ever quickening pace. 2A was a joke even before it was even written down and a bigger joke after is was written down as the courts have paid no attention to it from day one to the present day.

  16. Big data is precisely why I do not carry a cellphone with me anymore and have moved much of my email to my own domain. There is of course plenty that I don’t feel like changing, like licenses, also, a few things I rather John Q public have a harder time tracking back to me at the expense of it going into the google box.

    There are a lot of things business related that I can’t do much about but there is the public life tech knows about; then the relatively private life tech must strain and pry to glimpse into. It’s not perfect, but better than nothing. Everything in my posts here is obviously public.

    If a person has a super secret boating accident lake and he brought hit phone to it, his on-star, or anything else tech, he might as well find a new lake.

    I tried to explain to NPCs years ago that all their thumb games and phone apps were just sucking up their data, especially geo-location data, but it fell on deaf ears. Warrants are so 1970s, just ask big data where someone of interest is these days. The fact that big tech / data WANTS the data in the first place should be a good enough reason to not hand it over.

  17. So what are good resources for digital privacy, so we can say no to surveillance-capitalism and warrantless government surveillance?

    • I’m not sure why anyone would actually want to say no to capitalism. But if that’s what your looking for then I have to ask why you even feel a desire to posses the device you used to post that?

      As to everything else, the best resource is YOU. Spend the time to learn about what you own and use. It’s no different from the need to understand any firearm you might own. The internet is a two-way street. If you can see someone’s website then they can see you. There is nothing about the internet that is private. Wether it’s a forum post like this or a photo that has been uploaded. Once it’s there then the who world has access to it. It is ridiculous to think that the use of a VPN will mean your ISP no longer knows what IP address they gave you. If you want privacy, don’t use Facebook or Twitter. If you want resources then keep your cookies cleaned out and filter out all the advertising you can. If your worried about surveillance then be mindful of what you use, where you go, and what you type into websites and apps.

      Too many people approach this from the mindset that everything can be fixed with an app.

      • Capitalism is usually good, unrestrained capitalism isn’t. Surveillance-capitalism is a form of capitalism that SHOULD be restrained by the rule of law and something I will say no to because it’s the profiting off of other peoples data and a net detriment to both the individual as well as the society. It destroys privacy and social trust which is the glue holding a society together.

        Security and privacy is all a compromise with convenience, time, and cost. One of the most important would be to ditch windows, it acts like spyware and malware.

        The first thing is to move your email away from Google for anything you don’t want them knowing about anymore. A privacy focused browser and search engine is good but none of them are perfect. I dumped firefox for Vivaldi after FF went communist but Vivaldi is bloated and buggy. I haven’t ditched Thunderbird for EMclient yet but I entertain it.

        Privacy badger, no-script, HTTPS everywhere, and adblock are the usual starter pack for addons but there are many more, even search addons that feed junk searches to the analytics of the big data. Referral addons break the referral links and which site you came from, these can break sites from time to time (trade off).

        There are no private VPNs, only psudo private VPNs. If it’s outside of US jurisdiction and cooperation, allows you to pay with gift cards and crypto like Monero, then it’s probably alright to use but check reputation on tech forums. I’m too poor for a VPN right now.

        A computer without internet or network access of any kind is handy for some things, such as if you are a writer. As Prndll said, the best item is your mind, use it. The EFF foundation has a good section for internet privacy, there is a decent section on Reddit (I know) for privacy, and there is a news site for it as well but I forget the name.

  18. If law enforcement can use DNA from a place like Ancestory.com to track down a relative who is a criminal, this article should not surprise anyone.

    I was collecting signatures for a petition to overturn some gun control laws and people would not sign it saying that the government would know that they oppose their laws. Really people.

    The government knows anything and just about everything about all of us. What matters is who has control in the government. It matters who you vote for.

  19. “email marketers” are useless. ANYBODY who buys anything through an “email marketer” is crazy. There is no way that they can prove they are real or honest.

    NEVER give out any information to an unsolicited emailer or caller.

  20. So if the foregoing is true, why is the BATF working on building a database from 4473’s??

    Fact of the matter is this: Many agencies in the federal government still, even after 9/11, do not share all data with every other agency. Intelligence is like many other things insofar as compartmentalization goes, and ‘need to know’. Can the FBI tap into the NSA and literally pull up every bit of information on a ‘person of interest’? Yes, if they have an identity or name they are looking for SPECIFICALLY. If, for example, you happened to be in DC on January 6th, and all your debit/credit transactions place you somewhere far from the Capitol building (including your smart phone’s GPS or cellular pings), you MIGHT have been interviewed by an FBI agent, or if you were actually outside the building and never went in, you may have been arrested and sent to the Gitmo-on-the-Potomac to rot indefinitely and be subjected to all sorts of human rights abuses [except if that were the case, you would not be reading this, would you?] … But while the NSA may be hoovering up all the data on the internet 24/7/365, it takes a search parameter or a custom algorithm for a Special-Access Program (SAP) to connect the dots.

    Can the government do all of this? Yes, and they don’t care if it’s unconstitutional. Henry Kissinger once said; “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little bit longer.” Since 9/11, a lot of this was automated but it still takes human beings to give government computers the commands, the search parameters, etc. And a finite number of Americans can work in these positions that have various security classifications from Classified/FOUO all the way up to Top Secret / Secure Compartmented Information (aka ‘Above Top Secret’). This means that there are logistic and personnel limitations on the government AT THIS TIME. To bring in other personnel who are cleared for access and train them on what needs to be done takes a little bit of time, like Henry Kissinger’s comment.

    There are patriots still working in the government that have clearance, and are working in the same positions that all of this entails. If the US government were to activate an operation to collate every gun owner in the country, rank them in a threat matrix (Retired SOCOM soldiers & sailors, snipers, and intelligence agents being at or near the very top of that), then dust off operations & contingency plans for rounding up every privately-owned gun in the USA, these patriots would in all likelihood discreetly and carefully leak this intel to friends on the outside. In short, gun owners would very quickly learn of what’s about to happen and tell all of THEIR friends. Like the old shampoo commercial from the 1970’s (and you old farts may remember this) one person tells two friends, and those two tell two of their friends, and so on and so on into a mathematically exponential progression.

    Can the government do this? Possibly, but not without help. The only way that this government could have a fighting chance at seizing the vast majority of guns here would be to call in the only army in the world capable of doing this because of their sheer size; the People’s Republic of China. Under the aegis of the United Nations, according to a treaty for the control of small arms (the one that Joe the Pedo brought back after Trump scrapped it), the ATT, there would be enough Chinese troops to disarm every American (all 330 million of us) with 2 per for each of us to spare. I could be snarky and say we could all fire 3 well-placed shots & go home for dinner, but the truth is, that invasion would be highly inadvisable for all parties concerned because I’d be willing to bet (for now) there may be enough loyal Americans in the right positions to insure that if this were ever to be allowed, the USA would nuke our own Capitol and Beijing at the same time. Of course, the top brass at the Pentagon are already working out their woke strategy to excise all patriots from the ranks, and vax everyone else with these highly unsafe jabs.

    Bottom line, while we ought to be concerned and remain vigilant, the defacto 2nd largest army in the world (U.S. gun owners) will not be defeated easily, if at all, even with a complete database. There are, after all, MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of veterans, many of whom are combat vets! And I’ve not even brought up the citizen militias of every state, who train to kill tyrants & jackbooted thugs every month just for fun!

    IMHO, while a good article, this is just more fear porn for those who aren’t engaged in all-hazards prepping and regular training in vital skills.

    • Two Augusto Pinochet,
      Your analysis is interesting, but flawed.
      They do not need entire armies of people to break down doors and confiscate guns.
      All they have to do is what Florida did to bump stocks.
      Just declared them illegal and the penalty for possession is a felony good for 10 years in prison.
      Sit back and wait and do nothing .
      Every time someone brings one to a shooting range, the range officer will call the police and have the person arrested .
      Because they don’t want to lose their occupational license for allowing somebody’s contraband on their premises .
      Every time someone uses one on private land out in the woods, any game warden passing by can come out of their land and arrest them.
      There will be no mass uprising of gun owners because one person shot a game warden and then the swat team came and arrested him.
      Your contraband bump stocks and later “assault weapons “do you no good if you have to leave them in the safe in your closet .
      After you die, your wife and children are now in possession of contraband good for 10 years in prison.
      Maybe they share your beliefs and the guns sit in the safe for another 20 years until they die and someone else inherits that safe full of contraband.
      You might as well has left a pound of heroin in there.
      Whoever inherits that, will eventually throw it in the nearest lake.
      Or even worse, you have a fight with your wife or child and they call a red flag violation on you and the police look in the safe, find the contraband, and arrest you.
      There will be no uprising of millions of gun owners because one person’s ex-wife informed the police he had an illegal gun in the safe.
      No armies of jack booted government thugs are needed to smash your door and search your house.
      Slowly over the years they will arrest people who transport such kind of contraband in their car and are caught, who are using it on private property and are caught, who try to use it at a range and are caught.
      Eventually the great majority of people who inherit such items will dispose of them which are in them in because of the danger of being caught and jailed.

      • Where is the edit button?
        Eventually the great majority of people who inherit such items will dispose of them because of the danger of being jailed for possession.

  21. Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point.
    You definitely know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just posting videos to your site when you could be giving us something informative to read.

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