Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
When it comes to the Second Amendment and guns, it seems that President Obama can’t make anyone happy. Ever since Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency, the NRA has screamed that Obama will be taking away the guns. This scare tactic continued when Obama defeated John McCain for the Presidency. Just what has Barack Obama done to make the NRA and gun owners frightened for their guns? The simple answer to this question is nothing. The head of the National Rifle Association, Mr. Wayne LaPierre actually admitted recently that Obama has done nothing to attack gun owner’s rights to bear arms, but claims Obama’s inaction against guns is actually a conspiracy to take away guns!! ‘ “[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone,” LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday. “In public, he’ll remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws… The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment.” “But it’s a big fat stinking lie!” the NRA leader exclaimed. “It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” ‘ Raw Story
Now, before anyone thinks I am making this stuff up, the linked site includes a video clip wherein Mr. LaPierre verbalizes this alleged reverse conspiracy. Mr. LaPierre makes a point of throwing in the necessary names of alleged liberal co-conspirators to rev up his base. ‘ “Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast & Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today… President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they’re going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it. But we don’t care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!” ‘
The lying, conniving Obama crowd as Mr. LaPierre labels them has not done anything to harm the Second Amendment rights that the NRA claims to be at risk. I was interested in the last few words of LaPierre’s quotation above. The phrase “kiss our Constitution” appears to lay claim that the NRA and its followers own the Constitution and its protections. I could have sworn that my law school Constitutional professors taught me that the Constitution protects all citizens, but maybe I heard them wrong. But, I digress.
As the Raw Story article suggests, President Obama has actually taken heat from his own supporters over his alleged conspiracy to not take away the guns. NPR Does Mr. LaPierre provide any evidence of this bizarre claim? None that I could find. Maybe you will have better luck than me in finding evidence of presidential actions to hide President Obama’s intentions and/or actions of stealing legal guns from their owners.
I have to admit that if you read the comments section of the NPR article that details how the Left is disappointed with Obama’s inaction on gun control, you will read almost nothing except gun owners claiming that Obama’s words of inaction are actually code words that the End is Near and the Sky is Falling for gun owners! Just what will it take gun owners to ask Mr. LaPierre for evidence of his wild claims? I, for one would love to hear his answer to that question. I understand that candidate and President Obama may have stayed away from the 2nd Amendment issues for political reasons, but where is the evidence of this alleged conspiracy? I would think Fox News would be sending Bill O’Reilly’s reporters all over the country to uncover such a heinous conspiracy.
If Mr. Obama has not written any executive orders or supported additional legislative steps to control or take away guns since he has become President, just what is the basis for these wild claims? I realize that the NRA has a financial interest in getting gun owners scared into buying more guns, but are there other, underlying reasons why the gun owners are frightened so easily, when the facts do not support the NRA’s claims?
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Additional sources: Gun Owners of America; NRA-ILA; Pajamas Media;
I do admire pete’s take on matters before this blog … what works for him also works for me,
Ye gods … orange juice is bad enough but blueberry juice!!! Who drinks blueberry juice!!?? Yuk … by the way … I hate blueberries so factor that into this post.
Anon, Just read this thread and the Corrections thread. You’re still trying to embroil the Professor.
From Corrections:
“My suggestion would be for Professor Turley to direct Kesseler to delete the database and request he delete the code as well. But to definitely inform Kesseler he had no permission, and no authority to do what he did and does not have any permission to do so in the future.
I suggest as full disclosure that Professor Turley should put up a post describing the scraping, what has been disclosed, and who has received the information.
My suggestions only, I know Professor Turley can figure out how to handle it.”
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You suggestion on method, but a presumption that other than allowing his bandwidth to be used for the principals to discuss it, that the Professor needs to or will “handle it”.
Different posting:
“If you talk to Kevin, and decide to write a post discussing what has happened, you may wish to ask him what his motives are, since he says he has some but will not discuss them, what he intends to do with the data and how he intends to profit from it.
Other issues to consider:
Has Kevin broken anyone’s terms of service?
Who owns the data Kevin has scraped?
Can Kevin’s data be used to effectuate identity theft?
Will Kevin honor requests from individuals listed in his database to be removed from his database?”
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You’re attempting to embroil the Professor and from your last posting you seem to want him to act as your agent in considering certain points and talk to Dr. Kevin.
Slarti was gullible enough to actualy go to the Corrections thread and make a statement to the Professor and suggest it might require it’s own thread after your relentless hectoring (I’m going to start hectoring you Slarti, to clean out my basement LOL) but he’s a science guy, not a law guy.
“As for the gnashing of teeth and breathless rending of garments, what group is it that keeps saying that if you have nothing to hide you should not fear the Patriot Act.”
OS, I’ll have you know that blueberry juice isn’t much better for the nose than OJ. 😀
pete, it is obvious that you “get it.” I understand why some folks who have bogus accounts are paranoid and would like to shut down any revelations of their sockpuppets if they can. I also have more news for them. It is not always just the Gravitars that are a hole in the blanket. Just registering leaves a track. Not easy to access, but it is doable.
I am reminded of that reality TV show Mantracker. The tracker can be slowed down but has yet to be beaten. Same for the intertoobz. As for the gnashing of teeth and breathless rending of garments, what group is it that keeps saying that if you have nothing to hide you should not fear the Patriot Act.
doc slarti
i’ve been keeping up with the ongoing discussion about how you found a way to keep up with the number of sockpuppets some of the posters use.
i am not an attorney and my opinion is my own but i view what you did as no more egregious than taking pictures of a public meeting and comparing the ratio of men to women and what type of footware they have. a simplistic comparison but it works for me.
i realize that by going to a website and commenting, i leave footprints (or mouse droppings) and i conduct myself accordingly.
Defend Internet privacy?
It’s pretty
coolcommon to see some self-righteous right-wing nitwit try to defend something that isn’t real.And I’ll sweeten OS’s deal by throwing in a slightly musty antique turn of the century bridge.
You guys are going to have to stop that. Do you have any idea how much orange juice burns when snorted out one’s nose?
“Second, if one puts anything on the internet, assume you might as well put it on a billboard beside a busy highway. If you expect privacy and use the Internet, I have some beachfront property in Wyoming to sell you.” (OS)
… and I have some slightly damp property just north of me that I’ll throw in with OS’s Wyoming land.
“I am not trying to embroil the Professor in anything.” (anon)
Stop being disingenuous … you’re beginning to sound like Speaker-elect Livingston.
I understand what my code is doing perfectly – the only way to protect yourself from gravatar data mining is to not post on gravatar-enabled sites (or to do so with a fake email address). So why don’t you stop endangering your precious bodily fluids… er… data and stop spewing your pathetic bile here?
And by the way you sniveling fuckwad, my mother is dead and I’m done with you.
Two points of order.
First, if you use Dr. as the form of address preceding the name, it is not acceptable for to use the title ‘after’ the name (e.g.: M.D., Ph.D., etc.). Use one or the other but not both.
Second, if one puts anything on the internet, assume you might as well put it on a billboard beside a busy highway. If you expect privacy and use the Internet, I have some beachfront property in Wyoming to sell you. All the hue and cry about something called ‘privacy’ is in the wrong venue. As I said yesterday, if you want true privacy, live in a cave, do not own property of any kind, do not have a bank account or credit card, do not have a telephone, and above all, DO NOT OWN A COMPUTER OR USE THE INTERNET. Give me a few days and I can tell you all about yourself including some stuff you definitely would not want made public. The data mining companies are out their with their spider bots and it is all for sale.
Once again, whether it’s Kevin, Gene or others, it’s pretty cool to see self-identified liberal zealots defending privacy invasion, corruption of anonymity, and the maintenance of databases.
Presumably, because it’s a friend a fellow zealot doing this to attack conservatives.
@LK,
“BTW, continuing efforts to embroil the Professor into making statements and judgments about this dispute is rude at best and sinister at worse. Lawyers that give information that could in any way be described or construed as advice may well accrue some liability for that ‘advice’ or subsequent stupid actions by the folks taking that ‘advice’.”
I did not embroil Professor Turley in this.
It was Dr. Kevin Kesseler, Ph.D., who scraped the web, and built the database and did so without obtaining permission that has embroiled Professor Turley in this.
I am not trying to embroil the Professor in anything. The fact is that at his blog a privacy leak was exploited and a database of users and their alts was created that can be used to break their anonymity and privacy.
When this happens at other websites and blogs, it is customary and expected for the relevant admin or owner to disclose the nature of the leak, who it may have effected and how, steps being taken to correctit.
In addition as I have said, there is an interesting clash here between free speech and privacy.
Your claim that all commenters know that everything is insecure is trite. At many blogs at many times, we’ve seen anonymous posters pop up from time to time with interesting, useful, insights and information.
They do that because while they know there is no absolute guarantee of anonymity, that regardless, the customary behavior is that when a field says “Email, not published” it means the email will not be published.
They know that anonymity is encouraged and respected.
If Professor Turley wants to turn off anonymous logins he can do so.
If Professor Turley wants to encourage anonymous speech, he should take steps to encourage that. Dr. Kesseler’s behavior seems fundamentally antithetical to that.
Since all of this occurred on his blog, it would seem very appropriate for Professor Turley to give us his views on these issues.
I did not embroil Professor Turley in this.
It was Dr. Kevin Kesseler, Ph.D., who scraped the web, and built the database and did so without obtaining permission that has embroiled Professor Turley in this.
Dr. Kevin Kesseler, Ph.D,
“I say: gavatar is entitled to their business plan (which depends on mining massive amounts of data) – if the leak bothers you, then don’t post on any gravatar-enable blogs (incidentally, on most forums you need to put your gravatar’s URL in your personal profile before it shows up…).”
Since you wrote the code, it’s amazing you still don’t understand it.
The problem with Gravatar has nothing to do with anyone being logged in or associated with Gravatar. It has only to do with having an email address.
It is that email address that is hashed and placed as a web bug in the page.
It is that email address that WordPress says “Not published” that is in fact published as an MD5 hash. It is that MD5 hash that is unique to the original email that is placed in the source of the page, that will be trackable across websites.
I have never logged into Gravatar. But the email address I use, “anonyfk24@kevinsmother.com” is the same email address I use everywhere, and the md5 hash of that is what is placed in the source page at every wordpress or gravatar enabled blog, and that’s the trackable web bug.
Kevin, you say, “You say: I should write a paper (and, by the way, the $200/hr figure was for the work I’d need to do to remove someone from the database, not write your stupid paper…”
but earlier you said,
“I understand the issue. How much time do you think it would take to do what you suggest? If you’d like to pay me $200/hr I’ll write up your white paper and try to get people’s attention I’d be happy to do it, if not I can make better use of my time doing things that I consider important.”
Kevin, your excuses and apologies and arrogant defiance jumps around from rationalization to rationalization. I am certain you find them convincing.
First you told us your datamining was actually a service to people here that did not know or consent, then you said it was fine because it was all public information, then you said, Gravatar exploits the privacy leak on a far bigger scale, and so it’s okay what you did, now you say, your acts brought the problem to the attention of others so its okay.
The one thing you haven’t said is
“I, Dr. Kevin Kesseler, Ph.D believe that had I asked Professor Turley for permission to scrape his website in advance, and explained the issues, that I believe Professor Turley would have given me that approval.”
@OS, “anon, outing sockpuppets, trolls and zombies is a pastime at almost all blogs”
True, but mining email addresses for sockpuppets is usually reserved for the admins whose behavior is known and regulated by the TOS.
For the rest of us, we do, as you do, by analyzing writing patterns, catching lies, and slip ups.
And I’ve never heard, and please do correct me if I’m wrong, of a blog that supposedly champions free speech and anonymity being okay with the data mining of its commenters.
As I said yesterday, I hear from you guys lots of complaints of other people using sock puppets, but then I find out when Kevin does reveal some data, that it’s frequently the people complaining the loudest that turn out to have a lot of the sock puppets.
From my attendance here, I just don’t perceive a sock puppet problem here as being so serious as to overwhelm the privacy issues and the non disclosure issues inherent in Kevin’s code.
If this was 4chan it would be one thing. But it ain’t.
Kevin’s actions were uncalled for and they were abusive and if anyone else you didn’t know or agree with had done them, you would be the first to shout.
Harry Nevus GED: “Thank you, all, for the non-technical explanation. Nobody need tell me the OPFAC number of their ORTUPS unit.”
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I have found that there are two kinds of of guys: guys who are always bragging about the OPFAC number of their ORTUPS unit and guys that are secure enough that they don’t need to.
Oh, wait……
🙂
———————————————–
Anon: “But I also think that Professor Turley *should* warn commenters here that regardless of what the wordpress fields may say, that their anonymity cannot be guaranteed due to problems with the gravatar system.”
—-
He could more correctly post the statement “There is no real security for all of your information ANYWHERE on the interwebs, this site included, so y’all need to be careful.” But I’m sure he assumed his posters were smart enough to know that.
************************
Anon: “And I would like Professor Turley to explain his views as a civil libertarian on the various issues, I believe that would be interesting and valuable to us all.”
—
Don’t you read any of his postings?
🙂
*************************
BTW, continuing efforts to embroil the Professor into making statements and judgments about this dispute is rude at best and sinister at worse. Lawyers that give information that could in any way be described or construed as advice may well accrue some liability for that ‘advice’ or subsequent stupid actions by the folks taking that ‘advice’. A lawyer told me that so it may well be true. Settle it between yourselves.
Bron,
So you wouldn’t do anything that involved data mining? (By the way, a potential use for my idea [which this project was merely a small part of] is tracking terrorists, but I guess that would be unethical…)
Slarti:
“I say: It is my work and I wont destroy it unless you pay me to do so (if you want to control someone else’s work, you’ve got to pay for it – or don’t you understand basic capitalist economics?). I get to decide the price for which I will sell my work – you can decide whether or not you want to buy it.”
You are right about that. But I wouldnt design a program to gather people’s information even if I could.
Maybe you have a future with the DHS? 🙂
“If a right wing site had systematically attacked the Huffington Post in a similar way, what would be the reaction at Salon, or Mother Jones or Think Progress?”
If you don’t think all of those sites get scraped by data miners on a regular basis, you’re dumber than I think you are. By the way, “Expert”, you’re the one who keeps calling me an expert. I never claimed I was an expert. I just know enough to know you’re a pants load. And before you protest too much, let me just say HBGary Federal, TIA, MATRIX, Oracle, SAS, Intellidyn, RapLeaf, Facebook, EXelate and Google’s Ads Preferences. And that is not even a comprehensive list by a long shot. If you’re so worried about your privacy? These companies and Federal projects should have you far more concerned than someone whose goal seems to have been finding a method of combating sockpuppeting by trolls. These people sell your information to private corporations, the government and in some cases are the government. If you don’t think corporations and government will put their gathered data to more nefarious uses than combating trolls, then you’re naive as well as being a pants load. If you think 50K is too much to ask, why not call Google and ask them to destroy their data mining databases and see if you can get a quote on what that would take. If you can get them to stop laughing at you long enough to look up a figure.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I am exhausted! 🙂