> A Redding Police Department officer in 2021 was charged with six misdemeanors after being accused of accessing CLETS to set up a traffic stop for his fiancée's ex-husband, resulting in the man's car being towed and impounded, the local outlet A News Cafe reported. Court records show the officer was fired, but he was ultimately acquitted by a jury in the criminal case. He now works for a different police department 30 miles away.
When people say "I don't see why privacy matters, I have nothing to hide" this is the exact kind of edge-case I always think about.
The problem with a lot of these massive surveillance systems is that a lot of people end up with access to them, and some of those people may not be trustworthy.
In this case, your ex-wife gets engaged to a cop and now they're abusing their access to databases to cause you harm.
(That note that "he now works for a different police department 30 miles away" is such a toxic aspect of American policing: cops who get fired for stuff like this inevitably end up in the exact same job somewhere else.)
I was at a party with an early FB employee once and he was bragging about how they would spy on people to see who's profiles they were looking at. He thought it was hilarious, I never used FB again. I think his exact quote was "Hot girls are like celebrities, we watch people refresh their profiles all day long LOL".
Of course, this applies mass data collection by private entities too [1], and entities seeking to cross-reference commercially-available data sources together – even governments (thanks, Palantir!). There are plenty of ways to harass people without misusing your privileges as law enforcement.
Ex Palantir here: Palantir provides tools for data analysis and operations. The tools don't collect data. It's like saying: Thanks PostgreSQL for allowing this specific data misuse case. When I was at Palantir, the tools came with a robust ACL solution.
I'm not advocating for the company, but the statement in the comment is shallow. I was a̶b̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ assaulted while employed there, which is why I left, but my comment stands.
Everybody knows what purpose those tools are made for in practice simply by looking at who buys them and how they're used. So, no, Palantir does not get to claim some kind of neutrality here. It is a company knowingly enabling mass government surveillance and the associated abuses for the sake of profit.
Your premise is that absent of Palantir there would be no tooling. Someone is going to do it and it might as well be Peter Thiel & co because they're already doing all the other data surveillance.
You are going to die someday, right? How close do you have to be to deaths door for it to be morally okay for me to smother you with a pillow[1]? It was going to happen anyway, why would it matter that I did it?
1. Or carbon monoxide mask, if the distress of asphyxiation is throwing you off the from point I'm trying to make
> Palantir provides tools for data analysis and operations.
Potato potato. Palantir explicitly provides tools for data analysis and operations for government and enforcement agencies. Postgres is a database used for virtually anything that needs a database. The two aren't the same.
For the record - Palantir isn't 100% culpable of a government resource abusing its capabilities, but it sure unlocked a whole bunch of capabilities that were either too expensive or too difficult to do previously (for example, storing records in an RDMS).
> Palantir, the tools came with a robust ACL solution.
ACLs require humans to configure them. Uber also has a robust ACL. It doesn't stop someone in the org from using and abusing its God-mode.
I appreciate your comment, and it takes courage to post an unpopular opinion, but I'm not convinced about the analogy - Is Palantir used for myriad varied and lovely other cases? Or is it less like Postgres and more like napalm and ICBMs in that sure, it takes a human being to use it for its very much intended purpose?
I agree in the sense that it is directly the fault of the people doing the surveillance but this sounds like "guns dont kill people, people kill people..." which is true semantically, but not in spirit.
Palantir for example works directly with the government on State and Federal levels, and know damn well what they are doing, what their tools are used for, and answer directly to the requests of the government in regards to contracted work (all at the cost of the taxpayer mind you). These are mass surveillance tools, they have one purpose.
I also don't think its insignificant to recognize the backroom deals here that have created this vicious cycle of:
working as a govt official and giving kickbacks and heavily inflated contracts to contractors, and forming laws favorable to those contractors -> then getting a consulting job at those same defense contractors or lobbying groups -> and then moving back into politics
we can't just strip away the context here, a database has a purpose, what purpose does mass surveillance tools have? I'd argue that there is no proper use case for these tools against Americans, other than authoritarianism.
"We just make and sell bone saws, it's not us that murder journalists by dismembering them while they're still alive. I mean, sure, our only customers are Saudi military and intelligence forces, but how could we possibly predict they'd misuse the tools we make?"
You weren't abused. You were just talked to in a way that caused an elevated emotional response.
That said, I do find your argument interesting as it parallels the "guns don't kill people" argument. An I am a gun rights advocate yet am against Palantir's product usage on US citizens. Good food for thought.
>this is the exact kind of edge-case I always think about.
I think you're overly generous in calling this an "edge case". I do not think it uncommon at all, what we hear about are those who are too stupid to remain uncaught.
The biggest problem with police is it's the sort of job where the more a given person wants that job, the less they should probably have it. For their sake and others.
Another huge problem is that law allows union bargaining agreements to dictate what happens to disciplinary records, that officers are allowed to resign when there are investigations happening that effectively kills them, etc. Once an investigation starts you shouldn't be allowed to resign, or at the very least the investigation should still continue and you should still be able to be punished after. Any union contract requiring the deletion/obfuscation of any disciplinary records for any reason other than clerical error or pardon should be illegal.
> Another huge problem is that law allows union bargaining agreements to dictate what happens to disciplinary records, that officers are allowed to resign when there are investigations happening that effectively kills them, etc. Once an investigation starts you shouldn't be allowed to resign, or at the very least the investigation should still continue and you should still be able to be punished after.
I don't think requires any union pressure; the department is happy to be both rid of a problem officer and not have to put it in the public record just how bad the problem officer was.
I have a friend who is a cop in Indiana (a "right to work" state), and after talking with him, I've realized that the department, as an organization, can largely be modeled as an entity that takes action to minimize its liability (individual officers are mostly shielded from civil liability, but the department is much less so). Apropos to this subject:
- They want to minimize the number of apparent past bad actors that will be revealed during discover because a lot of past bad actors could be presented as a pattern of poor hiring and/or training. Allowing officers to resign to kill an investigation is golden).
- When something bad happens and it makes it into a courtroom with sufficient evidence that it happened, they want every officer in the department to testify that the action in question is definitely not common practice and completely contrary to training. Such testimony would be greatly undermined by a subpoena that revealed several investigations finding officers to have engaged in such behavior in the past. Again anything that stops the investigation before it can find anything material could potentially save the department millions of dollars in future liability.
"the department is happy to be both rid of a problem officer and not have to put it in the public record just how bad the problem officer was."
...have you not seen the extents that LE agencies and the FOP will go to make sure these folk aren't fired? There's a reason LE have FOP cards in their wallets that include a statement to be read verbatim into a transcript for disciplinary meetings.
- When something bad happens and it makes it into a courtroom with sufficient evidence that it happened, they want every officer in the department to testify that the action in question is definitely not common practice and completely contrary to training. Such testimony would be greatly undermined by a subpoena that revealed several investigations finding officers to have engaged in such behavior in the past. Again anything that stops the investigation before it can find anything material could potentially save the department millions of dollars in future liability.
You have a very rose-stained perception into these things. I highly recommend you do some court watching to really understand how these systems work. These sorts of retrospective analyses of misconduct truly don't exist as deeply or as strong as you think they are.
- Neither GP nor I were talking about officers being fired.
- GP was talking about a dynamic of officers resigning to avoid disciplinary actions on their record and working elsewhere.
- GP suggests this is due to union pressure.
- Indiana has much less strong police unions compared to Chicago
- My point is that there is still an incentive for departments to allow problem officers to retire before any investigation can confirm allegations of wrongdoing.
- I am more than willing to believe that lots of wrongdoing is enabled by the actions of unions, I just think that a policy allowing problem officers to resign with a clean record rather than be investigated is not solely motivated by union pressure.
As a US outsider (Australia) I see the Tulsi Gabbard hearing has stirred a barely tangential can of worms re: disclosure and keeping secrets.
It's national security related, Was Snowden a traitor or a whistleblower and pokes the bear on whistleblowers and duty to disclose poor and outright illegal behaviour.
Not sure if that's your beat or interest as a reporer .. but it goes to a core issue wt public institutions.
Why? Most police spend their time keeping the peace and catching bad guys. That seems an intrinsically rewarding activity. No need to posit any character flaw to explain why someone would want to do that. Maybe you are thinking “power over other people” is the issue, but I think most cops see that as a necessary tool rather than the chief reward.
The problem is a higher portion of people who just want to power trip apply to these positions, even if they are not the majority of the police force. Basically, it is the dream job for a bully.
It seems there should be severe penalties for "power tripping" (aka misuse of authority and databases for special purposes); slap of the wrist fine, suspended paychecks and internal investigations will not deter this group of people. I don't see how these crimes are considered less than drug dealing.
Specifically the punishment should include mandatory jail time and permanent ban from jobs where they have any form of authority over others including management, teaching, and all government positions.
> It seems there should be severe penalties for "power tripping" (aka misuse of authority and databases for special purposes)
I wonder if the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could be used against them in these cases. I'm not a law expert, but it seems to be used for similar "unauthorized access" cases.
Personally, I’m not so sure. That’s not to say I welcome the burglars and murderers but it would be comedy to say, “At least it can’t get any worse,” and then the police show up.
There are countless videos demonstrating that some cops are power tripping. Some guy doesn't react quickly enough to a request and they get floored brutally while the cop screams at him: "Don't you dare f** with me or I'll turn you into a puddle you a*h**! Do you understand me! I said do you understand me!"
You might argue that hey, he has adrenaline flowing and so maybe he was a bit over the line. But they are professionals supposedly trained in effective deescalation techniques. Those techniques aren't just because it is humane, it is because it results in better outcomes. But the ego trippers put all that aside because they enjoy being the punisher.
Both of my grandfathers (and an uncle and a brother in law) were career cops. One of my grandfathers said: the power given to you as a cop either brings out the best in you or the worst.
I don't disagree on the principle you're advocating for here, but this example isn't about massive surveillance systems. CLETS seems to aggregate various databases police already had access to, probably some of which include data that ideally we wouldn't collect at all, but vehicle registration has to be stored somewhere and cops always have and always will have access to that.
The other factor is that police have near blanket immunity to violate any of our rights, whether that be privacy, using the power of the state to harass individuals, and even killing or maiming people. Then the worst consequence they face is a light slap on the wrist, paid vacation and then a transfer to another Police department. Police only serve one purpose, and that is... well if you know, you know. They have a mass surveillance state in their hands, blanket immunity, and no oversight or checks and balances. People should at the very least recognize this fact.
On top of that I get super frustrated when people want to do austerity measures like cutting funding to libraries, cancer research, public health etc... but refuse to even acknowledge that the police takes up the majority of a states public funding by orders of magnitude, and often receive "surplus" military weaponry.
If anyone actually cared about govt spending, it would be extremely clear that military and police funding would come first and foremost. The reality is that these two things are heavily intertwined, and the ways in which they are corrupt are the same... but one should ask themselves why does the US police force need to be more powerful than nearly every countries military? Who is it that they are fighting and who are they fighting for?
> but one should ask themselves why does the US police force need to be more powerful than nearly every countries military? Who is it that they are fighting and who are they fighting for?
Well, either you pay for healthcare (especially mental health care) and social security programs such as affordable housing... or you'll pay police to deal with the fallout.
Unfortunately, unlike in Europe, "government handouts" for the poor aren't something to score political points with, but authoritarian police is...
In 2021 alone, the FBI conducted up to 3.4 million warrantless searches of Section 702 data to find Americans’ communications. --https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/internal-documents-show-how-little-fbi-did-correct-misuse-section-702-databases
So the story is that California isn't holding up their end of the police state? Compared to the FBI they're hardly trying.
I'm cool with this. The FBI purged my city and state of rampant corruption and they remove heinous violent criminals from the street every day, often before they can commit any other crimes. Most of the people who work there are tireless and thankless servants.
And to all the haters, let's see how you feel when your daughter is abducted and taken over state lines or your local law enforcement becomes corrupt and starts working with criminals. The FBI showing up is a great feeling.
Database use can NOT be limited by policy. If the data is there, people with access to it WILL use it for whatever they want, even if that's simply because nobody told them what the restrictions are.
The best way to prevent misuse of data is not to have it. The second best way is to only allow access through technical means with proper access control at the query level and never access to the raw data.
idk, I would say that at least in healthcare, most people are sufficiently terrified of the consequences of HIPAA violations that they won't access records they aren't supposed to. In this case, what works is a combination of serious, career-ending consequences and the knowledge that compliance departments conduct regular audits of everyone's access logs.
An interface that accepts only certain things - not raw SQL - and only returns whats needed for the task at hand. Logging of who asked for what is good too but is not preventative.
> The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits
So for the concealed carry there is a background check involved, but it has to be done in a certain way, and the police instead were being more "thorough" and were digging through more databases than they were supposed to? I guess they do have access to those databases, but are only supposed to check them if they suspect a crime was committed.
What's the personal motivation there? It seems like they were going out of their way to be more "thorough", wouldn't it save them time and grief not to check more than needed. Is some higher political figure asking them to be more "thorough". I don't quite get the whole picture. Of course, they broke the law, but just wondering about their motive.
The CLETS database LACSD used includes non-conviction records, investigative records, gang affiliations, and other data that aren’t part of the proper background check process. For example, if you were arrested but never charged, or if you’re a known gang member without any convictions, those records would be in CLETS but not in the system they’re legally supposed to use for concealed carry permits (CCPs).
State law doesn’t allow this kind of non-conviction information to be used in CCP decisions, so this was an overreach. (previously you had to be of "good moral character" and have "good cause" to get a CCP, but these have been replaced with objective criteria)
You could argue that having more information might lead to better decisions on who gets a permit, but that’s not what the law allows—and letting police pull extra data whenever they feel like it creates obvious risks of abuse.
The issue at hand is despite federal rulings forcing all states to have some level of "shall issue" concealed permits, and laws on the books, California's process has left it to county sheriffs to follow the evaluation criteria. Some, like San Bernardino, practically rubber stamp them if you pass the background checks. Others, like Ventura, Riverside, LA, etc. try their hardest to find ways to reject them - even circumventing the law to do so.
They've also tried to implement strong arm policies like "We will notify your employer you have a license" knowing most large employers in California are fairly liberal and anti-gun and might look at that negatively to try to dissuade people from even exercising the right.
Aha, that's the kind of nuance I was missing. Something just didn't add up. One would like to believe these are all just hard-working officers, going above and beyond their "call of duty" to keep the guns out of "bad citizens'" hands, but that seemed a little too naive of an idea.
I think the most likely good faith version of this is that the LACSD wants to prevent people that are bad actors from obtaining the licenses.
Where this touches on abuse are people who are not convicted of any particular criminal offense related to firearms, or people that have had negative contact with the LACSD.
So on the "positive" side this might allow them to prevent a person who they strongly believe is a gang leader but has not been convicted of any offense from obtaining a permit.
On the "negative" side this might be people like defense attorneys, anti-police activists, or private investigators who have a tendencious relationship with the police from obtaining such a permit. Or in some cases maybe even people who have simply had a negative interaction -- filing reports critical of officers, etc., who are being spitefully targetted.
The law attempts to strike a balance between the concerns and law enforcement overreach and exists for a reason.
Probably also Wilhoit's law some too "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." So not only do some people not get the right to own a gun effectively, but specifically certainly kinds of people arbitrarily.
There has been documented corruption and abuse in basically every state that uses a "may-issue" firearms permit scheme that allows official "discretion" about "suitability," as opposed to a "shall-issue" one where issuing a permit is mandatory to anyone who meets the qualifications.
Yeah I would be very interested in the demographic makeup of those people who were checked in this database compared to those who weren't. Maybe cross-referenced with who accepted/reviewed/received their application.
To "bear" means to carry. "You may have this firearm but you cannot carry it in a manner which is fit for purpose anywhere other than your own private property" is a pretty tough sell to anyone who believes in the second amendment.
I'm happy to get into a 2A debate (as funny as it sounds it is a hobby of mine!) but it seems like a tangent for this thread specifically. I'll just say that this definition of "militia" is completely incorrect in the historical context in which it was written. The next thing you'll say is that "well-regulated" means regulated by the government which is also 100% incorrect.
Militia is the people - it's everyone, individually. Well-regulated means well-functioning, fit for purpose. In order for individual people to be fit for militia/defensive service, they cannot be deprived of their right to make, purchase, own, use, and/or carry firearms.
My favorite quote related to this:
"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people." - George Mason, address to Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
George Mason was an anti-federalist arguing his opposition to the Constitution. When he says "They consist now of the whole people" he is referring to the present moment under the Articles of Confederation. He goes on to argue his opposition to the constitution, saying:
> If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but they may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people. If we should ever see that day, the most ignominious punishments and heavy fines may be expected.
He very clearly believed that the federal government under the Constitution would have the power to determine who did and did not belong to the Militia which is one of many reasons he voted against ratification. He also clearly believes that the federal government has the task of regulating it given the talk of punishments and fines, though he seems fine with that as long as they are reasonable. That it was ratified in that form makes your referenced quote an argument against your reading of the second amendment.
That particular quote does not really support the presumption here. In that debate, as with most ratifying debates around the constitution and the bill of rights, the concern is that the federal government not usurp the ability of states to arm their militias.
That quote in context [1] clearly is about who the members of the militia are drawn from, not the implicit militia-ness of all citizens. He even states this explicitly later in the same argument: "Under the present government, all ranks of people are subject to militia duty".
In the end, they wrote what they wrote and they ratified what they ratified -- "the right of the people" and not the right of the "several states" or the "militia of the several states" as is used elsewhere in the document. So it's a right of the people, period, and "keep and bear" has a plain meaning (Scalia wrote something to the effect of "you cannot interpret 'he filled and kicked the bucket' to mean 'he filled the bucket and died').
Some state constitutions (contemporaneous and known to the authors of the constitution) carved out an explicit self-defense or individual right to arms, but this language was not encoded into the second amendment.
Whenever I encounter quotes from the constitutional ratification debates that purport to claim an individual right to keep and bear arms, on closer inspection in context, they are arguing about states vs. federal authority, not an individual right. If you choose to respond by offering other supporting quotes, please give a link to the full context and due consideration of it, because I have yet to see an actual quote that holds up.
I'm happy to debate or discuss this in good faith but this isn't a good faith argument.
"Arms" meant (means) state-of-the-art, military-level hardware. The muskets that civilians had in their homes were as good or better than what you'd be issued by the burgeoning American military, to the extent that you were issue anything and weren't just expected to bring your own. Throughout all of American history, perhaps with the exception of nuclear arms and vehicles like tanks and submarines, firearms research and development has occurred in private industry and made its way into the military later.
But the specifics are irrelevant, the spirit is clear.
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Sam Adams, address to Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
Finding an article that says, essentially, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and then goes on to talk about government licensed privateers - akin to the modern setup of a security guard licensed to carry in a state that doesn't otherwise permit it. Is there evidence outside of that of personal home ownership of cannons? (Let alone of a widespread nature?)
Do we think Sam Adams would advocate personal ownership of nuclear bombs, or do we think he'd perhaps see such things as a category slightly different than the muskets of his time?
We can hem and haw and guess about what we think the founders would think, or we can look at what they said and what the historical context of firearms ownership is. We don't have private ownership of nuclear arms now and pointing there is IMO another explicitly bad faith argument, in part because it's clear you don't particularly care what the founders' intentions were because there are thousands of pages of discussions and arguments showing that regular every-day people were allowed to - encouraged to, in cases required to - own weapons on par or better than military armaments of the day. And despite that, my guess is you have a problem with people owning or carrying AR-15s, or with people carrying handguns on them when they go to a restaurant, etc. I'm happy to be proven wrong though!
The start of this little digression was private citizens carrying their personally owned handguns outside of their home as is plainly meant by the word "bear" in 2A. So rather than moving the goalposts to Sam Adams's opinion on private ownership of nuclear weapons or whatever other bad faith things you want to bring up, I'd rather focus on that.
> We can hem and haw and guess about what we think the founders would think, or we can look at what they said and what the historical context of firearms ownership is.
"Nothing like machine guns exist, let alone in private hands, let alone widely so" is part of that historical context, yes.
> We don't have private ownership of nuclear arms now...
As the apocryphal Churchill quote about whores goes, "We've already established that [some arms don't fall under the 2nd]; we're merely haggling over [which]..."
Puckle guns existed about 60 years before the revolution and you could absolutely own them privately and they were developed by a private citizen, although they're closer to a Gatling gun than a machine gun.
If your argument is that machine guns didn't exist in the late 1700s therefore they're not covered by the second amendment, then surely the internet isn't covered by the first amendment and you should be able to be arrested for any online comments you make, right?
> its operation does not match the modern use of the term... It was never used during any combat operation or war... Production was highly limited and may have been as few as two guns...
I'm not sure this works any better than the privateers example.
> If your argument is that machine guns didn't exist in the late 1700s therefore they're not covered by the second amendment, then surely the internet isn't covered by the first amendment and you should be able to be arrested for any online comments you make, right?
It has exactly the same sorts of widely-supported exceptions. I can't exercise my freedom of speech via threats, fraudulent claims, false advertising, lying to a FBI agent, etc. I can, and should be, arrested for such things.
(I also like to think modern social media and its societal impact would give the Founders some pause.)
> If that argument holds truth, than the entire internet should be exempt from 1A protections, shouldn't it?
Frankly, I think if the Founders had anticipated its rise, they'd have put a few more qualifications on the First. I think we're in the fuck-around-find-out phase of the technology outpacing the societal capacity to cope with it.
There was no law about revenge porn, either, until it became a societal issue. Most things we ban or regulate when they become a problem.
The Founding Fathers existed in a time where gun control was “they are big, heavy, and don’t shoot very fast”. That they did not anticipate a Glock with a 100 round drum is fairly understandable.
Cannons and grapeshot were an essential part of marine commerce at the time and tons of them were privately owned. The only control on who could own what back then was wealth.
I agree! But one of the more prominent Founding Fathers disagreed!
This is why I find "but the Founding Fathers wanted everyone to be able to own an AR-15" uncompelling. It's fairly clear evidence they thought the First was way less comprehensive than we currently interpret it, yet people interpret the Second the opposite way.
If one is to cite what the Founding Fathers intended as justification for an absolute individual right to bear arms, one must confront the fact that they clearly didn't consider the fairly simply written First Amendment to be absolute. That points to an attitude of "well obviously we're not gonna be stupid about it" for other amendments introduced at the same time... like the Second.
If they felt the Alien and Sedition Acts complied with the First Amendment, I think it's reasonable to believe they'd consider the assault weapons ban to comply with the Second.
Given Jefferson's remarks to Abigail Adams after pardoning everyone ever prosecuted under them, I don't know how you can draw that conclusion:
"I do not know who was the particular wretch alluded to: but I discharged every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition law, because I considered & now consider that law to be a nullity as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image; and that it was as much my duty to arrest it’s execution in every stage, as it would have been to have rescued from the fiery furnace those who should have been cast into it for refusing to worship their image."
Seems the Founders did not all support that viewpoint.
> Seems the Founders did not all support that viewpoint.
That’s fair! But also a challenge for guessing their intents with the Second.
(Notably, one of them is still on the books. Jefferson didn’t repeal. He had a personal dislike of Adams for quite some time.)
What they’d think of today’s weaponry would probably vary somewhat. The Scalias, Alitos, and Thomases of the Court would rather not confront that. They seem certain of their crystal balls.
I don't understand why if they used the words 'well-regulated militia' that so many pro-gun people argue that what _they actually meant_ was "any random person". They had words for that and they chose the words 'well-regulated militia'.
Interesting. How does pressure regulator relate to humans? It seems like any random civilian being able to gun down dozens of people is pretty out of regulation.
I've read every single word that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin ever wrote that survived to be collected into the various volumes of their collected writings.
Regulated has always meant "controlled".
The pressure regulator schtick sounds like some BS the NRA came up with after snorting some coke through the pile of rubles Putin gave them to poison the minds of Americans.
"regulated" appears 26 times, often in a military context, and it always means what everyone thinks it means and is never used the way you propose.
>Elections in Ireland, till of late, were regulated entirely by the discretion of the crown, and were seldom repeated, except on the accession of a new prince, or some other contingent event.
Do you have any historical examples that support your usage of the word?
Regulated means subject to regulations, which are a body of rules.
Regulated technical parameters like pressure and voltage are not subject to regulations (unless we construe the simple feedback mechanism to be a couple of rules).
It is blatant word semantic equivocation to conflate government regulation and pressure regulation.
The word "controlled" doesn't help much; it can be similarly equivocated as a near synonym of "regulated". Regulated pressure is controlled. A regulated industry is controlled.
Well regulated as in "well equipped". A militia wouldn't be worth much with pikes and spoons. Particularly the glorious founders antipathy for a standing army.
I don't like guns, but I think the masses right to own arms is more constitutional than the standing army.
So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia as in US v. Miller? Or does your complete and total deference to case law only go in one direction?
> In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is *not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment*, or that its use *could contribute to the common defense*.
If you point to Miller, it becomes clear that military weapons were more acceptable for personal ownership under their interpretation of the 2A than a sawed-off shotgun, which was considered only useful for crimes when the NFA was passed (similar to other "concealable" arms). Consequently, the common refrain that "well-regulated militia" now implies something like the National Guard, would thus also imply that in fact it's more reasonable to privately own a tank or fighter jet than a suppressor.
I don't think that most anti-2A advocates really understand that our current legislative limits on gun ownership are about as restrictive as they can be. Amend the 2A if you like (and it probably should be, even if only for clarity), but don't try to amend history.
There is no textual interpretation of the 2A that would not allow for private firearm ownership. Every state constitution that directly preceded the Federal US constitution had a section that said some variation of:
> "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."
That specific quote came from Pennsylvania's constitution (Article 13), which was a Quaker colony at the time, that was much less friendly to firearms than other states, but even they explicitly spelled out the right to arms for personal defense. Heller (2008) reaffirmed this. That we have the largest standing army on Earth now would be horrifying to the founders, because they knew exactly the kind of Imperialism and Authoritarianism that follows, as opposed to a muster-able militia.
As Huey Newton noted: "Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment."
> So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia
Yes, absolutely. I don't think that, for instance, anyone should own chemical weapons, or weapons like cluster munitions. Generally, any weapon that you would not deploy defensively in a conflict should not be in the hands of a defensive force (the citizenry/ militia). I don't think anyone should have nukes, period, but that's a different discussion.
You're not wrong but with all the other laws surrounding firearms in public and in vehicles not being able to have a concealed carry permit is a huge practical impediment to exercising one's rights.
CC permits and anything firearm related winds up having to do elaborate song and dance routines to avoid being unconstitutional. Searching the crappy DB that only contains stuff they're allowed to care about instead of searching the good DB that they use when they really want to find dirt on someone falls into that category.
"Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits"
Well that was a fuck-up! Not only is Los Angeles politically vulnerable right now, LASD went after gun owners. Bipartisan hell in 3, 2, 1...
I'm surprised that with all the leaks of sensitive databases there isn't a public copy of every government database running on Tor in some distributed anti-take-down configuration by this point.
It appears the LASD is not just at the top of the list, but essentially is the list: they account for 93% of the violations.
Which, as you point out, is not surprising. The LASD is enough of a mess that I've heard other nearby police departments complain about them, not to mention their history of gangs, corruption, and conflicts with the Board of Supervisors and FBI.
In California it's generally the county sheriff who issues carry permits. Apparently sometime in the past few years municipal police were also given the authority to do this, but for decades I believe it was just the sheriff. And it was discretionary and highly political--urban sheriff's departments were invariably, "no", unless you were a high profile figure, whereas rural sheriff's departments were typically an easy, "yes", unless they had a reason (good or bad) not to. And sometimes there were jurisdictional fights where rural sheriff's departments would bend the rules and issue permits to residents of urban counties, (arguably) sometimes just to spite the cities. Like most jurisdictions in the US, sheriffs are an elected position, and very often crudely politicized, especially in states like California with strong urban/rural partisanship.
In any event, it's likely most Californians still go straight to the sheriff's department when seeking a permit.
Historically (as in past 100-150 years), the Deep South and West, though today probably only states like Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, etc. Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia now have rural/urban divides that are stronger (more predictive) than, e.g., racial and class divides. Historically the West was rather homogenous politically, relatively speaking, but that's rapidly receding from memory. Though if you squint both Democratic and Republican West Coast politicians in some state (e.g. governor) and national offices (senator), but definitely not local offices, tend to still be a little more centrist than you'd expect as compared to their counterparts back east.
Typically the tactics and abuses are shared among other staff to help them in their cases. The 7k number should be higher in 2024. Exponentially higher.
Remember when CA 'accidently' released the names and addresses of ALL CCW holders? They weaponize the mere fact they have potential to release these databases.
The same law enforcement constellation that includes the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, famous for being a paragon of respect for civil rights, detainee rights and never having been repeatedly accused of beating arrestees, profiling aggressively or forming its own literal internal gang with which to intimidate whistle blowers and suspects?
Color me surprised that they'd ever abuse state databases on people of interest!
Does California law enforcement's rate of misuse of information systems exceed, equal, or fall short of my own misuse (usually unintentional, due to lack of clear policy/guidance) of various information systems?
>Isn’t it a little like Ted Bundy pointing out he hasn’t murdered the vast majority of Americans, though?
You expect there to be no murders.
I expect murders to be low, and for murderers to be punished.
I also expect the number of murderers in the police force to be only slightly better than that of the rest of society. There are background checks, but there are also other factors that may increase the rate, regardless: I expect from them what I expect from everyone.
So-- 7,000 murders per year.
For Iceland that's high. I think they had 3 last year.
For the United States, that's fucking fantastic! I wish we had 7,000 murders per year! If we had 3 that would be awesome but I'm not delusional.
It's all about the wider context.
Especially in this case, 6,800 of the misuses were from the LA sheriff's department doing background checks for gun permits so that's almost certainly a policy and procedure problem that has been fixed.
So that leaves around 200 cases.
Is that good? No.
But how bad is it? 200 misuses out of ten quadrillion accesses is pretty not bad, if you ask me. edit: and that's a sign that things are going well because I am not dumb enough to expect 0 misuses of anything by any group of individuals. I expect misuses to be low and for misuse to be punished.
Yes, the top-line number doesn't tell you much. Additional details matter: Was it one department or endemic? It appears mostly related to one large Sherrif department:
"""The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) sheriff’s department’s 6,789 abuses made up a majority of the record 7,275 violations across California that were reported to the state Department of Justice (CADOJ) in 2023 regarding the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS). """
Does misuse of the databases lead to tangible consequences? Maybe yes: "Across California between 2019 and 2023, there have been:
""
761 investigations of CLETS misuse, resulting in findings of at least 7,635 individual violations of the system’s rules
55 officer suspensions, 50 resignations, and 42 firings related to CLETS misuse
six misdemeanor convictions and one felony conviction related to CLETS misuse
""
> A Redding Police Department officer in 2021 was charged with six misdemeanors after being accused of accessing CLETS to set up a traffic stop for his fiancée's ex-husband, resulting in the man's car being towed and impounded, the local outlet A News Cafe reported. Court records show the officer was fired, but he was ultimately acquitted by a jury in the criminal case. He now works for a different police department 30 miles away.
When people say "I don't see why privacy matters, I have nothing to hide" this is the exact kind of edge-case I always think about.
The problem with a lot of these massive surveillance systems is that a lot of people end up with access to them, and some of those people may not be trustworthy.
In this case, your ex-wife gets engaged to a cop and now they're abusing their access to databases to cause you harm.
(That note that "he now works for a different police department 30 miles away" is such a toxic aspect of American policing: cops who get fired for stuff like this inevitably end up in the exact same job somewhere else.)
I was at a party with an early FB employee once and he was bragging about how they would spy on people to see who's profiles they were looking at. He thought it was hilarious, I never used FB again. I think his exact quote was "Hot girls are like celebrities, we watch people refresh their profiles all day long LOL".
I see you also have met zuck
Of course, this applies mass data collection by private entities too [1], and entities seeking to cross-reference commercially-available data sources together – even governments (thanks, Palantir!). There are plenty of ways to harass people without misusing your privileges as law enforcement.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/13/uber-empl...
Ex Palantir here: Palantir provides tools for data analysis and operations. The tools don't collect data. It's like saying: Thanks PostgreSQL for allowing this specific data misuse case. When I was at Palantir, the tools came with a robust ACL solution.
I'm not advocating for the company, but the statement in the comment is shallow. I was a̶b̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ assaulted while employed there, which is why I left, but my comment stands.
Everybody knows what purpose those tools are made for in practice simply by looking at who buys them and how they're used. So, no, Palantir does not get to claim some kind of neutrality here. It is a company knowingly enabling mass government surveillance and the associated abuses for the sake of profit.
>Everybody knows what purpose those tools are made for in practice simply by looking at who buys them and how they're used.
The name of the company itself is another dead giveaway.
Your premise is that absent of Palantir there would be no tooling. Someone is going to do it and it might as well be Peter Thiel & co because they're already doing all the other data surveillance.
"Someone else will just do this thing anyway, so I might as well do it" is a fairly weak excuse. I doubt it would hold up as a defense of a crime.
You are going to die someday, right? How close do you have to be to deaths door for it to be morally okay for me to smother you with a pillow[1]? It was going to happen anyway, why would it matter that I did it?
1. Or carbon monoxide mask, if the distress of asphyxiation is throwing you off the from point I'm trying to make
Mass scale surveillance wasn't practical or affordable until Linux HPC and OSS. The whole community is enabling.
> Palantir provides tools for data analysis and operations.
Potato potato. Palantir explicitly provides tools for data analysis and operations for government and enforcement agencies. Postgres is a database used for virtually anything that needs a database. The two aren't the same.
For the record - Palantir isn't 100% culpable of a government resource abusing its capabilities, but it sure unlocked a whole bunch of capabilities that were either too expensive or too difficult to do previously (for example, storing records in an RDMS).
> Palantir, the tools came with a robust ACL solution.
ACLs require humans to configure them. Uber also has a robust ACL. It doesn't stop someone in the org from using and abusing its God-mode.
> It's like saying: Thanks PostgreSQL for allowing this specific data misuse case.
Sure, if PostgreSQL were specifically selling their tools to organizations known to commit those sort of abuses.
This is exactly what Oracle does.
Oracle and Larry Ellison specifically are routinely called the devil incarnate though, so they're not exactly getting a break here.
I appreciate your comment, and it takes courage to post an unpopular opinion, but I'm not convinced about the analogy - Is Palantir used for myriad varied and lovely other cases? Or is it less like Postgres and more like napalm and ICBMs in that sure, it takes a human being to use it for its very much intended purpose?
I agree in the sense that it is directly the fault of the people doing the surveillance but this sounds like "guns dont kill people, people kill people..." which is true semantically, but not in spirit.
Palantir for example works directly with the government on State and Federal levels, and know damn well what they are doing, what their tools are used for, and answer directly to the requests of the government in regards to contracted work (all at the cost of the taxpayer mind you). These are mass surveillance tools, they have one purpose.
I also don't think its insignificant to recognize the backroom deals here that have created this vicious cycle of:
working as a govt official and giving kickbacks and heavily inflated contracts to contractors, and forming laws favorable to those contractors -> then getting a consulting job at those same defense contractors or lobbying groups -> and then moving back into politics
we can't just strip away the context here, a database has a purpose, what purpose does mass surveillance tools have? I'd argue that there is no proper use case for these tools against Americans, other than authoritarianism.
"We just make and sell bone saws, it's not us that murder journalists by dismembering them while they're still alive. I mean, sure, our only customers are Saudi military and intelligence forces, but how could we possibly predict they'd misuse the tools we make?"
You weren't abused. You were just talked to in a way that caused an elevated emotional response.
That said, I do find your argument interesting as it parallels the "guns don't kill people" argument. An I am a gun rights advocate yet am against Palantir's product usage on US citizens. Good food for thought.
“You weren’t murdered, you were just interacted with in a way that caused cardiac arrest”
Typical cop press brief
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>this is the exact kind of edge-case I always think about.
I think you're overly generous in calling this an "edge case". I do not think it uncommon at all, what we hear about are those who are too stupid to remain uncaught.
Reminds me of this: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/13/uber-empl...
Also reminds me of Amazon being sued for giving employees access to Ring data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/08/ring-ha...
The biggest problem with police is it's the sort of job where the more a given person wants that job, the less they should probably have it. For their sake and others.
Another huge problem is that law allows union bargaining agreements to dictate what happens to disciplinary records, that officers are allowed to resign when there are investigations happening that effectively kills them, etc. Once an investigation starts you shouldn't be allowed to resign, or at the very least the investigation should still continue and you should still be able to be punished after. Any union contract requiring the deletion/obfuscation of any disciplinary records for any reason other than clerical error or pardon should be illegal.
> Another huge problem is that law allows union bargaining agreements to dictate what happens to disciplinary records, that officers are allowed to resign when there are investigations happening that effectively kills them, etc. Once an investigation starts you shouldn't be allowed to resign, or at the very least the investigation should still continue and you should still be able to be punished after.
I don't think requires any union pressure; the department is happy to be both rid of a problem officer and not have to put it in the public record just how bad the problem officer was.
I have a friend who is a cop in Indiana (a "right to work" state), and after talking with him, I've realized that the department, as an organization, can largely be modeled as an entity that takes action to minimize its liability (individual officers are mostly shielded from civil liability, but the department is much less so). Apropos to this subject:
- They want to minimize the number of apparent past bad actors that will be revealed during discover because a lot of past bad actors could be presented as a pattern of poor hiring and/or training. Allowing officers to resign to kill an investigation is golden).
- When something bad happens and it makes it into a courtroom with sufficient evidence that it happened, they want every officer in the department to testify that the action in question is definitely not common practice and completely contrary to training. Such testimony would be greatly undermined by a subpoena that revealed several investigations finding officers to have engaged in such behavior in the past. Again anything that stops the investigation before it can find anything material could potentially save the department millions of dollars in future liability.
"the department is happy to be both rid of a problem officer and not have to put it in the public record just how bad the problem officer was."
...have you not seen the extents that LE agencies and the FOP will go to make sure these folk aren't fired? There's a reason LE have FOP cards in their wallets that include a statement to be read verbatim into a transcript for disciplinary meetings.
You have a very rose-stained perception into these things. I highly recommend you do some court watching to really understand how these systems work. These sorts of retrospective analyses of misconduct truly don't exist as deeply or as strong as you think they are.I recommend reading: https://chicagoreader.com/news/police-misconduct-brady/ (disclaimer: I'm one of the authors)
- Neither GP nor I were talking about officers being fired.
- GP was talking about a dynamic of officers resigning to avoid disciplinary actions on their record and working elsewhere.
- GP suggests this is due to union pressure.
- Indiana has much less strong police unions compared to Chicago
- My point is that there is still an incentive for departments to allow problem officers to retire before any investigation can confirm allegations of wrongdoing.
- I am more than willing to believe that lots of wrongdoing is enabled by the actions of unions, I just think that a policy allowing problem officers to resign with a clean record rather than be investigated is not solely motivated by union pressure.
As a US outsider (Australia) I see the Tulsi Gabbard hearing has stirred a barely tangential can of worms re: disclosure and keeping secrets.
It's national security related, Was Snowden a traitor or a whistleblower and pokes the bear on whistleblowers and duty to disclose poor and outright illegal behaviour.
Not sure if that's your beat or interest as a reporer .. but it goes to a core issue wt public institutions.
related: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/politics/tulsi-gabbard...
Transparency is indeed a large focus of mine, but it's mostly focused on local transparency and not federal.
Understandable :)
Why? Most police spend their time keeping the peace and catching bad guys. That seems an intrinsically rewarding activity. No need to posit any character flaw to explain why someone would want to do that. Maybe you are thinking “power over other people” is the issue, but I think most cops see that as a necessary tool rather than the chief reward.
This is not the problem.
The problem is a higher portion of people who just want to power trip apply to these positions, even if they are not the majority of the police force. Basically, it is the dream job for a bully.
It seems there should be severe penalties for "power tripping" (aka misuse of authority and databases for special purposes); slap of the wrist fine, suspended paychecks and internal investigations will not deter this group of people. I don't see how these crimes are considered less than drug dealing.
Specifically the punishment should include mandatory jail time and permanent ban from jobs where they have any form of authority over others including management, teaching, and all government positions.
> It seems there should be severe penalties for "power tripping" (aka misuse of authority and databases for special purposes)
I wonder if the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could be used against them in these cases. I'm not a law expert, but it seems to be used for similar "unauthorized access" cases.
> I think most cops see that as a necessary tool rather than the chief reward.
The problem with this view is that there are a lot of high profile cases that are examples of people abusing their power.
I am happy to believe that “most cops” see it that way.
I am less familiar with those police officers supporting reforms that would either expose or suppress the bad behavior of the minority.
Could have fooled me!
I'm more worried about the Police than any other class of criminals.
I think that is a pretty privileged position. You might feel different if there were homicides and armed burglaries in your neighborhood
Personally, I’m not so sure. That’s not to say I welcome the burglars and murderers but it would be comedy to say, “At least it can’t get any worse,” and then the police show up.
Excerpting power over others is intrinsically rewarding too, so I'm not sure why we should only expect the pure motivation.
There are countless videos demonstrating that some cops are power tripping. Some guy doesn't react quickly enough to a request and they get floored brutally while the cop screams at him: "Don't you dare f** with me or I'll turn you into a puddle you a*h**! Do you understand me! I said do you understand me!"
You might argue that hey, he has adrenaline flowing and so maybe he was a bit over the line. But they are professionals supposedly trained in effective deescalation techniques. Those techniques aren't just because it is humane, it is because it results in better outcomes. But the ego trippers put all that aside because they enjoy being the punisher.
Both of my grandfathers (and an uncle and a brother in law) were career cops. One of my grandfathers said: the power given to you as a cop either brings out the best in you or the worst.
Watch this for one of the most vivid illustrations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8
No human is trustworthy. Verify.
I don't disagree on the principle you're advocating for here, but this example isn't about massive surveillance systems. CLETS seems to aggregate various databases police already had access to, probably some of which include data that ideally we wouldn't collect at all, but vehicle registration has to be stored somewhere and cops always have and always will have access to that.
The other factor is that police have near blanket immunity to violate any of our rights, whether that be privacy, using the power of the state to harass individuals, and even killing or maiming people. Then the worst consequence they face is a light slap on the wrist, paid vacation and then a transfer to another Police department. Police only serve one purpose, and that is... well if you know, you know. They have a mass surveillance state in their hands, blanket immunity, and no oversight or checks and balances. People should at the very least recognize this fact.
On top of that I get super frustrated when people want to do austerity measures like cutting funding to libraries, cancer research, public health etc... but refuse to even acknowledge that the police takes up the majority of a states public funding by orders of magnitude, and often receive "surplus" military weaponry.
If anyone actually cared about govt spending, it would be extremely clear that military and police funding would come first and foremost. The reality is that these two things are heavily intertwined, and the ways in which they are corrupt are the same... but one should ask themselves why does the US police force need to be more powerful than nearly every countries military? Who is it that they are fighting and who are they fighting for?
> but one should ask themselves why does the US police force need to be more powerful than nearly every countries military? Who is it that they are fighting and who are they fighting for?
Well, either you pay for healthcare (especially mental health care) and social security programs such as affordable housing... or you'll pay police to deal with the fallout.
Unfortunately, unlike in Europe, "government handouts" for the poor aren't something to score political points with, but authoritarian police is...
not just the same job, likely a cash transfer bonus. get caught doing bad shit, and get a new boat for next season.
I'm cool with this. The FBI purged my city and state of rampant corruption and they remove heinous violent criminals from the street every day, often before they can commit any other crimes. Most of the people who work there are tireless and thankless servants.
And to all the haters, let's see how you feel when your daughter is abducted and taken over state lines or your local law enforcement becomes corrupt and starts working with criminals. The FBI showing up is a great feeling.
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Database use can NOT be limited by policy. If the data is there, people with access to it WILL use it for whatever they want, even if that's simply because nobody told them what the restrictions are.
The best way to prevent misuse of data is not to have it. The second best way is to only allow access through technical means with proper access control at the query level and never access to the raw data.
idk, I would say that at least in healthcare, most people are sufficiently terrified of the consequences of HIPAA violations that they won't access records they aren't supposed to. In this case, what works is a combination of serious, career-ending consequences and the knowledge that compliance departments conduct regular audits of everyone's access logs.
The problem is that if someone has access to query at all, they can abuse it.
How do you limit to specific search strings? Is that a thing?
An interface that accepts only certain things - not raw SQL - and only returns whats needed for the task at hand. Logging of who asked for what is good too but is not preventative.
> The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits
So for the concealed carry there is a background check involved, but it has to be done in a certain way, and the police instead were being more "thorough" and were digging through more databases than they were supposed to? I guess they do have access to those databases, but are only supposed to check them if they suspect a crime was committed.
What's the personal motivation there? It seems like they were going out of their way to be more "thorough", wouldn't it save them time and grief not to check more than needed. Is some higher political figure asking them to be more "thorough". I don't quite get the whole picture. Of course, they broke the law, but just wondering about their motive.
The CLETS database LACSD used includes non-conviction records, investigative records, gang affiliations, and other data that aren’t part of the proper background check process. For example, if you were arrested but never charged, or if you’re a known gang member without any convictions, those records would be in CLETS but not in the system they’re legally supposed to use for concealed carry permits (CCPs).
State law doesn’t allow this kind of non-conviction information to be used in CCP decisions, so this was an overreach. (previously you had to be of "good moral character" and have "good cause" to get a CCP, but these have been replaced with objective criteria)
You could argue that having more information might lead to better decisions on who gets a permit, but that’s not what the law allows—and letting police pull extra data whenever they feel like it creates obvious risks of abuse.
The issue at hand is despite federal rulings forcing all states to have some level of "shall issue" concealed permits, and laws on the books, California's process has left it to county sheriffs to follow the evaluation criteria. Some, like San Bernardino, practically rubber stamp them if you pass the background checks. Others, like Ventura, Riverside, LA, etc. try their hardest to find ways to reject them - even circumventing the law to do so.
They've also tried to implement strong arm policies like "We will notify your employer you have a license" knowing most large employers in California are fairly liberal and anti-gun and might look at that negatively to try to dissuade people from even exercising the right.
Aha, that's the kind of nuance I was missing. Something just didn't add up. One would like to believe these are all just hard-working officers, going above and beyond their "call of duty" to keep the guns out of "bad citizens'" hands, but that seemed a little too naive of an idea.
I think the most likely good faith version of this is that the LACSD wants to prevent people that are bad actors from obtaining the licenses.
Where this touches on abuse are people who are not convicted of any particular criminal offense related to firearms, or people that have had negative contact with the LACSD.
So on the "positive" side this might allow them to prevent a person who they strongly believe is a gang leader but has not been convicted of any offense from obtaining a permit.
On the "negative" side this might be people like defense attorneys, anti-police activists, or private investigators who have a tendencious relationship with the police from obtaining such a permit. Or in some cases maybe even people who have simply had a negative interaction -- filing reports critical of officers, etc., who are being spitefully targetted.
The law attempts to strike a balance between the concerns and law enforcement overreach and exists for a reason.
It is an ideologically driven belief that "dirty civilians" don't deserve firearms, and any reason to deny them access should be used.
Probably also Wilhoit's law some too "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." So not only do some people not get the right to own a gun effectively, but specifically certainly kinds of people arbitrarily.
There has been documented corruption and abuse in basically every state that uses a "may-issue" firearms permit scheme that allows official "discretion" about "suitability," as opposed to a "shall-issue" one where issuing a permit is mandatory to anyone who meets the qualifications.
California has been a shall-issue state since 2022, when Bruen made may-issue unconstitutional.
Yeah I would be very interested in the demographic makeup of those people who were checked in this database compared to those who weren't. Maybe cross-referenced with who accepted/reviewed/received their application.
Maybe nothing but perhaps very interesting.
This is not about the right to have firearms, but the right to carry them concealed, which is not exactly the same.
To "bear" means to carry. "You may have this firearm but you cannot carry it in a manner which is fit for purpose anywhere other than your own private property" is a pretty tough sell to anyone who believes in the second amendment.
But that would comport with the 2nd's militia concept: guns owned and kept for militia use in times of emergency, not everyday carry.
I'm happy to get into a 2A debate (as funny as it sounds it is a hobby of mine!) but it seems like a tangent for this thread specifically. I'll just say that this definition of "militia" is completely incorrect in the historical context in which it was written. The next thing you'll say is that "well-regulated" means regulated by the government which is also 100% incorrect.
Militia is the people - it's everyone, individually. Well-regulated means well-functioning, fit for purpose. In order for individual people to be fit for militia/defensive service, they cannot be deprived of their right to make, purchase, own, use, and/or carry firearms.
My favorite quote related to this:
"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people." - George Mason, address to Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
George Mason was an anti-federalist arguing his opposition to the Constitution. When he says "They consist now of the whole people" he is referring to the present moment under the Articles of Confederation. He goes on to argue his opposition to the constitution, saying:
> If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but they may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people. If we should ever see that day, the most ignominious punishments and heavy fines may be expected.
He very clearly believed that the federal government under the Constitution would have the power to determine who did and did not belong to the Militia which is one of many reasons he voted against ratification. He also clearly believes that the federal government has the task of regulating it given the talk of punishments and fines, though he seems fine with that as long as they are reasonable. That it was ratified in that form makes your referenced quote an argument against your reading of the second amendment.
That particular quote does not really support the presumption here. In that debate, as with most ratifying debates around the constitution and the bill of rights, the concern is that the federal government not usurp the ability of states to arm their militias.
That quote in context [1] clearly is about who the members of the militia are drawn from, not the implicit militia-ness of all citizens. He even states this explicitly later in the same argument: "Under the present government, all ranks of people are subject to militia duty".
In the end, they wrote what they wrote and they ratified what they ratified -- "the right of the people" and not the right of the "several states" or the "militia of the several states" as is used elsewhere in the document. So it's a right of the people, period, and "keep and bear" has a plain meaning (Scalia wrote something to the effect of "you cannot interpret 'he filled and kicked the bucket' to mean 'he filled the bucket and died').
Some state constitutions (contemporaneous and known to the authors of the constitution) carved out an explicit self-defense or individual right to arms, but this language was not encoded into the second amendment.
Whenever I encounter quotes from the constitutional ratification debates that purport to claim an individual right to keep and bear arms, on closer inspection in context, they are arguing about states vs. federal authority, not an individual right. If you choose to respond by offering other supporting quotes, please give a link to the full context and due consideration of it, because I have yet to see an actual quote that holds up.
[1] https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/rc/rat_va_13.htm
> I'll just say that this definition of "militia" is completely incorrect in the historical context in which it was written.
That's also true for the definition of arms.
You can define "militia" as "all the of-age white males" if we get to define "arms" as "muskets". Fair trade!
I'm happy to debate or discuss this in good faith but this isn't a good faith argument.
"Arms" meant (means) state-of-the-art, military-level hardware. The muskets that civilians had in their homes were as good or better than what you'd be issued by the burgeoning American military, to the extent that you were issue anything and weren't just expected to bring your own. Throughout all of American history, perhaps with the exception of nuclear arms and vehicles like tanks and submarines, firearms research and development has occurred in private industry and made its way into the military later.
> The muskets that civilians had in their homes were as good or better than what you'd be issued by the burgeoning American military...
Probably not cannons and grapeshot, though.
Took me 10 seconds on Google: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/29/joe-biden/...
But the specifics are irrelevant, the spirit is clear.
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Sam Adams, address to Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
> Took me 10 seconds on Google...
Finding an article that says, essentially, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and then goes on to talk about government licensed privateers - akin to the modern setup of a security guard licensed to carry in a state that doesn't otherwise permit it. Is there evidence outside of that of personal home ownership of cannons? (Let alone of a widespread nature?)
Do we think Sam Adams would advocate personal ownership of nuclear bombs, or do we think he'd perhaps see such things as a category slightly different than the muskets of his time?
We can hem and haw and guess about what we think the founders would think, or we can look at what they said and what the historical context of firearms ownership is. We don't have private ownership of nuclear arms now and pointing there is IMO another explicitly bad faith argument, in part because it's clear you don't particularly care what the founders' intentions were because there are thousands of pages of discussions and arguments showing that regular every-day people were allowed to - encouraged to, in cases required to - own weapons on par or better than military armaments of the day. And despite that, my guess is you have a problem with people owning or carrying AR-15s, or with people carrying handguns on them when they go to a restaurant, etc. I'm happy to be proven wrong though!
The start of this little digression was private citizens carrying their personally owned handguns outside of their home as is plainly meant by the word "bear" in 2A. So rather than moving the goalposts to Sam Adams's opinion on private ownership of nuclear weapons or whatever other bad faith things you want to bring up, I'd rather focus on that.
> We can hem and haw and guess about what we think the founders would think, or we can look at what they said and what the historical context of firearms ownership is.
"Nothing like machine guns exist, let alone in private hands, let alone widely so" is part of that historical context, yes.
> We don't have private ownership of nuclear arms now...
As the apocryphal Churchill quote about whores goes, "We've already established that [some arms don't fall under the 2nd]; we're merely haggling over [which]..."
Puckle guns existed about 60 years before the revolution and you could absolutely own them privately and they were developed by a private citizen, although they're closer to a Gatling gun than a machine gun.
If your argument is that machine guns didn't exist in the late 1700s therefore they're not covered by the second amendment, then surely the internet isn't covered by the first amendment and you should be able to be arrested for any online comments you make, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puckle_gun
> its operation does not match the modern use of the term... It was never used during any combat operation or war... Production was highly limited and may have been as few as two guns...
I'm not sure this works any better than the privateers example.
> If your argument is that machine guns didn't exist in the late 1700s therefore they're not covered by the second amendment, then surely the internet isn't covered by the first amendment and you should be able to be arrested for any online comments you make, right?
It has exactly the same sorts of widely-supported exceptions. I can't exercise my freedom of speech via threats, fraudulent claims, false advertising, lying to a FBI agent, etc. I can, and should be, arrested for such things.
(I also like to think modern social media and its societal impact would give the Founders some pause.)
Just like I can't claim 2A freedom to use a gun and murder someone.
You're saying since MGs didn't exist, they shouldn't be covered - or at least presenting that as a valid argument? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
If that argument holds truth, than the entire internet should be exempt from 1A protections, shouldn't it?
> If that argument holds truth, than the entire internet should be exempt from 1A protections, shouldn't it?
Frankly, I think if the Founders had anticipated its rise, they'd have put a few more qualifications on the First. I think we're in the fuck-around-find-out phase of the technology outpacing the societal capacity to cope with it.
> I think we're in the fuck-around-find-out phase of the technology outpacing the societal capacity to cope with it.
We absolutely agree on this!
> Is there evidence outside of that of personal home ownership of cannons?
Is there evidence of a law against the personal ownership of cannons?
There was no law about revenge porn, either, until it became a societal issue. Most things we ban or regulate when they become a problem.
The Founding Fathers existed in a time where gun control was “they are big, heavy, and don’t shoot very fast”. That they did not anticipate a Glock with a 100 round drum is fairly understandable.
Cannons and grapeshot were an essential part of marine commerce at the time and tons of them were privately owned. The only control on who could own what back then was wealth.
> You can define "militia" as "all the of-age white males" if we get to define "arms" as "muskets". Fair trade!
Ah yes, the argument that was explicitly rejected by the Supreme Court as "bordering on the frivolous."
I suppose the First Amendment is also limited to quill pens, parchment, and yelling to passersby from a literal soapbox?
Sure. They also said home-grown marijuana exclusively for in-state personal use in California was "interstate commerce".
> I suppose the First Amendment is also limited to quill pens and parchment?
The First Amendment, as the Second, was fully intended to have common-sense exceptions.
Shit, John Adams himself signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts into law.
I don't think many people would consider the Alien and Sedition Acts an example of a "common-sense exception" to 1A.
I agree! But one of the more prominent Founding Fathers disagreed!
This is why I find "but the Founding Fathers wanted everyone to be able to own an AR-15" uncompelling. It's fairly clear evidence they thought the First was way less comprehensive than we currently interpret it, yet people interpret the Second the opposite way.
. . . so two wrongs make a right?
I'm not sure how you get that from my comment.
If one is to cite what the Founding Fathers intended as justification for an absolute individual right to bear arms, one must confront the fact that they clearly didn't consider the fairly simply written First Amendment to be absolute. That points to an attitude of "well obviously we're not gonna be stupid about it" for other amendments introduced at the same time... like the Second.
If they felt the Alien and Sedition Acts complied with the First Amendment, I think it's reasonable to believe they'd consider the assault weapons ban to comply with the Second.
Given Jefferson's remarks to Abigail Adams after pardoning everyone ever prosecuted under them, I don't know how you can draw that conclusion:
"I do not know who was the particular wretch alluded to: but I discharged every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition law, because I considered & now consider that law to be a nullity as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image; and that it was as much my duty to arrest it’s execution in every stage, as it would have been to have rescued from the fiery furnace those who should have been cast into it for refusing to worship their image."
Seems the Founders did not all support that viewpoint.
> Seems the Founders did not all support that viewpoint.
That’s fair! But also a challenge for guessing their intents with the Second.
(Notably, one of them is still on the books. Jefferson didn’t repeal. He had a personal dislike of Adams for quite some time.)
What they’d think of today’s weaponry would probably vary somewhat. The Scalias, Alitos, and Thomases of the Court would rather not confront that. They seem certain of their crystal balls.
I don't understand why if they used the words 'well-regulated militia' that so many pro-gun people argue that what _they actually meant_ was "any random person". They had words for that and they chose the words 'well-regulated militia'.
Regulated like pressure regulator, not regulated like the sort government bureaucracy HN idolizes. The latter meaning came later.
Basically the same situation as when you read "gay" in a historical context.
Interesting. How does pressure regulator relate to humans? It seems like any random civilian being able to gun down dozens of people is pretty out of regulation.
>Regulated like pressure regulator
I've read every single word that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin ever wrote that survived to be collected into the various volumes of their collected writings.
Regulated has always meant "controlled".
The pressure regulator schtick sounds like some BS the NRA came up with after snorting some coke through the pile of rubles Putin gave them to poison the minds of Americans.
Here's the full text of the Federalist Papers: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1404/1404-h/1404-h.htm
"regulated" appears 26 times, often in a military context, and it always means what everyone thinks it means and is never used the way you propose.
>Elections in Ireland, till of late, were regulated entirely by the discretion of the crown, and were seldom repeated, except on the accession of a new prince, or some other contingent event.
Do you have any historical examples that support your usage of the word?
Regulated means subject to regulations, which are a body of rules.
Regulated technical parameters like pressure and voltage are not subject to regulations (unless we construe the simple feedback mechanism to be a couple of rules).
It is blatant word semantic equivocation to conflate government regulation and pressure regulation.
The word "controlled" doesn't help much; it can be similarly equivocated as a near synonym of "regulated". Regulated pressure is controlled. A regulated industry is controlled.
Well regulated as in "well equipped". A militia wouldn't be worth much with pikes and spoons. Particularly the glorious founders antipathy for a standing army.
I don't like guns, but I think the masses right to own arms is more constitutional than the standing army.
Except that is not the definition of the Second Amendment according to US Supreme Court case law.
So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia as in US v. Miller? Or does your complete and total deference to case law only go in one direction?
Per Miller:
> In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is *not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment*, or that its use *could contribute to the common defense*.
If you point to Miller, it becomes clear that military weapons were more acceptable for personal ownership under their interpretation of the 2A than a sawed-off shotgun, which was considered only useful for crimes when the NFA was passed (similar to other "concealable" arms). Consequently, the common refrain that "well-regulated militia" now implies something like the National Guard, would thus also imply that in fact it's more reasonable to privately own a tank or fighter jet than a suppressor.
I don't think that most anti-2A advocates really understand that our current legislative limits on gun ownership are about as restrictive as they can be. Amend the 2A if you like (and it probably should be, even if only for clarity), but don't try to amend history.
There is no textual interpretation of the 2A that would not allow for private firearm ownership. Every state constitution that directly preceded the Federal US constitution had a section that said some variation of:
> "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."
That specific quote came from Pennsylvania's constitution (Article 13), which was a Quaker colony at the time, that was much less friendly to firearms than other states, but even they explicitly spelled out the right to arms for personal defense. Heller (2008) reaffirmed this. That we have the largest standing army on Earth now would be horrifying to the founders, because they knew exactly the kind of Imperialism and Authoritarianism that follows, as opposed to a muster-able militia.
As Huey Newton noted: "Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment."
> So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia
Yes, absolutely. I don't think that, for instance, anyone should own chemical weapons, or weapons like cluster munitions. Generally, any weapon that you would not deploy defensively in a conflict should not be in the hands of a defensive force (the citizenry/ militia). I don't think anyone should have nukes, period, but that's a different discussion.
You're not wrong but with all the other laws surrounding firearms in public and in vehicles not being able to have a concealed carry permit is a huge practical impediment to exercising one's rights.
CC permits and anything firearm related winds up having to do elaborate song and dance routines to avoid being unconstitutional. Searching the crappy DB that only contains stuff they're allowed to care about instead of searching the good DB that they use when they really want to find dirt on someone falls into that category.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_Count...
That seems like it's only data that's self reported by the agencies themselves, I suspect the real number is much, much higher.
The article also mentions this is only one of many databases, and the only one that has self-reporting requirements for abuse.
"Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits"
Well that was a fuck-up! Not only is Los Angeles politically vulnerable right now, LASD went after gun owners. Bipartisan hell in 3, 2, 1...
That’s about every 30 minutes, every day of the week, including weekends, during their day shift.
As if anyone needed any more proof that LASD is just a criminal gang with a badge.
I'm surprised that with all the leaks of sensitive databases there isn't a public copy of every government database running on Tor in some distributed anti-take-down configuration by this point.
How do I join the effort for running these kinds of analyses?
Well it's no shock that the top of the list of offenders is the LA Sheriff Dept, they're a nightmare of abuse at pretty much every level.
It appears the LASD is not just at the top of the list, but essentially is the list: they account for 93% of the violations.
Which, as you point out, is not surprising. The LASD is enough of a mess that I've heard other nearby police departments complain about them, not to mention their history of gangs, corruption, and conflicts with the Board of Supervisors and FBI.
In California it's generally the county sheriff who issues carry permits. Apparently sometime in the past few years municipal police were also given the authority to do this, but for decades I believe it was just the sheriff. And it was discretionary and highly political--urban sheriff's departments were invariably, "no", unless you were a high profile figure, whereas rural sheriff's departments were typically an easy, "yes", unless they had a reason (good or bad) not to. And sometimes there were jurisdictional fights where rural sheriff's departments would bend the rules and issue permits to residents of urban counties, (arguably) sometimes just to spite the cities. Like most jurisdictions in the US, sheriffs are an elected position, and very often crudely politicized, especially in states like California with strong urban/rural partisanship.
In any event, it's likely most Californians still go straight to the sheriff's department when seeking a permit.
>especially in states like California with strong urban/rural partisanship
I haven't been to a state where there isn't strong urban/rural partisanship. Is that what Rhode Island is like?
Historically (as in past 100-150 years), the Deep South and West, though today probably only states like Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, etc. Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia now have rural/urban divides that are stronger (more predictive) than, e.g., racial and class divides. Historically the West was rather homogenous politically, relatively speaking, but that's rapidly receding from memory. Though if you squint both Democratic and Republican West Coast politicians in some state (e.g. governor) and national offices (senator), but definitely not local offices, tend to still be a little more centrist than you'd expect as compared to their counterparts back east.
Typically the tactics and abuses are shared among other staff to help them in their cases. The 7k number should be higher in 2024. Exponentially higher.
Remember when CA 'accidently' released the names and addresses of ALL CCW holders? They weaponize the mere fact they have potential to release these databases.
Guess there’s no Delete Act for state databases
The same law enforcement constellation that includes the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, famous for being a paragon of respect for civil rights, detainee rights and never having been repeatedly accused of beating arrestees, profiling aggressively or forming its own literal internal gang with which to intimidate whistle blowers and suspects?
Color me surprised that they'd ever abuse state databases on people of interest!
Only 7k? They are slipping.
What say you, Rob Bonta?
He will likely invoke the "but guns" exception to all California policies and ignore it.
7,000 times out of how many accesses?
7,636?
10 quadrillion?
Does California law enforcement's rate of misuse of information systems exceed, equal, or fall short of my own misuse (usually unintentional, due to lack of clear policy/guidance) of various information systems?
I don't think it matters.
> I don't think it matters
Of course it does. It doesn't absolve anything if the rate is low. But the frequency is absolutely meaningful.
Isn’t it a little like Ted Bundy pointing out he hasn’t murdered the vast majority of Americans, though?
At the very least, I wonder how many officers are responsible for the violations. 7000? 1? LASD only has 18k employees.
> Isn’t it a little like Ted Bundy pointing out he hasn’t murdered the vast majority of Americans, though?
No. It's like tracking the homicide rate. The rate going down or being low doesn't mean murder is fine.
>Isn’t it a little like Ted Bundy pointing out he hasn’t murdered the vast majority of Americans, though?
You expect there to be no murders.
I expect murders to be low, and for murderers to be punished.
I also expect the number of murderers in the police force to be only slightly better than that of the rest of society. There are background checks, but there are also other factors that may increase the rate, regardless: I expect from them what I expect from everyone.
So-- 7,000 murders per year.
For Iceland that's high. I think they had 3 last year.
For the United States, that's fucking fantastic! I wish we had 7,000 murders per year! If we had 3 that would be awesome but I'm not delusional.
It's all about the wider context.
Especially in this case, 6,800 of the misuses were from the LA sheriff's department doing background checks for gun permits so that's almost certainly a policy and procedure problem that has been fixed.
So that leaves around 200 cases.
Is that good? No.
But how bad is it? 200 misuses out of ten quadrillion accesses is pretty not bad, if you ask me. edit: and that's a sign that things are going well because I am not dumb enough to expect 0 misuses of anything by any group of individuals. I expect misuses to be low and for misuse to be punished.
Yes, the top-line number doesn't tell you much. Additional details matter: Was it one department or endemic? It appears mostly related to one large Sherrif department:
"""The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) sheriff’s department’s 6,789 abuses made up a majority of the record 7,275 violations across California that were reported to the state Department of Justice (CADOJ) in 2023 regarding the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS). """
Does misuse of the databases lead to tangible consequences? Maybe yes: "Across California between 2019 and 2023, there have been:
"" 761 investigations of CLETS misuse, resulting in findings of at least 7,635 individual violations of the system’s rules 55 officer suspensions, 50 resignations, and 42 firings related to CLETS misuse six misdemeanor convictions and one felony conviction related to CLETS misuse ""
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