Saturday, October 29, 2011

Okay, that's an easy one...

Nothing more clearly fails Joe Huffman's "Jews In The Attic Test" than a comprehensive, mandatory list of Jews (or Presbyterians, or blacks, or gun owners, or left-handers, or...) who might potentially be found in attics.

Which is all a national biometric ID database is when you think about it.

"Oh," comes the reply, "We just have to keep it from falling into the wrong hands! After all, this is about national security, and the government only has the best intentions..."

*BANG!*

I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What's the matter? Oh, you were finished! Well, allow me to retort:
  1. If we can't keep h4x0rZ out of Predator drones and Chicoms out of our satellites, how are we going to keep $RANDOM_FUTURE_VILLAIN out of our comprehensive National Identity Theft Clearinghouse/Pogrom Database?

  2. "Keep it from falling into the wrong hands"? It's a government database! It's starting out in the wrong hands! I don't know if you were keeping track in the 20th Century, dude, but Governments out-pointed Nigerian 419 Scammers by several hundred million to zero on the big International Dead Guy Scoreboard.
I'd sooner trust Joseph M'bekebeke in a Lagos internet cafe with this information than I would a bunch of guys with snappy uniforms and lots of guns. At least if Joseph decides to use the information to find me and rough me up, he's got to come up with the scratch for airfare first.

26 comments:

perlhaqr said...

It's starting out in the wrong hands!

Quoted for truth.

MSgt said...

Joseph is sending you money too?
Wow, small world, eh?

Great post. Loved the Pulp Fiction reference.

Borepatch said...

I would add another item.

3. Since the Government's computer security is so clearly incompetent, what's to keep someone from maliciously changing the data? There's an old, old saying in the security biz that if you want to give someone a Bad Day, hack the National Crime Information Center and put out an APB, armed and dangerous.


This may actually be the biggest short term risk.

And I guess you could probably add a fourth.

4. Since the program's success will be measured by how much data is in the database, not by how accurate the data is, the entire database will be crap.

jetaz said...

This is one of the few things that would make me go full on wookie suit. Cause I figure, if they are creating a database like this, it is only because they want to kill a bunch of us later, and we are better off starting this shindig early. Catch them by surprise, rather than the other way around.

SiGraybeard said...

That source article on Fast Company literally made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I've never been much a fan of dystopian future stories, but lately it seems they've been too optimistic.

Anonymous said...

Feds. Personal data. Oh, sure, nothing could possibly go wrong, no data would be misused and it would be utterly theft-proof. And I've got some truly lovely ocean-view property in central Nebraska that I'd consider putting on the market at a reasonable price if you send me $1,000,000 as escrow this afternoon.

And people still wonder why I don't like having my data available on the 'Net?

LittleRed1

the pawnbroker said...

Full agreement with the likelihood of ineptitude, misuse, and abuse of such a system.

More troubling still -and hilariously highlighted by your "wrong hands" quip- is that the actual purpose from the get-go is control.

But is it really much different than past methods? Crude death-camp tattoos from two generations ago and biblical foretellings from a hundred generations ago, would indicate not.

The difference is the technology, and that's not going away. And like it or not, our virtual fingerprints and everything we own and are, are out there floating around and available to any determined hacker -inside or outside gov- who wants them. The thing that I like most about the silicon age, the storage of and access to information, is also the thing that I most abhor and am afraid of.

So what's the answer? We can resist such an obviously dystopian measure as this, but does it matter? Is it already too late to avoid being numbered and ordered and watched and controlled?

Sometimes I'm glad that I'm almost done here.

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I'm glad that I'm almost done here.

+1

The Jack said...

But... but... it'll be different this time.

We're the goodies, our intentions are pure.

Besides making lists of gun owners or making a list of everyone is *different* than making a list of blondes or Jews.

After all, pogroms are only bad if you base it on things people can't change. When we do it we'll offer a choice to those-

Aaaaaaaand we have an answer to pawnbroker's question.

Why do would they even want a list like this?

Well if registration leads to confiscation...

Register your guns loose your guns.
(And gun owners see Joe Huffman's link to the Corporal's story)

Register your Jews...

Register everyone...

NotClauswitz said...

It's gonna cost so many bazillion-trillions to run it'll make the utterly failed Canadian Gun Registry look like a microdot flea-speck, and sink the economy even further.
Why not just do what they did in East Germany and have everyone be everyone else's snitch? All that costs is a vegan pizza every week.
Count the people in the picture: one, two, three, four, snitch - one, two... And they have the phonelines already set-up: Attack Watch.

Henry Bowman said...

Indeed. After all, it wasn't the Nazis who created the registration list of German gun owners, it was the relatively benign Weimar Republic. The Nazis just said, "Thanks for the spiffy new offices, leave the list right there on the desk, and don't let the Eingangstür mit Fliegengitter hit you in the ass on the way out."

Anonymous said...

Making a list
Checking it twice
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice....

Gerry

Justthisguy said...

Cheer up a bit. I comment a lot on Cap'n Lex's and Major Donovan's blogs, and most everybody who hangs out at those seems to be an Oath Keeper in fact, if not an official member. This is one of the reasons I prefer sojers to cops.

Alan J. said...

Oathkeepers, freedom lovers, and gun owners. Once again, I give thanks to our Founding Fathers for the 2nd Amendment.

As much as I don't like the policies of Barack, Nancy, and Henry - does anyone really think that the Democratic Underground, HuffPo, and Move-On types would like to see another Richard Nixon with this info in his hands?

Joe in PNG said...

Alan,
Sadly, when the People give up power to Their Guy with the hope that he'll get Something Done, it never occurs to them that they also just gave the same power to the Next Guy... who will then use it to Get Something Else Done.

See Aslo: The Patriot Act and The Department of Homeland Security.

Joe in PNG said...

Alan,
Sadly, when the People give up power to Their Guy with the hope that he'll get Something Done, it never occurs to them that they also just gave the same power to the Next Guy... who will then use it to Get Something Else Done.

See Aslo: The Patriot Act and The Department of Homeland Security.

og said...

This is a tasty burger. Is that bacon I taste?

Joe in PNG said...

"What do the Americain People look like?"
"What...I..."
"Where you from, Barak?"
"What?"
"What ain't no country I ever heard of! Do they speak English in What!?"
"...what..."
"English, Mother###er! Do. You. Speak. It?!"
"Yes"
"Now describe what the American People look like!"
"They're bitter..."
"Go on!"
"...they cling to guns and religion..."
"Do they look like a bitch?"
"Well, to tell the truth, yeah, they do- they elected me!"
"You have a point there..."

Don M said...

Better one tyrant 3000 miles away than 3000 tyrants one mile away...

Anonymous said...

I would rather have the government ignorant and inept and disgruntled, than clever, ept and gruntled.

Anonymous said...

Of course one approach would be to make the list so wrong as to be useless. For example, be sure to register your MG-42, your FG-42, and your Johnson LMG, your Masden LMG, your 30mm grenade launcher, your gatling, and your 3 inch mountain howitzer. All registered at your mother in law's address...

RL said...

I become afflicted with .gov database dyslexia at every opportunity.

Anonymous said...

"I'd sooner trust Joseph M'bekebeke in a Lagos internet cafe with this information than I would a bunch of guys with snappy uniforms and lots of guns."

Yeah, the nazis had snappy uniforms & lots of guns, an' look what they did! The gov officials are the same jack-booted thugs but of a different generation.

Anonymous said...

Aw, what could go wrong. After all the No Fly list has worked out so well. It kept those two year old little monsters off the flight. And Teddy the swimmer Kennedy. And those people from Idaho. Everyone knows they are dangerous.

Alan J. said...

Don, your "... 3000 tyrants one mile away..." reminded me of the opening quote in MHI. "You know what the difference between me and you really is? You look out there and see a horde of evil, brain eating zombies. I look out there and see a target rich environment."

Got another chuckle, thinking about that book.

Windy Wilson said...

Say what you want, but there were some snafus earlier but Ted "Swimmer" Kennedy hasn't flown on any commercial airliner for a few years now, and he isn't likely to fly on one anytime soon.