Police now have access to automated license plate readers mounted on their patrol cars.  These readers can track thousands of plates per day.  That creates a data log of where you (or your car, which is often the same thing) have been.  If the data is stored -- and it's trivial to store it once gathered -- the state has a record of your public movements any time you are within visual range of a police car. 

That includes when your car is parked within view of the street.  It isn't hard to imagine the applications; suppose you capture a terrorist and get his license plate.  Suppose you look up that license plate in the database and get a list of locations, and then you look up anyone else in the database whose license plate shows up near the terrorist's known locations at roughly the same time more than, say, twice.  Then you've got a list of that terrorist's associates, right?  Well, maybe just neighbors, but it's a place to start.

Now, suppose you write down the license plate of one of your political opponents...

Before, Heal said, police had to call license plates in to a dispatcher and wait to have the car verified as stolen. Plate readers, Heal said, ?are lightning fast in comparison? and allow officers to run up to 1,200 plates an hour, as opposed to 20 to 50 plates per day previously.

And every one of those records is stored for at least two years by the local "fusion center".  That is, two years that they admit to.

The New York Times turns on Obama over the surveillance issue:

This view is wrong -- and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House -- and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.

Too bad it all came out after the election.

RCMP revealed Thursday that officers have seized a "substantial amount" of firearms from homes in the evacuated town of High River.

"We just want to make sure that all of those things are in a spot that we control, simply because of what they are," said Sgt. Brian Topham.

"People have a significant amount of money invested in firearms ... so we put them in a place that we control and that they're safe."

That news didn't sit well with a crowd of frustrated residents who had planned to breach a police checkpoint northwest of the town as an evacuation order stretched into its eighth day.

I'm speechless.

Remember, they can't do this if they don't have a registration system.

So say 26% of Obama supporters, apparently.

In their defense, the Tea Party seems to have scared Obama enough to bring out the IRS audits.

Granted, the comment was stupid and, if you take it literally, threatening.  On the other hand, it's clearly not intended to be taken literally even when pulled out of context.  In context, according to the father, the next lines were "lol" and "jk". 

To make the situation even more absurd, the comments were seen and reported from Canada, which is quite a long ways from Texas and makes it clear we're talking about an online busybody rather than a concerned member of the same community.  The Texas police should have looked at the situation and at most knocked on this guy's door to say "Hi, you didn't really mean that stupid comment on facebook, right?"  Unless he responds by shooting at them, case closed.

It's possible they investigated and found some additional reason to be concerned, but this looks more like a panic over nothing than a legitimate charge to me. 

Federal courts authorized 1,354 interception orders for wire, oral and electronic communications, up from 792 the previous year, according to the figures, released Friday by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. There was a 5 percent increase in state and local use of wiretaps in the same period.

A single wiretap can sweep up thousands of communications. One 30-day local wiretap in California, for instance, generated 185,268 cellular telephone interceptions, of which 12 percent were incriminating, according to the report.

And they still did not manage to stop the Boston Marathon bombing.

It's a chilling combination: more accidental discharges than intentional ones in 2009-2011, and agents training with deadly bullet hoses.

Truth is, I don't really care about this one.  The absolute number of weapons discharges by the IRS is low -- 20 total, and just two more accidents than intentional.  The supposed need for IRS agents to have assault weapons that the Obama administration would like to deny the ordinary citizen is an embarrassing internal contradiction, but it's not like the IRS is the first government agency to discover a vital need for its own SWAT team recently.  

I'm noting this news item primarily because, at some future date, some gun control idiot is going to claim that AR-15 rifles have no use beyond murdering children and poodles, and I'll point them to this post and say "So why is the IRS murdering children and poodles?" 

(And then I'll point out that it's surely a job for the local police...)

A more serious IRS problem is the political targeting.  A good first step in responding to those problems would be to stop paying bonuses.

Two Democrats initially voted against, but then switched their votes.  The bill provides civil penalties for selling a firearm to a prohibited person, with a background check as a defense from prosecution.

The governor will likely veto the bill, and support is thin enough to make overriding the veto difficult.

UPDATE: Veto upheld.

I can't vouch for the source, but then, who can for this sort of thing?

They went after -- and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things -- they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the -- and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of -- heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House -- their own people.

This is exactly the reason we don't -- or didn't, until recently -- allow government to collect data without a warrant: it is inevitable that it will be abused.  The source hints at data collection on Obama (from the Bush years), at least one Supreme Court justice (which raises all sorts of interesting questions about the Roberts vote switch on Obamacare), and god knows what else.

One of the problems with a system like this, that is designed to collect everything and then only reveal limited amounts when a particular number or data point becomes "interesting", is that everything you've done in the past becomes fair game when your number becomes "interesting". 

Hat tip to Joe Huffman.

... at his blog The Smallest Minority.  It's been a while since you've had an uberpost, Kevin.  Welcome back.

They charged this guy with six counts of possessing an assault weapon, plus some miscellaneous stuff related to drugs and carrying a concealed firearm and generally being an idiot.  But the article claims they found "five fully automatic high-powered rifles".  Fully automatic rifles are not "assault weapons" by the federal definition.  If they were really fully-automatic, shouldn't we expect to see federal charges?

I suspect they are standard semi-automatic rifles, possibly (but not necessarily) assault weapons under the California definition.

Anyways, it's good to see how effective California's gun control laws are.

That is, "not very."

This time it's not about hassling the Tea Party, it's about $500 million in ordinary corruption.  Who knew you could get that much government money by making friends with the right IRS agent and faking disability?

The more important question, though, is this: can we have a special prosecutor yet?

1. Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;
2. Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;
3. Preserve "foreign intelligence information" contained within attorney-client communications;
4. Access the content of communications gathered from "U.S. based machine[s]" or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

Take a close look at the first two points.  If the NSA hoovers your data -- and they will, if you use a cell phone or the internet , because they collect everything -- then they can keep it for five years.  If they have some reason to look at your data during that time -- for which they do not need a warrant if they don't already know you are a US person, which they carefully avoid knowing -- then anything they find in their 5 years of data that indicates criminal activity, threat of harm, encrypted data for any reason, or anything remotely related to cybersecurity, can be retained and used against you.

Without a warrant.

On the face of it, the Taxpayer Advocate Service is supposed to be one of the good guys.  They are, after all, supposed to represent taxpayers, and right on cue they are speaking up about the problems at the agency and how the IRS needs to make it up to taxpayers.

[Taxpayer Advocate Service] found that inadequate guidance, inadequate training, inadequate systems, inadequate metrics, insufficient transparency, and management failures all contributed to the problems, along with EO's failure to vet its guidance with TAS and EO leadership's failure to acknowledge TAS's statutory authority ...

So what are they asking for, specifically?  What would it take to rectify these severe image problems at the USA's least favorite federal agency?

More money for guidance.

More money for training.

More money for systems.

More money for metrics.

More money for transparency.

More money for management.

More money to bribe taxpayers.

More power for the taxpayer advocates.

Sorry, no.  I believe bad behavior should be punished, not rewarded.  And making "apology payments" to taxpayers with money collected from taxpayers is just insulting.

That doesn't mean punitive action is inappropriate.  It means that punitive action in this case should involve the IRS employees  involved losing their jobs, paying fines, and going to jail.

For the past two years, a secretive unit in the Metropolitan Police has been developing the tools for blanket surveillance of the public's social media conversations. Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a staff of 17 officers in the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) has been scanning the public's tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook profiles, and anything else UK citizens post in the public online sphere.

"Sentiment analysis" that can determine your mood, "horizon scanning" that tries to pre-empt disorder and crime, facial recognition software that can track down individuals, geo-location that is able to pinpoint your whereabouts, and profiling that can map who you are and what circles you move in. All innovative techniques used in the private sector, and all adapted for law enforcement and surveillance.

Remember when two terrorists attacked a soldier leaving his barracks by ramming him with their car and dismembering his body in public while people watched?

Remember when the government started charging people with hate speech for posting angry tweets about the incident?

They aren't watching the terrorists.  The terrorists know how to hide and have the motivation to maintain communications discipline.  They are watching you.

The National Review explains why claims that including "progressive" and "occupy" on the list of names to be on the lookout for does not mean that left and right groups were treated equally.

Part of the answer is that "progressive" groups applying for 501(c)3 status (which allows for no political activity) were told that the designation might not be appropriate, and, presumably, informed that 501(c)4 groups ("social welfare" with some political activity) might be better.  Front-line agents were still empowered to make immediate determinations.  On the other hand, "tea party" groups applying for 501(c)4 status were referred to a group of legal specialists in Washington, DC for special processing and intrusive questioning that delayed applications for years.

... Barack Obama might not have been on the ballot in his Indiana primary against Hillary Clinton:

The plot successfully faked names and signatures on both the Obama and Clinton presidential petitions that were used to place the candidates on the ballot. So many names were forged -- an estimated 200 or more -- that prosecutor Stanley Levco said that had the fraud been caught during the primary, "the worst that would have happened, is maybe Barack Obama wouldn't have been on the ballot for the primary."

Would such a small change in election results have changed history?  I don't know -- I'd have to go back to the 2008 primary campaign to see if Indiana had a pivotal role in that race.  But it illustrates how what looks like a relatively small problem -- forged signatures on ballot eligibility petitions -- could potentially change the course of the nation. 

German police say they have arrested a 57-year-old trucker whom they accuse of carrying out 762 shootings on European highways over the past five years.

They must be imagining things.  That can't have happened.  They have gun control there.

"We found the famous needle in a hay stack," said Joerg Ziercke, chief commissioner of the German Federal Criminal Police. "A dangerous criminal who on several thousands of kilometers of highway in Germany, France, Belgium and Austria would reach for a gun whenever, wherever to shoot at other vehicles and endanger people's lives. It's unprecedented in Germany criminal history."

Not unprecedented anymore.

He told reporters at a news conference Tuesday in Wiesbaden, Germany, that guns and ammunition matching the caliber of those used in many of the shootings were confiscated at the suspect's home in North Rhine Westphalia. The trucker had no gun permit, Ziercke added.

Impossible!  No gun permit?  How did he commit all those shootings then?

Police say the highway attacks became more dangerous a year ago when the culprit began firing larger caliber ammunition.

MORE THAN ONE gun without a gun permit?  Gosh!  How could that happen?

[Hat tip to Irons in the Fire]

Turns out Bloomberg had New York City employees registered as paid lobbyists in Nevada, working on gun control, in addition to hosting the Mayors Against Illegal Guns website on New York City infrastructure.  This shouldn't surprise anyone.

Americans tend to be less concerned about civil liberties violations when those violations are pointed at someone else.  With that in mind, it's good to occasionally remind each other that surveillance is not aimed at catching terrorists.  Terrorists have far more incentive to avoid being caught than ordinary people do, and are thus far more motivated to use high-effort, high-effectiveness means to avoid surveillance.  Ordinary people aren't willing to put out the effort in their lives to hide things that may still be embarrassing, awkward, useful for blackmail, or mildly criminal.

The only way to ensure that everyone has privacy is to make privacy the default assumption, and on the internet, that's more of a technical problem than a user one.

"I've set up a privacy and civil liberties oversight board, made up of independent citizens including some fierce civil libertarians," Obama told Charlie Rose in an interview that aired Monday. "I'll be meeting with them. And what I want to do is to set up and structure a national conversation, not only about these two programs, but also the general problem of data, big data sets, because this is not going to be restricted to government entities."

Sounds good if this is the only soundbite you hear.

The board, however, was funded eight years ago, and has remained largely powerless since then.

Eight years ago, and Obama is only now meeting with the oversight board?  It doesn't sound like it's a priority for him.  It sounds like he wants political cover for the NSA scandal after the fact.

The panel operated without offices or staff for years, and the fifth and final member -- Chairman David Medine -- was only confirmed last month, by a narrow 53-45 party-line vote.

Well, gosh, I'm so glad that Obama finally took the time to set up this panel after he got caught out spying on millions of innocent Americans.  It doesn't sound like a cynical attempt to polish his reputation at all, does it?  After all, Obama set up this advisory board to... wait, why are you laughing?

The board, however, was funded eight years ago, and has remained largely powerless since then.

The panel was first suggested in the 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission, and was first launched that year. In 2007, the group was granted independent powers, but both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama resisted nominating members for years.

Oh.  So it wasn't Obama's idea after all.  It was launched in 2004, under a Republican congress and a Republican president.  It was funded in 2005, still under Republicans.  Now, President Bush certainly deserves some blame for not nominating members, but Obama is into his second term now and he only just nominated the last member?  How hard can this be?

Clearly, it hasn't been a priority for either party.

Radley Balko explores what we can learn from police t-shirts. It's not pretty.

Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed to lawmakers that the FBI owns several unmanned aerial vehicles, but has not adopted any strict policies or guidelines yet to govern the use of the controversial aircraft.

"Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on US soil?" Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Mr Mueller during an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Yes," Mueller responded bluntly, adding that the FBI's operation of drones is "very seldom."

I wouldn't object to FBI use of drones in specific cases -- hostage situations, kidnappings, counterespionage.  I do object to their use for general surveillance.  And without guidelines, they will inevitably be abused.

Just being able to get the recall petitions certified is a big success.  It shows that politicians will face consequences if they vote for gun control.  Even if they retain their seat in the recall election, they have to spend time and money contesting that election.  And winning is not at all a foregone conclusion when you have pissed off enough voters to generate a recall, since the recall effort itself points to a core of organized voters in opposition.

Gun control has consequences.

Hat tip to Sebastian.

PTR Industries, a company that builds high-end semi-automatic rifles at a factory in Bristol, Conn., is relocating to Aynor, South Carolina for its more-friendly gun rights laws, according to vice president of sales John McNamara. Meanwhile, a new Quinnipiac University poll released this week shows 57% of Connecticut residents are in favor of the state's new gun law.

Gun control costs your state jobs.  It's high time the gun industry relocated to states that will welcome them.

Oh, and about those layers of editors and fact-checkers...

The company first announced plans to leave Connecticut in April, when [name of legislation] {sic} was passed, outlawing guns like the ones manufactured by PTR Industries. The legislation was written in reaction to the heart-breaking Sandy Hook school shootings that claimed the lives of 20 children and 6 adults.

I'm sure they'll silently fix that when they notice.