View Full Version : Have an ATN NV Scope? Have an App for it? DoJ wants your name and #...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/09/06/exclusive-feds-order-apple-and-google-to-hand-over-names-of-10000-users-of-a-gun-scope-app/#3f5992ed6135
Exclusive: Feds Order Apple And Google To Hand Over Names Of 10,000+ Users Of A Gun Scope App
Own a rifle? Got a scope to go with it? The government might soon know who you are, where you live and how to reach you.
That’s because Apple and Google have been ordered by the U.S. government to hand over names, phone numbers and other identifying data of at least 10,000 users of a single gun scope app, Forbes has discovered. It’s an unprecedented move: Never before has a case been disclosed in which American investigators demanded personal data of users of a single app from Apple and Google. And never has an order been made public where the feds have asked the Silicon Valley giants for info on so many thousands of people in one go.
According to a court order filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 5, investigators want information on users of Obsidian 4, a tool used to control rifle scopes made by night-vision specialist American Technologies Network Corp. The app allows gun owners to get a live stream, take video and calibrate their gun scope from an Android or iPhone device. According to the Google Play page for Obsidian 4, it has more than 10,000 downloads. Apple doesn’t provide download numbers, so it’s unclear how many iPhone owners have been swept up in this latest government data grab.
If Apple and Google decide to hand over the information, it could include data on thousands of people who have nothing to do with the crimes being investigated, privacy activists warned. Edin Omanovic, lead on Privacy International's State Surveillance program, said the order would set a dangerous precedent and scoop up “huge amounts of innocent people’s personal data.”
“Such orders need to be based on suspicion and be particularized—this is neither,” Omanovic added.
Neither Apple nor Google had responded to a request for comment at the time of publication. ATN, the scope maker, also hadn’t responded.
Cont'd...
WELL......I certainly feel more free, how about you?
WELL......I certainly feel more free, how about you?
Totes! :no:
58701
Ahh the angst over weapons systems recipients.
I’ve always held the belief that “friends don’t let friends buy ATN” ever since I saw them in the Sportsman’s Guide catalogs bought a few things from them when I was a kid and was burned every time due to the crappy quality.
Well, that's disconcerting. What's next, requesting information on all M4C members?
FromMyColdDeadHand
09-06-19, 17:57
As if they don't know.... they are just looking at a way to get the info legally for a prosecution of some sort...
Would they have to have a warrant, or could they just ask nicely?
What's next, everyone who's downloaded a ballistic app? Used the distance measure feature in google...
ramairthree
09-06-19, 18:15
If you’re not doing anything wrong what’s the problem?
If you have the urge to give me the five fingered pimp hand across the mouth for saying that, we would probably get along.
Diamondback
09-06-19, 19:20
If you’re not doing anything wrong what’s the problem?
If you have the urge to give me the five fingered pimp hand across the mouth for saying that, we would probably get along.
Um, does the urge to reply with a steeltoe in the nuts then one to the teeth count? "If you haff nossink to hide you haff nossink to fear" was supposed to have died with the Nazis... people don't like it when they try that card and I throw their own "you are literally Hitler now! FASCIST!" back in their faces. :)
The boardware doesn't support Upvotes, but you'd get one on that.
Diamondback
09-06-19, 19:22
58701
Ahh the angst over weapons systems recipients.
Welcome to the open Pandora's Boxes of Patriot Act and ITAR...
If you’re not doing anything wrong what’s the problem?
If you have the urge to give me the five fingered pimp hand across the mouth for saying that, we would probably get along.
That follow up put a smile on my face. :thank_you2:
MountainRaven
09-06-19, 20:26
I'm so glad that the eight year assault on our Second Amendment rights is over.
I'm so glad that the eight year assault on our Second Amendment rights is over.
LOL. Wut? Just don't download the stupid app. Assume any app you do DL is viewable by anyone.
People are expecting 4th amendment protections to apply to their phone the same way it applies to your desk at home and it really isn't even close to the same thing. Especially when people click "accept" to terms and conditions of most apps, software, etc.
Google and Apple are only limited by user agreements and how much loss of privacy their customers will accept to remain customers, if it was voluntary. A court order sounds like a warrant, not a request. All warrants should be limited by the 4th Amendment.
Google and Apple are only limited by user agreements and how much loss of privacy their customers will accept to remain customers, if it was voluntary. A court order sounds like a warrant, not a request. All warrants should be limited by the 4th Amendment.
Yes, should. I'm just saying real world expectations vs reality. In a perfect world a lot of things should be different, but they aren't. If you download it to your phone, it just won't be given the same level of privacy and protection that you get if you put something in your safe at home.
Outlander Systems
09-07-19, 07:11
So the same government that was arming drug cartels through straw purchases, is now concerned about ITAR?
Yeah, right lmfao.
So the same government that was arming drug cartels through straw purchases, is now concerned about ITAR?
Yeah, right lmfao.
And Saddam and other nefarious groups.
MountainRaven
09-07-19, 08:58
EULAs aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Maybe we should get everyone to download the app? Add in another quadrillion downloads worth of info?
Diamondback
09-07-19, 17:50
Maybe we should get everyone to download the app? Add in another quadrillion downloads worth of info?
Or create a gazillion fake Play Store accounts to download it, just to bugger the data? :)
jerrysimons
09-07-19, 23:28
The reason being looking for users of the app (which indicates scope possession) who don’t line up with official purchase records or US residency requirements of ItAR. No doubt your personal info, name, location, phone number is consented to being provided to the third party and able to be “requested” by the govt.
Is not the time to insert this article? In one sense I feel vindicated because I had this pondering years ago when the idea of asset freezing for forced assault weapons ban turn ins seemed more far fetched, yet in another sense - dreadful:
https://www.alloutdoor.com/2016/09/13/google-facebook-will-turn-nation-gun-owners/
You probably think Facebook and Google are throwing off geysers of money by dominating an industry known as “online advertising”, but those of us who’ve spent time on the inside of this beast know the industry by its true name: mass behavior modification.
It’s only a matter of time before these two companies openly go on the attack against American gun ownership, and when they do, they’ll form a foe far greater than any we’ve faced before. If you don’t believe that they can turn the tide of public opinion on firearms, a tide that lately seems to be going in our favor, then you’re not paying attention.
Consider the following three articles:
Facebook reveals news feed experiment to control emotions — Protests over secret study involving 689,000 users in which friends’ postings were moved to influence moods
How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election — Google has the ability to drive millions of votes to a candidate with no one the wiser
The new mind control — The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do
Go ahead and click through to the above. I’ll wait. Just skim them for now, but when you get a moment definitely go back and read them. They’re not from your favorite conspiracy site, and the people sounding the alarm have impeccable, mainstream academic credentials. You may think you’re immune to most of the techniques outlined above, but you’re not. And even if you were, what matters is that the country as a whole is not immune, not by a long shot.
To understand just how effective these manipulation techniques are, you need only consider how large Facebook and Google’s profits have grown based on their ability to get users to buy things via advertising. These companies’ ability to alter user behavior on a mass scale has been validated again and again by the one entity that you just can’t fool, and whose judgement isn’t clouded by political agendas: the market.
FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE JIHADIS, THEN THE RIGHT-WINGERS…
With all of this in mind, consider the very latest news on Google’s Jigsaw project, which is a deliberate use of all of its tools and techniques for the purposes of explicitly political behavior modification–first against would-be jihadis, and next against right-wing “radicals”.
GOOGLE HAS BUILT a half-trillion-dollar business out of divining what people want based on a few words they type into a search field. In the process, it’s stumbled on a powerful tool for getting inside the minds of some of the least understood and most dangerous people on the Internet: potential ISIS recruits. Now one subsidiary of Google is trying not just to understand those would-be jihadis’ intentions, but to change them.
Jigsaw, the Google-owned tech incubator and think tank—until recently known as Google Ideas—has been working over the past year to develop a new program it hopes can use a combination of Google’s search advertising algorithms and YouTube’s video platform to target aspiring ISIS recruits and ultimately dissuade them from joining the group’s cult of apocalyptic violence.
The Intercept reports on Google’s plan to turn the aforementioned tool against right-wingers:
A GOOGLE-INCUBATED PROGRAM that has been targeting potential ISIS members with deradicalizing content will soon be used to target violent right-wing extremists in North America, a designer of the program said at an event at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday…
“We are very conscious — as our own organization and I know Jigsaw are — that this [violent extremism] is not solely the problem of one particular group,” Frenett said.
“Our efforts during phase two, when we’re going to focus on the violent far right in America, will be very much focused on the small element of those that are violent. The interesting thing about how they behave is they’re a little bit more brazen online these days than ISIS fan boys,” Frenett said.
He noted that this new target demographic is more visible online.
“In the U.K., if someone in their Facebook profile picture has a swastika and is pointing a gun at the camera, that person is committing a crime,” Frenett said. “In the U.S., there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. So we found that when we’re looking for individuals that are genuinely at risk of carrying out violence, that they’re relatively open online.”
Adnan Kifayat, head of global security ventures at Gen Next Foundation, said he is optimistic about applying the ISIS approach to North America. “Our interest is in countering extremism … particularly in the homeland,” he told The Intercept.
Taking all of the above into account, what comes next is crystal-freaking-clear: a coordinated, private sector, mass behavior manipulation campaign aimed at stigmatizing and suppressing gun ownership and disguised as an effort to “do something” about the “gun violence epidemic” and “right-wing extremism.”
When the CDC was in the heyday of their smear campaign against guns, a PR effort that a prominent CDC official likened to the public campaign against smoking, that was just the warm-up. Those guys with their billboards and their op-eds were just pikers compared to the power of Google and Facebook.
When these two private sector behemoths, who know everything about you and who are wildly successful in using that knowledge to manipulate you, turn their sights on the “public menace” that is guns, then you’ll long for the days when the anti-gun movement was mostly just sad astroturf groups funded by a single New York billionaire. These companies can flip national elections, state and local elections, and public attitudes, all in secret and without spending nearly the kind of (traceable) money that Bloomberg does.
I don’t know what to tell you to do about it. I’m just warning you that it’s coming. These companies will begin to manipulate public opinion on gun ownership, and it will have an impact. It’s going to be up to us to figure out how to counter it.
jerrysimons
09-07-19, 23:32
The Dystopian Future is starting to take shape. Big Data coming to get us with the FEDS zealously mounted on their back.
I read somewhere else that the actualized vision of the patriot act for the intelligence community is only now coming to fruition as technology has advanced to the point of making it possible with super computers, algorithms, facial recognition, AI, etc.
Diamondback
09-08-19, 21:43
The Dystopian Future is starting to take shape. Big Data coming to get us with the FEDS zealously mounted on their back.
I read somewhere else that the actualized vision of the patriot act for the intelligence community is only now coming to fruition as technology has advanced to the point of making it possible with super computers, algorithms, facial recognition, AI, etc.
This is why so many of us small-l libertarian sorts opposed the Patriot Act's passage in the first place, we read the damn thing and knew what kind of Pandora's Box the Shrub and his handlers were opening up... seriously, how many of you have actually READ the complete text?
Cyberpunk 2020 is now reality....
Overbearing monopolistic megacorps
Augmented reality
Rampant unrest
Crooked system
The only real freedom is in small pockets of an ever oppressed Internet
All we need is cybernetics and even that sorta exists.
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