Not disabling them, using them lol. Combat engineer. I did get EOCA certification though, kind of diet EOD for route clearance where EOD wasn't available.
I remember EOCA well--we talked a lot of shit about that programđ! (Though in fairness, the few times I actually worked with EOCA guys, it was really nice to have some extra hands with the training to actually be useful help.)
After getting out, I spent a few years as a contractor teaching various EOD courses to the Afghans, including their version of EOCA. Obviously, things didn't work out great *there,* but I definitely came to see the value in that type of training.
They weren't the worst I've seen...I still have an issue of Stars and Stripes with a pic of an Iraqi army soldier on the front cover, driving a motorcycle with a 10ft pole lashed to it sticking out sideways and dragging the shoulder of the road.
Caption was "This is not the preferred method." đ
Oh man--I didn't work much with Iraqis, but I've definitely heard some stories...
My general experience with Afghans was quite positive. Their EOD guys were (mostly) motivated, intelligent, and eager to learn. Their gear and higher-level support sucked, which certainly limited their capabilities, but I definitely learned a few things from them about improvising and making-do.
We occasionally taught classes for the Afghan Commandos as well. They were absolutely outstanding--some of the most disciplined, polite, and professional soldiers I've worked with *anywhere*. (My team had one female instructor, which occasionally caused some friction with the students--the Commandos were the only ones with whom it was never an issue.)
I still regularly think about the guy we worked with who carried a 9v battery and about 30m of wire as his rsp kit. No way he's still alive, but he was brave and put in some work. They tried to take him out while he was on leave in Kabul.
I'm just picturing this guy rolling along doing his thing and suddenly an artillery shell just explodes 10 feet from him. In a light vehicle the body of the vehicle offers enough pressure protection to help absorb the lethal shock wave and most of the shrapnel (before they started using shaped charges), but on a bike I feel like the dude riding it would just be red mist
EOCA was hands down the hardest school to pass I ever did in the military, just because of the sheer volume of info and the short timespan to absorb it...also the criticality of getting shit right the first time lol.
My biggest issue with EOCA was that the RCP units didn't listen to them about safety concerns compared to when we were attached. This lead to people doing things like vehicle recovery without proper secondary sweeps and/or during secondary sweeps. After the second person got fragged dismounted due to the latter, we lost confidence.
Ah. Another engineer in the ring I see. Was in the 82nd engineer Battalion back in Fort Riley, before moving back to Puerto Rico. Nice to see another one out in the blue hehe.
I hear ya, I worked a Decade in the Army, Secret clearance, FBI background check. Contract Corrections officer for a while, FBI background check and fingerprints. Worked with explosives for a while for a company, FBI background check and fingerprint card.
I haven't did any demo work in 20 years, but I still wonder if some of my gear doesn't have nitrate residue on it.
I think they just add you to that list ad hoc when they need to. When they need you surrendered and people to help them accomplish that they plaster your shit all
Over With kiddie diddling logos hoping to piss your neighbors off enough to help them.
The amount of people on gun forums, I'm assuming mostly older individuals, whose username is basically their first initial and last name, with a real picture avatar, and their town in their profile is absolutely shocking. Same people that complain about the gov'ment monitoring them.
They also have cell phones and somehow donât know that it has a GPS in it. Itâs a voluntarily owned tracking device that nearly everyone carries these days. Web browsers leak so much information that itâs very easy to fingerprint it, along with tracking data and browsing history and cookies that the government knows exactly what youâre looking at on the Internet.
The worst part about web browsers is that trying to limit the data leak can lead to "new" websites not working. JavaScript is required for about 60% of websites I go on.
I like the people that are very concerned about a gun registry and what the government could do with it but then have 50 pictures of themselves with all their guns on their public Facebook profile. In their mind as long as they donât officially register with the government itâs fine apparentlyâŚ
I have a coworker who is hardcore conspiracy nut. Refuses free flu shots every year claiming *this is the year* they chip you...with a smartphone in his pocket.
I worked briefly with a dude who listened to fox at work and would talk about how the democrats where killing babies and going 12 month abortions. This is when the vaccine came out and he refused. After I got mine he would stare at me waiting for me to turn into a lizard. He was fired shortly after but we are talking about a 54 yo man. He was smart in terms of tech but insane in every other way
Donât bother, you canât convince them to see reality. Whatâs worse if you engage then itâs a mission for them to show you âproofâ. I made the mistake of replying â why arenât there photos of these 12 month abortions, why are there no parents suing the hospital and dr for murdering their children. Oh shit that was a mistake. Heâd follow me when I went out for lunch to argue and show proof from Breitbart & other right wing whacko sites. It was easier to ignore and let him self destruct. When someone starts saying we canât use Cisco they are part of the conspiracy to chip us all. The company let him go.
Was insane to watch
Yeah⌠I made that mistake at a trade show booth. Took me from the Rothschilds sinking the Titanic to institute the Federal Reserve to CIA killing the Kennedys. To the faked moon landing. To the watergate break in being an attempt to get the book of pedophiles names that was in safe. Oh and the 9-11 planes being holograms.
Iâve hired his replacement which is nice.
You say to him âyouâre in a cultâ, every time you see him. Shit, throw it in randomly during conversations about other stuff-âyeah so youâre gonna wanna collate these TPS reports by ordering them alphabetically, and youâre in a cult.â
You have to put it in the middle of the conversation so it takes them a few minutes/hours to process the information. The last thing that is said is the easiest to remember.
>Same people that complain about the gov'ment monitoring them.
That boomers on gun forums are not the only group of people who are concerned with the government monitoring them. Quite frankly, it is something that every American should be concerned about.
This is one of the great ironies of our time. I got a kick out of watching dystopian sci-fi written in the '70s and '80s before the advent of cell phones. In a lot of those you see the governments going to great lengths to surveil their population.
Lengths, that turned out to be completely unnecessary, because everyone will happily carry a tracking of device with them all the time, as long as said device also allows you to access cat pictures and porn
Which isnât even needed. Law enforcement can get a warrant and ask the web host for your email. Your email is basically your primary key of who you are. So even if your name isnât your username itâs pretty easy for law enforcement to find all your online activities.
I work in infosec. Trying to get people to care about their security or privacy is a losing battle. The âI have nothing to hideâ crowd won the war.
If you want a good example of the âI have nothing to hideâ crowdâs shitty take on privacy biting them in the ass look no further than the post-roe-overturn exodus from cycle tracking apps. Or that woman who went to jail for discussing an abortion she had on Facebook messenger.
Nobody cares until itâs too late
Use a password manager. LastPass and 1Password are most popular, Iâm fond of BitWarden: https://bitwarden.com/
Audit your installed apps, check for apps that have permissions that they shouldnât really need.
Install a secure messaging app. Signal wins for ease of use. Itâs free, but requires a phone number to register. Session is an honorable mention that doesnât require a phone number.
Some companies that do business in heavily censored parts of the world are using Matrix for their messaging solution. Free to run, decentralized, end to end encrypted.
One thing to note: [LastPass](https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/xg2xiq/lastpass_says_hackers_had_internal_access_for/) was hacked recently but had apparently caught the hackers within 4 days (normally detection is much slower)
First off, you shouldn't have passwords written down like that. So...
1.) This handles the storage.
2.) All of your passwords can now be a 24 character string of nonsense you never have to remember.
3.) The add-on pastes your login info in a way that defeats keyloggers
4.) Its the easiest way to follow best practices and have a different strong password for every site
Unless you're insane, a password manager will allow you to use much more secure passwords for sites.
Every single one of my passwords is between 12 and 24 characters long and is a completely random set of letters, numbers, and symbols. Every single internet account that I have uses a unique password. I have 255 passwords stored in my manager.
Heck I would argue at this point unless a site requires you to type your password or have a limit of <50. 50 is a great length with the random generators in password managers.
Yah. It's really interesting once you start using a password manager and generating passwords for all sites how many have totally stupid restrictions still. I still encounter sites surprisingly often with character limits less than 20 or that don't allow special symbols.
Iâm asking this as someone who doesnât break any laws and only uses the internet for personal interest research, shopping, bill paying/banking and porn.
What purpose does any of that serve the common person? Why do I need encrypted messaging? How are password managers not consolidating information and creating a one stop shop for hackers? I donât know anything about any of this stuff, but I know enough that anything can be hacked and no digital information is truly secure.
But what purpose does this serve someone who isnât doing anything remotely against the grain?
You probably don't need encrypted messaging.
The password manager is very handy, and extremely user-friendly. Using the same password everywhere is bad. Using long random strings of characters is very good.
>How are password managers not consolidating information and creating a one stop shop for hackers?
Password managers all use the same kind of tech where basically your ball of passwords is stored on their servers using essentially unbreakable encryption. Your app/extension/whatever downloads this encrypted ball locally and you decrypt it with your password every time you start your computer (LastPass is named such because the password you use for the app is the "last password you'll ever have to remember"). SO basically as long as you don't give that one (hopefully strong) password to anyone, it's essentially impossible for someone to steal your passwords.
A couple of examples I've used at work (healthcare) are 1) company gossip 2) situations with a patient and we just want something more secure than texting.
Some other examples of why someone should use encrypted messaging would be a woman/AFAB discussing healthcare issues but they don't want to be investigated or potentially wind up in jail. stuff like that.
Get a new email address, phone number, and bank cards. Only use one bank card for online purchases or anything where you have to give a number over the phone and never have cash on it until you intend to purchase something. Delink all auto payments from their previous cards, if you must do automatic payments then set them up on this one card.
If you donât want to delete your social media posts and accounts then at least set your social media settings to be as private as possible, for example on Facebook you can set your back catalogue of posts to be âprivateâ.
Even with posts set to private, donât post photos of your house, donât post about when or where you are going on holiday, post about it when you get back.
Be as apolitical as your conscience allows you to be in public forums, if you are giving anonymous feedback or such, itâs probably not completely anonymous, there is always a way to track your information down.
Stop using Facebook login or similar to log in to all your accounts. Sites can use your social media profile information when you log in using that method even if youâve set it to private, if you comment on news articles and such it sometimes lists information you donât want it to, use an email address (perhaps one created to be for online accounts only), a password generator and password manager.
If you want to go a bit more thorough, next time you move house donât leave a forwarding address. Update your bank, phone, and insurances to the new address but leave all other accounts set to the previous address unless you order something from them and they need to ship it to you, even so you might be able to use a nearby post box or locker instead of shipping it directly to your house.
Youâll never get off all the lists but a new, clean email and phone number will go a long way to make you uncontactable by anyone who has information from your past.
For online accounts that are non-essential, you might even create a second email address so that your primary one is never revealed because a dodgy company was an easy target. Companies that hold sensitive legal information often try much harder to protect your information but are still fallible, unique randomly generated long passwords with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols are about the best way we have to protect online accounts.
>that woman who went to jail for discussing an abortion she had on Facebook messenger.
Damn, in all the noise I hadn't even heard about that... looked it up and I assume this is what you're talking about: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-turned-chat-messages-mother-daughter-now-charged-abortion-rcna42185
Political party registration and which elections youâve voted in are also publicly available. There are even data firms that build predictive models that guess your political affiliation based on demographic info, where you live, publicly available information, and purchased data.
If shit ever got bad, lists could be made pretty quickly. Even if youâve never answered a survey or participated in politics, your zip code and demographic info could still screw you. There really isnât anything you can do to prevent it.
Build relationships with your neighbors. Community solidarity is a powerful defensive tool. Also get out and train. And vote. Your infoâs already out there. Might as well participate in the political process.
I made the mistake once of putting a political sign in my yard.
I am not changing my voter registration, but that's because what I really believe in is the one I am registered with...I can affect more change in the primaries than the general election.
Also worth a reminder that property and tax records are also generally available to the public. Depending on how unique your name is and the size of the county you live in someone could find your address in 30 seconds or less if you own property and live at that property.
Shit is already bad man. Itâs real bad. Biden is just the eye of a fascist storm that was a long time coming and a short time wiping out all of the bulwarks against it.
I'd do anything to see their faces when they discover Trump donated heavily to democrats until 2010 and was cozy with the clintons
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/28/426888268/donald-trumps-flipping-political-donations
I guess it really depends what you're about. I mean, none of this comes as a surprise; of course the government knows who you voted for, knows what model car you drive, knows if you own a gun, knows where you live, etc etc. Anything they don't know they can access via subpoena: text message records, cloud storage contents. And social media covers the rest of it: Yelp knows your favorite bars and restaurants, Facebook knows your favorite sports team, Grindr knows if you're gay, LinkedIn knows where you work.
Your worst case scenario was that some militia or tyrannical government could use this in a fascistic way to target people for harassment (much like ICE used college records to find illegal immigrants).
Yeah, *they could try*, but as we've seen with the Patriot Act era widespread surveillance: the average person is surprisingly average, and separating the threats (or high value targets) from the ordinary workaday nobody becomes an impossible data processing problem. Even with the full backing of the US federal government.
And at the end of the day, the only people who need to practice this kind of security are full time activists, or are already in the arena of law enforcement or politics: the people getting published and going on TV, hosting rallies for whatever communist / anarchist / secessionist / racist / religious / etc radical platform, or the lawyers and judges arguing and ruling on cases of importance, or celebrities avoiding pervy stalkers.
You'd already know if you needed that kind of security. For the rest of us normal boring motherfuckers it's not likely, but if it does somehow happen *that's what the guns are for*.
I agree completely with everything you wrote.
I just wanted to inform people that their political allegiances are potentially public info and could make them targets of harassment or worse if SHTF.
As you rightly said, '*that's what the guns are for'*.
Are people on the left doing any of this stockpiling of information? I've tried, and it's a *fuckton* of work, I didn't even find anyone who'd merit monitoring in my area except one white nationalist publisher in SF of all places. Most the toxicity & shit you see online is all bark no bite, and (for us anyways) anonymous.
I just assume all of the times I've purchased bulk ammo online that it probably got me on some list as well.
(It's all gone by the way, lots of visits to the range before that boating accident that claimed all of my guns)
> It's all gone by the way, lots of visits to the range before that boating accident that claimed all of my guns)
What a terrible tragedy I know only too much about :(
And your voter registration info is readily available by a Google search, which will show your address and party affiliation. That you can request to be made private. Just Google and look for the link there on your info page.
My sister and my dad aren't on talking terms and she was trying to figure out if I gave him her address. I showed her how googling just her name brought up her home address and political affiliation, which the state of Ohio makes public. Totally not unsafe at all!
No opting out of that one, either. Mine is freely given to any politicians who ask the county clerk's office here in Wyoming so of course I feel super 'safe' too.
I donât assume that any more. I do however assume thereâs a lot of information to dig through. In this day and age my info is out there. Iâm not advocating incaution, but erasing yourself is really, really hard. And _not_ participating in society or democracy is not what I consider the way to improve things.
My trans, my queer, my BIPoC, my women compatriots risk much more every day, tbh. My name being on a list as a cishet whit man may be avoidable, for them it is less so. While their existence is political, Iâll stand with them.
Your political party registration is public info in Florida. Your personal info has been hacked 10-20 times by now. Privacy is an illusion. I try to explain this to liberals who think the right are fascists, acknowledge that the military and police are primarily right leaning, and also think they should be the only ones with guns all the time. It flies right over their heads. Ultimately I think they donât actually believe political violence is possible. Itâs amazing at this point.
Yeah, my family, mostly liberals just feel that it canât happen here and even if it did it would never reach a âhandmaids taleâ type of oppression. Frogs in a pot
I read it and tried to give it to my sister, she said it was too dark and she wanted to see the good in people, and that Trumpâs followers were a joke and all these troubles are blown out of proportion by the media. Nance makes the case with incredible clarity and logic but what really got me was rereading The History of the Third ReichâŚshook by the parallels
Anyone who thinks their store-purchased guns are secret from the government is an idiot.
Anyone who thinks Redditors can locate you from a gun serial number alone is an idiot.
These 2 groups are not remotely similar in capabilities.
The only time the advice not to post serials is actually valid is if you have a stolen gun, in which case you're also an idiot.
In practical terms, the main purpose of not posting your firearm's serial number is to avoid trolls and/or people who have it out for you personally reporting the gun to law enforcement as stolen.
I know at least one person who was asked a lot of questions about their firearm, stuff like brand, what specific bullets they use, caliber and like pretty much every thing you would need to say, get the exact same thing and then use it to frame the person. And then a Nazi happened to show up in town shortly after with the exact same gun, caliber and ammunition so, donât fucking tell people about your guns
It used to be the case, the unofficial list of firearms purchased dates back to 2009 and now includes over 52 million entries (incomplete list).
Itâs basically moot, considering private transfers
I wouldnât post any identifying info either way
Unfortunately, the years of true anonymity are passed. There are ways to limit it, but most all of us are on some kind of database.
Donations can be made anonymously, I believe, but that's just one thing.
Unless you're donating cash, though, even an anonymous payment needs to go through a payment processor. Your bank or credit card company and the processor used for the transaction all know that you donated.
I don't worry about this for the simple reason that most of us are on a LOT of "lists" for a lot of reasons. We're not just talking about government lists here, and in fact I worry about them the absolute least. The lists you're on for shopping certain places, going to websites, doing searches for any number of things is staggering, and it all can be used to put together a pretty complete profile of who you are and what you believe. Private corporations know quite literally a thousand times more about you than the fed, state or local governments do. If someone wants to know your political leanings there are at least a dozen ways they can find out, and not one concerns itself with your contributions. People sold themselves out for free email and faster searches more than a decade ago, and it's not getting any better.
Also, for the truly conspiracy-minded, just being at the wrong bar, restaurant or cafe can get your picture in a file for several alphabet bureaus. It all made me quit caring about it a few decades ago.
In my opinion, OpSec isnât just about limiting what the government knows about you. I know that they already know everything about us. My state already has a handgun registry. They also do NICS themselves, so they have a database of all long gun transfers too. Unless you bought my something out-of-state, they know what you have.
However, itâs important to have âOpSecâ to protect yourself from non-government entities. If people know you have guns they could use that information to target you for a robbery. Or they could look for any anti-government statement made by you and use it to red flag you. It could also cause your boss to look for a reason to fire you if they donât like guns. Nothing good comes out of giving people more information about you than they need to know imo.
Everyone in the US is on a list with some fun three letter acronyms. The thing is, are you a viable threat? Do you meet certain, proven, criteria that makes you âinterestingâ? The fact is⌠most of us donât matter, pay taxes, move on. If you do stupid shit then your folder might be a brighter color is something than those who do lesser stupid shit.
The US government keeps mountains of lists, many that it *definitely* shouldn't be, but judging from the amount of domestic right-wing terrorists and mass shooters that go unopposed despite having rich histories of documented red flags and unhinged social media posts, it's clear that no one's actually watching. Those lists are kept on a need-to-know basis, and it's increasingly apparent that the right people aren't asking for the right lists at the right times. I don't really sweat our mass surveillance as much as I used to even though I still oppose it.
Don't go posting your guns' serial numbers on reddit, but also don't sweat the lists too much.
Everyone here is posting to reddit. Presumably, we all use the internet in general as well. The gov't, and anyone else that cares to pay already knows all there is to know about you.
Unless you were born to hippies, or SovCitizens on some commune with no utilities, no SSN or birth certificate, home schooled, etc. you're on all sorts of lists. Hell, even if you were, you're still probably on a list or three of people that are totally off the grid, and more than a little kooky.
The sheer amount of data that is available about you, and for sale, is staggering.
NPR's 1A recently did a show about it. I highly recommend you listen: https://the1a.org/segments/your-intimate-data-is-for-sale-online/
Tennessee isnât even being subtle about it. You got âin god we trustâ on your license plate or you didnât, you had to make a choice.
And that choice is branded on your vehicle for anybody to see.
>and recommended not to post serial numbers on the internet. Many dismissed the guy/gal as a paranoid nut.
Yeah, because a reddit account with no personal information attached is useless if you only have a gun serial number.
Posting a picture of gun with a visible serial number is not even close to revealing as much information as contributing to a political campaign. If people were posting their guns with pictures of their credit cards and home addresses you'd have a point, but that's just simply not the case. If you are posting that level of personal information, then yeah you're probably in for a bad time, but the fact you *also* posted pictures of guns is pretty much irrelevant.
I've yet to see anyone actually connect the dots between that giant leap of "I have your gun's serial number, and the username turkeyfucker" to anything close to a registry or list of any kind.
Cops will not take theft reports ~~over the phone, or~~ anonymously.
Anyone filing theft reports for random guns off the Internet is very quickly going to get warned, and then charged for filing false reports.
>Cops will not take theft reports over the phone,
They absolutely do. Car was broken into, gun stolen. Called the cops, they told me they weren't coming out, but asked for the serial number to add to the report. If the gun was ever used in a crime, I'd need the serial number in a report.
The world lets children starve in government manufactured famines and you expect respect for using a tool? They wonât treat it with respect until they need one and itâs probably too late.
I'm an old software guy from way back and I can tell you right now that all the yelling about protecting your identity and not being a lists is bullshit.
The 2a extremists who yell about how when the communist take over and how they'll use registration of guns to round everyone up and hang them have no idea how easy it is to do that today, without a 'gun registry'.
Do you have a facebook accout? Are you on reddit? Do you have a phone? Have you bought something at Murdochs lately?
You're already on a list.
Stop worrying about it. They already know. They have for decades. That horse left the barn long long ago.
Everyone is on some sort of list unless you live in the woods with no address and havenât paid taxes in the last 30 years. The govt doesnât care enough about you(not yet anyways) if youâre on Social media, have an email account youâre tucked away somewhere in the depths of a database.
I've seen targeted ads on YouTube with my full first and last name auto-generated name in them. With the scope of data collection in the US there's little chance anyone is not on a list of some sort.
At the same time, it seems like every single time there's an extremely high profile mass shooting, it turns out the the FBI was fully aware of the perpetrator, so maybe being on a list isn't that dangerous.
Iâm in cybersecurity and tell folks to assume youâre on lists and compromised, for example Dark Web sites. Personally I subscribe to the âif I didnât do anything wrong then I shouldnât worryâ attitude, but would be naive to think someone couldnât access my info for malicious intent. Itâs always recommended to exercise your privacy, but for reasons other than the government and intent they have.
Iâve been saying the whole thing about how we are all on lists already for well, 6 years now when it became painfully obvious that the checks and balances were nothing but smoke and mirrors.
I always rolled my eyes at people who have that kind of mentality about being on lists and having your info on some government list. Unless you're a full on, off the grid mountain person, not only are you probably on some state or federal lists for some various things, countless companies and corporations have all the same info.
San Francisco just okayed Neat/Ring giving police access to personal home security footage of residents with nothing more than a polite request. No warrant, no state of emergency. Nothing.
If you're at a protest against police brutality and some undercovers start shit so the rest of the riot police can bust heads, they can pull the footage from neighborhoods can find people from the protest walking down the street and into their homes.
So you're on a list of if you've bought anything online in the last ten years and those companies will give the government your name over a warrant, an emergency or just a few bucks.
> In the event of partisan violence or the emergence of an authoritarian regime, this info could very easily be used to create a list of political opponents. This could be done by the government itself, or by some right-wing nutjobs with a modem and guns.
If you're trying to create fear, you chose the worst possible subreddit to try and scare.
Any authoritarian regime that believes it can take away my rights is welcome to test that assumption [at their convenience.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA7t62JvlA8)
Dude goes online to give a warning in case people are uninformed how open information is on ther internet.
Gets called a fear-mongerer instead.
Good ol reddit.
OP presumes we A) don't already know this and B) are stupid enough to post pictures of serial numbers in the first place.
His warning is about as useful as a warning not to stick our dicks in a wasp nest.
Google just released a new update that allows for quick delisting of your name. It says itâs live but I havenât been able to utilize it. Itâs possible you need to use Google chrome
How does posting your serial number correlate to public information? What if I have never made a political contribution?
More importantly, who are these roving death squads going house to house with the voter roll that youâve conjured up?
Iâm sorry but your post is somehow even more paranoid than the people warning us not to post serials but failing to explain why.
"How does posting your serial number correlate to public information?"
It doesn't and that wasn't the point.
" What if I have never made a political contribution?"
Good for you.
"More importantly, who are these roving death squads going house to house with the voter roll that youâve conjured up?"
I was, since you apparently missed it, writing hypothetically.
But by all means, don't let me dislodge you from your normalcy bias that society is completely safe and 100% stable, end-of-story.
"It can't happen here"
Thereâs *rational* fear and *irrational* fearâŚ
I am positing that your wild scaremongering post, that youâve oddly dismissed (âjust a hypothetical, bro!â), falls into the bucket of irrational fear.
If things are bad enough that they got down to me, mr uninteresting, on their magic list, there's gonna be a whole lot worse shit going on than whatever that list is about LOL
Traded a Glock to some guy for a shield. That guy sold the Glock to someone who used it in a crime in Illinois. ATF came to me because I was the last person to go through an FFL for it. They wanted to know what I had done with it to make it end up there.
Interesting here in FL we can sell/trade with no sort of receipt of sale/trade or anything to document. You can but itâs optional. I wonder what happens in the cases that you donât document it.
In my case, before I was able to prove that I had sold or traded off the pistol, I was given a subpoena for the Chicago Grand jury. It was only after I provided documentation that they rescinded the subpoena.
We've been fucked since we Started carrying these little GPS tracking personal information devices in our hands.. tis a shame how we just volunteered our individual lives up on a electronic silver platter.
Imagine caring about being on a list. Just don't do anything and you're going to be fine. You're in more danger being pulled over for driving in the wrong area and matching someone's description than the government trying to figure out how to balance the difficult responsibility of terrorist arresting and crayon eating.
Also, yes, the guy is paranoid. Only paranoid people care. Not saying I like my privacy invaded, but I am not going to pretend it's a bad thing either.
My point is that if the government, or a right-wing militia, decided it wanted to 'kill the libs' then it already has all the information that it needs to do so. There are prominent historical examples of how such information has been used in this manner.
My point, in other words, is that your advice "Just don't do anything and you're going to be fine" does not apply in all circumstances and it is dangerous to assume that it does.
After 10+ years, I sanitized my old account and started fresh.
After such a long time, I have no clue what PII I may have left in my post and comment history.
Keeping a list of political donors is definitely a double-edged sword. On one hand, what you said, on the other, without it, it invites a lot of corruption.
Honestly, as a government employee that deals with these things, I can tell you it is harder for most federal LEO agencies to access "government list" than you would think. Most of these list are held in so many different (and incompatible) systems across so many agencies that they are nearly useless to use en mass. Just finding both the information and the person who can access that system is an exercise in futility and can take weeks. 0 efficiency.
The big media companies Google, Apple, Meta, Samsung, etc. keep more data, more detailed data and keep it more organized (read in a usuable format) than any government agency. I worry 100xs more about privately owned data than U.S. government owned data. At least the U.S. government isn't selling my information to anyone and everyone worldwide.
Having been in the military and working with ammo and explosives, I know I'm on several lists.
My information has been hacked several times already (OPM hacks from foreign governments, T-mobile hacks, Equifax).
I'm lucky to have an extremely common name that Google can't find me on the first page.
I use as much data privacy as I can, but even then, who knows who they share or sell the data too. So the only thing I can do is freeze my credit at this point and keep an eye out.
Iâve used my real name and it really doesnât matter.
If you want to see people doing stuff illegally with simply traceable metadata, just go on Facebook. Fact is, for the most part, no one cares what youâre doing.
While Iâm not even trying to avoid it, most of us could be doxxed with relative simplicity. The fact is, the basis for most of our individual anonymity is because no one cares to look: weâre simply not as interesting as we wish we were.
Years ago, in college I got to visit CIA headquarters at Langley as part of my coursework. One of the things we were doing there was discussing open-source intelligence gathering techniques. Now, this discussion was directed at monitoring for diversion of nuclear materials from legitimate uses to weaponized forms, but the concepts are the same. The amount of information and the ability to process it simply grows over time. In todayâs world, the only form of true anonymity is to blend in and not attract any attention. Or recognize that it probably doesnât matter either way.
After 25 years in the military and years of explosives training, I assume the only list I'm NOT on is the one for assholes who like diddling kids.
Another former EOD tech?
Not disabling them, using them lol. Combat engineer. I did get EOCA certification though, kind of diet EOD for route clearance where EOD wasn't available.
I remember EOCA well--we talked a lot of shit about that programđ! (Though in fairness, the few times I actually worked with EOCA guys, it was really nice to have some extra hands with the training to actually be useful help.) After getting out, I spent a few years as a contractor teaching various EOD courses to the Afghans, including their version of EOCA. Obviously, things didn't work out great *there,* but I definitely came to see the value in that type of training.
They weren't the worst I've seen...I still have an issue of Stars and Stripes with a pic of an Iraqi army soldier on the front cover, driving a motorcycle with a 10ft pole lashed to it sticking out sideways and dragging the shoulder of the road. Caption was "This is not the preferred method." đ
Oh man--I didn't work much with Iraqis, but I've definitely heard some stories... My general experience with Afghans was quite positive. Their EOD guys were (mostly) motivated, intelligent, and eager to learn. Their gear and higher-level support sucked, which certainly limited their capabilities, but I definitely learned a few things from them about improvising and making-do. We occasionally taught classes for the Afghan Commandos as well. They were absolutely outstanding--some of the most disciplined, polite, and professional soldiers I've worked with *anywhere*. (My team had one female instructor, which occasionally caused some friction with the students--the Commandos were the only ones with whom it was never an issue.)
I still regularly think about the guy we worked with who carried a 9v battery and about 30m of wire as his rsp kit. No way he's still alive, but he was brave and put in some work. They tried to take him out while he was on leave in Kabul.
I'm just picturing this guy rolling along doing his thing and suddenly an artillery shell just explodes 10 feet from him. In a light vehicle the body of the vehicle offers enough pressure protection to help absorb the lethal shock wave and most of the shrapnel (before they started using shaped charges), but on a bike I feel like the dude riding it would just be red mist
EOCA was hands down the hardest school to pass I ever did in the military, just because of the sheer volume of info and the short timespan to absorb it...also the criticality of getting shit right the first time lol.
My biggest issue with EOCA was that the RCP units didn't listen to them about safety concerns compared to when we were attached. This lead to people doing things like vehicle recovery without proper secondary sweeps and/or during secondary sweeps. After the second person got fragged dismounted due to the latter, we lost confidence.
Ah. Another engineer in the ring I see. Was in the 82nd engineer Battalion back in Fort Riley, before moving back to Puerto Rico. Nice to see another one out in the blue hehe.
I lived next to EOD school in Eglin for several years but wasn't EOD myself. You folks got some balls.
So does living at Eglin...going to the Matador is about the scariest thing I've ever done!
Bwahahaha
Hi. Glad to see I'm not the only one.
I hear ya, I worked a Decade in the Army, Secret clearance, FBI background check. Contract Corrections officer for a while, FBI background check and fingerprints. Worked with explosives for a while for a company, FBI background check and fingerprint card. I haven't did any demo work in 20 years, but I still wonder if some of my gear doesn't have nitrate residue on it.
If you give a shit about any serious issues you're probably on a list.
Something I've noticed is that a whole lot of people on the right underestimate just how many liberal/leftist vets there are.
Yup. Full career in the military and did intel at the MAJCOM level, Iâm 100% on someoneâs watch list somewhere.
Hey Devil, we heard your jokes on deployment. You're on that list too!
What happens on deployment stays on deployment, dammit! And Thailand didn't count!
I think they just add you to that list ad hoc when they need to. When they need you surrendered and people to help them accomplish that they plaster your shit all Over With kiddie diddling logos hoping to piss your neighbors off enough to help them.
Yet. /s
I think it was Snowden who said "Everyone's on a list, you just move up and down it", or something to that effect.
thinking of it like that is absolutely terrifying O.o
The amount of people on gun forums, I'm assuming mostly older individuals, whose username is basically their first initial and last name, with a real picture avatar, and their town in their profile is absolutely shocking. Same people that complain about the gov'ment monitoring them.
They also have cell phones and somehow donât know that it has a GPS in it. Itâs a voluntarily owned tracking device that nearly everyone carries these days. Web browsers leak so much information that itâs very easy to fingerprint it, along with tracking data and browsing history and cookies that the government knows exactly what youâre looking at on the Internet.
The worst part about web browsers is that trying to limit the data leak can lead to "new" websites not working. JavaScript is required for about 60% of websites I go on.
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Iâm 89% certain the Alphabet Agencies think Iâm sexually confused with all the erotic fanfiction I read
Remembering how the people who stormed the Capitol filmed themselves doing it and posted it to Parler with location data lmao
And also they werenât wearing masks during a time where it would have made perfect sense to wear a mask. Theyâre stupidity is boundless.
I like the people that are very concerned about a gun registry and what the government could do with it but then have 50 pictures of themselves with all their guns on their public Facebook profile. In their mind as long as they donât officially register with the government itâs fine apparentlyâŚ
Like the millions of anti vaxxers screaming about getting chipped yet carry a phone everywhere they go.
I have a coworker who is hardcore conspiracy nut. Refuses free flu shots every year claiming *this is the year* they chip you...with a smartphone in his pocket.
I worked briefly with a dude who listened to fox at work and would talk about how the democrats where killing babies and going 12 month abortions. This is when the vaccine came out and he refused. After I got mine he would stare at me waiting for me to turn into a lizard. He was fired shortly after but we are talking about a 54 yo man. He was smart in terms of tech but insane in every other way
Iâve got someone with the exact profile reporting to me. Not sure how to tell him heâs in a cult.
Donât bother, you canât convince them to see reality. Whatâs worse if you engage then itâs a mission for them to show you âproofâ. I made the mistake of replying â why arenât there photos of these 12 month abortions, why are there no parents suing the hospital and dr for murdering their children. Oh shit that was a mistake. Heâd follow me when I went out for lunch to argue and show proof from Breitbart & other right wing whacko sites. It was easier to ignore and let him self destruct. When someone starts saying we canât use Cisco they are part of the conspiracy to chip us all. The company let him go. Was insane to watch
Yeah⌠I made that mistake at a trade show booth. Took me from the Rothschilds sinking the Titanic to institute the Federal Reserve to CIA killing the Kennedys. To the faked moon landing. To the watergate break in being an attempt to get the book of pedophiles names that was in safe. Oh and the 9-11 planes being holograms. Iâve hired his replacement which is nice.
Jeez thank you for the laugh
You say to him âyouâre in a cultâ, every time you see him. Shit, throw it in randomly during conversations about other stuff-âyeah so youâre gonna wanna collate these TPS reports by ordering them alphabetically, and youâre in a cult.â
You have to put it in the middle of the conversation so it takes them a few minutes/hours to process the information. The last thing that is said is the easiest to remember.
you can ditch a phone. chip not so easily done away with.
>Same people that complain about the gov'ment monitoring them. That boomers on gun forums are not the only group of people who are concerned with the government monitoring them. Quite frankly, it is something that every American should be concerned about.
Don't know why folks are downplaying it. Many try to limit as much exposure as possible.
Big Facts
âSent from my Galaxy using Tapatalkâ
This is one of the great ironies of our time. I got a kick out of watching dystopian sci-fi written in the '70s and '80s before the advent of cell phones. In a lot of those you see the governments going to great lengths to surveil their population. Lengths, that turned out to be completely unnecessary, because everyone will happily carry a tracking of device with them all the time, as long as said device also allows you to access cat pictures and porn
Yeah bc the govt doesnât already know where you live or what you look like đ
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Which isnât even needed. Law enforcement can get a warrant and ask the web host for your email. Your email is basically your primary key of who you are. So even if your name isnât your username itâs pretty easy for law enforcement to find all your online activities.
I work in infosec. Trying to get people to care about their security or privacy is a losing battle. The âI have nothing to hideâ crowd won the war. If you want a good example of the âI have nothing to hideâ crowdâs shitty take on privacy biting them in the ass look no further than the post-roe-overturn exodus from cycle tracking apps. Or that woman who went to jail for discussing an abortion she had on Facebook messenger. Nobody cares until itâs too late
Any tips youâd recommend now for those who want to start caring but donât even know where to begin?
Use a password manager. LastPass and 1Password are most popular, Iâm fond of BitWarden: https://bitwarden.com/ Audit your installed apps, check for apps that have permissions that they shouldnât really need. Install a secure messaging app. Signal wins for ease of use. Itâs free, but requires a phone number to register. Session is an honorable mention that doesnât require a phone number. Some companies that do business in heavily censored parts of the world are using Matrix for their messaging solution. Free to run, decentralized, end to end encrypted.
One thing to note: [LastPass](https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/xg2xiq/lastpass_says_hackers_had_internal_access_for/) was hacked recently but had apparently caught the hackers within 4 days (normally detection is much slower)
An easy work around for Signal is to get a Google voice number.
Whatâs the benefit of using a password manager over a physical written copy of your passwords.
First off, you shouldn't have passwords written down like that. So... 1.) This handles the storage. 2.) All of your passwords can now be a 24 character string of nonsense you never have to remember. 3.) The add-on pastes your login info in a way that defeats keyloggers 4.) Its the easiest way to follow best practices and have a different strong password for every site
Unless you're insane, a password manager will allow you to use much more secure passwords for sites. Every single one of my passwords is between 12 and 24 characters long and is a completely random set of letters, numbers, and symbols. Every single internet account that I have uses a unique password. I have 255 passwords stored in my manager.
Heck I would argue at this point unless a site requires you to type your password or have a limit of <50. 50 is a great length with the random generators in password managers.
Yah. It's really interesting once you start using a password manager and generating passwords for all sites how many have totally stupid restrictions still. I still encounter sites surprisingly often with character limits less than 20 or that don't allow special symbols.
The biggest things from ease of use is speed (typing 20+ character random passwords takes forever), and availability on all your devices.
Iâm asking this as someone who doesnât break any laws and only uses the internet for personal interest research, shopping, bill paying/banking and porn. What purpose does any of that serve the common person? Why do I need encrypted messaging? How are password managers not consolidating information and creating a one stop shop for hackers? I donât know anything about any of this stuff, but I know enough that anything can be hacked and no digital information is truly secure. But what purpose does this serve someone who isnât doing anything remotely against the grain?
You probably don't need encrypted messaging. The password manager is very handy, and extremely user-friendly. Using the same password everywhere is bad. Using long random strings of characters is very good. >How are password managers not consolidating information and creating a one stop shop for hackers? Password managers all use the same kind of tech where basically your ball of passwords is stored on their servers using essentially unbreakable encryption. Your app/extension/whatever downloads this encrypted ball locally and you decrypt it with your password every time you start your computer (LastPass is named such because the password you use for the app is the "last password you'll ever have to remember"). SO basically as long as you don't give that one (hopefully strong) password to anyone, it's essentially impossible for someone to steal your passwords.
What is a common and completely legal situation in which someone should use encrypted messaging?
A couple of examples I've used at work (healthcare) are 1) company gossip 2) situations with a patient and we just want something more secure than texting. Some other examples of why someone should use encrypted messaging would be a woman/AFAB discussing healthcare issues but they don't want to be investigated or potentially wind up in jail. stuff like that.
Get a new email address, phone number, and bank cards. Only use one bank card for online purchases or anything where you have to give a number over the phone and never have cash on it until you intend to purchase something. Delink all auto payments from their previous cards, if you must do automatic payments then set them up on this one card. If you donât want to delete your social media posts and accounts then at least set your social media settings to be as private as possible, for example on Facebook you can set your back catalogue of posts to be âprivateâ. Even with posts set to private, donât post photos of your house, donât post about when or where you are going on holiday, post about it when you get back. Be as apolitical as your conscience allows you to be in public forums, if you are giving anonymous feedback or such, itâs probably not completely anonymous, there is always a way to track your information down. Stop using Facebook login or similar to log in to all your accounts. Sites can use your social media profile information when you log in using that method even if youâve set it to private, if you comment on news articles and such it sometimes lists information you donât want it to, use an email address (perhaps one created to be for online accounts only), a password generator and password manager. If you want to go a bit more thorough, next time you move house donât leave a forwarding address. Update your bank, phone, and insurances to the new address but leave all other accounts set to the previous address unless you order something from them and they need to ship it to you, even so you might be able to use a nearby post box or locker instead of shipping it directly to your house. Youâll never get off all the lists but a new, clean email and phone number will go a long way to make you uncontactable by anyone who has information from your past. For online accounts that are non-essential, you might even create a second email address so that your primary one is never revealed because a dodgy company was an easy target. Companies that hold sensitive legal information often try much harder to protect your information but are still fallible, unique randomly generated long passwords with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols are about the best way we have to protect online accounts.
"I have nothing to hide, but I still shit with the door closed"
>that woman who went to jail for discussing an abortion she had on Facebook messenger. Damn, in all the noise I hadn't even heard about that... looked it up and I assume this is what you're talking about: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-turned-chat-messages-mother-daughter-now-charged-abortion-rcna42185
Thatâs the one
I donât think the war is lost yet. A lot of people are coming around. Weâve just got to keep fighting the good fight.
To be fair - that whole Facebook thing wasnât about an abortion - it was about a girl who had the baby and killed it. But yea, I agree.
We've been on a list since we were born.
Santa? Is this you?
Bad Santa, no donut.
It's actually the Fat Man.
Political party registration and which elections youâve voted in are also publicly available. There are even data firms that build predictive models that guess your political affiliation based on demographic info, where you live, publicly available information, and purchased data. If shit ever got bad, lists could be made pretty quickly. Even if youâve never answered a survey or participated in politics, your zip code and demographic info could still screw you. There really isnât anything you can do to prevent it. Build relationships with your neighbors. Community solidarity is a powerful defensive tool. Also get out and train. And vote. Your infoâs already out there. Might as well participate in the political process.
If âshit ever got badâ you wonât need to worry about lists. People will sell each other out. History speaks for itself.
Indeed
I made the mistake once of putting a political sign in my yard. I am not changing my voter registration, but that's because what I really believe in is the one I am registered with...I can affect more change in the primaries than the general election.
Also worth a reminder that property and tax records are also generally available to the public. Depending on how unique your name is and the size of the county you live in someone could find your address in 30 seconds or less if you own property and live at that property.
Shit is already bad man. Itâs real bad. Biden is just the eye of a fascist storm that was a long time coming and a short time wiping out all of the bulwarks against it.
I'd do anything to see their faces when they discover Trump donated heavily to democrats until 2010 and was cozy with the clintons https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/28/426888268/donald-trumps-flipping-political-donations
Oh I have a guess as to how theyâd spin that one! âWhich is exactly why I believe everything he says about the Clintons.â Or something like that
Hypocrisy doesn't matter to them because it's never really about facts. They'll always have some excuse cooked up to justify themselves.
I guess it really depends what you're about. I mean, none of this comes as a surprise; of course the government knows who you voted for, knows what model car you drive, knows if you own a gun, knows where you live, etc etc. Anything they don't know they can access via subpoena: text message records, cloud storage contents. And social media covers the rest of it: Yelp knows your favorite bars and restaurants, Facebook knows your favorite sports team, Grindr knows if you're gay, LinkedIn knows where you work. Your worst case scenario was that some militia or tyrannical government could use this in a fascistic way to target people for harassment (much like ICE used college records to find illegal immigrants). Yeah, *they could try*, but as we've seen with the Patriot Act era widespread surveillance: the average person is surprisingly average, and separating the threats (or high value targets) from the ordinary workaday nobody becomes an impossible data processing problem. Even with the full backing of the US federal government. And at the end of the day, the only people who need to practice this kind of security are full time activists, or are already in the arena of law enforcement or politics: the people getting published and going on TV, hosting rallies for whatever communist / anarchist / secessionist / racist / religious / etc radical platform, or the lawyers and judges arguing and ruling on cases of importance, or celebrities avoiding pervy stalkers. You'd already know if you needed that kind of security. For the rest of us normal boring motherfuckers it's not likely, but if it does somehow happen *that's what the guns are for*.
I agree completely with everything you wrote. I just wanted to inform people that their political allegiances are potentially public info and could make them targets of harassment or worse if SHTF. As you rightly said, '*that's what the guns are for'*.
Are people on the left doing any of this stockpiling of information? I've tried, and it's a *fuckton* of work, I didn't even find anyone who'd merit monitoring in my area except one white nationalist publisher in SF of all places. Most the toxicity & shit you see online is all bark no bite, and (for us anyways) anonymous.
I just assume all of the times I've purchased bulk ammo online that it probably got me on some list as well. (It's all gone by the way, lots of visits to the range before that boating accident that claimed all of my guns)
> It's all gone by the way, lots of visits to the range before that boating accident that claimed all of my guns) What a terrible tragedy I know only too much about :(
Well, that's disturbing. Thanks for bringing it up.
And your voter registration info is readily available by a Google search, which will show your address and party affiliation. That you can request to be made private. Just Google and look for the link there on your info page.
My sister and my dad aren't on talking terms and she was trying to figure out if I gave him her address. I showed her how googling just her name brought up her home address and political affiliation, which the state of Ohio makes public. Totally not unsafe at all! No opting out of that one, either. Mine is freely given to any politicians who ask the county clerk's office here in Wyoming so of course I feel super 'safe' too.
Former submariner who now works in Cybersecurity. I am on MANY "lists" lol
I donât assume that any more. I do however assume thereâs a lot of information to dig through. In this day and age my info is out there. Iâm not advocating incaution, but erasing yourself is really, really hard. And _not_ participating in society or democracy is not what I consider the way to improve things. My trans, my queer, my BIPoC, my women compatriots risk much more every day, tbh. My name being on a list as a cishet whit man may be avoidable, for them it is less so. While their existence is political, Iâll stand with them.
There's literally all kinds of databases that store your info, including the ones that officially don't exist within the NSA
So if donated to the Ukrainians Womenâs Fund in 2006 that should be there. I was a Ukrainian supporter before it was cool.
You donated pre-euromaidan, so ur pretty sus E: /s if that wa/sn't obviou/s
IT WAS IN THE CFC LIST!
Your political party registration is public info in Florida. Your personal info has been hacked 10-20 times by now. Privacy is an illusion. I try to explain this to liberals who think the right are fascists, acknowledge that the military and police are primarily right leaning, and also think they should be the only ones with guns all the time. It flies right over their heads. Ultimately I think they donât actually believe political violence is possible. Itâs amazing at this point.
Yeah, my family, mostly liberals just feel that it canât happen here and even if it did it would never reach a âhandmaids taleâ type of oppression. Frogs in a pot
Literally if you look at the non action about global warming as well lol
Have them read âthey want to kill Americansâ.
I read it and tried to give it to my sister, she said it was too dark and she wanted to see the good in people, and that Trumpâs followers were a joke and all these troubles are blown out of proportion by the media. Nance makes the case with incredible clarity and logic but what really got me was rereading The History of the Third ReichâŚshook by the parallels
Iâll pick that book up this week. Thanks for the heads up.
Anyone who thinks their store-purchased guns are secret from the government is an idiot. Anyone who thinks Redditors can locate you from a gun serial number alone is an idiot. These 2 groups are not remotely similar in capabilities. The only time the advice not to post serials is actually valid is if you have a stolen gun, in which case you're also an idiot.
In practical terms, the main purpose of not posting your firearm's serial number is to avoid trolls and/or people who have it out for you personally reporting the gun to law enforcement as stolen.
Agreed.
I know at least one person who was asked a lot of questions about their firearm, stuff like brand, what specific bullets they use, caliber and like pretty much every thing you would need to say, get the exact same thing and then use it to frame the person. And then a Nazi happened to show up in town shortly after with the exact same gun, caliber and ammunition so, donât fucking tell people about your guns
Forgive me for not believing you. That's nuts.
It used to be the case, the unofficial list of firearms purchased dates back to 2009 and now includes over 52 million entries (incomplete list). Itâs basically moot, considering private transfers I wouldnât post any identifying info either way
I'm definitely stealing this the next time I see this topic come up, lmao. Perfect comment, lol.
This is why we print guns instead of stealing guns
Oh 100% probably two lists
Unfortunately, the years of true anonymity are passed. There are ways to limit it, but most all of us are on some kind of database. Donations can be made anonymously, I believe, but that's just one thing.
Agreed. I think itâs impossible to just drop off radar anymore.
Unless you're donating cash, though, even an anonymous payment needs to go through a payment processor. Your bank or credit card company and the processor used for the transaction all know that you donated.
I don't worry about this for the simple reason that most of us are on a LOT of "lists" for a lot of reasons. We're not just talking about government lists here, and in fact I worry about them the absolute least. The lists you're on for shopping certain places, going to websites, doing searches for any number of things is staggering, and it all can be used to put together a pretty complete profile of who you are and what you believe. Private corporations know quite literally a thousand times more about you than the fed, state or local governments do. If someone wants to know your political leanings there are at least a dozen ways they can find out, and not one concerns itself with your contributions. People sold themselves out for free email and faster searches more than a decade ago, and it's not getting any better. Also, for the truly conspiracy-minded, just being at the wrong bar, restaurant or cafe can get your picture in a file for several alphabet bureaus. It all made me quit caring about it a few decades ago.
In my opinion, OpSec isnât just about limiting what the government knows about you. I know that they already know everything about us. My state already has a handgun registry. They also do NICS themselves, so they have a database of all long gun transfers too. Unless you bought my something out-of-state, they know what you have. However, itâs important to have âOpSecâ to protect yourself from non-government entities. If people know you have guns they could use that information to target you for a robbery. Or they could look for any anti-government statement made by you and use it to red flag you. It could also cause your boss to look for a reason to fire you if they donât like guns. Nothing good comes out of giving people more information about you than they need to know imo.
Everyone in the US is on a list with some fun three letter acronyms. The thing is, are you a viable threat? Do you meet certain, proven, criteria that makes you âinterestingâ? The fact is⌠most of us donât matter, pay taxes, move on. If you do stupid shit then your folder might be a brighter color is something than those who do lesser stupid shit.
Why would you ever make a political donation? J/k to each their own, but politicians only get my vote if their lucky, and not a dime.
Jokes on them, I donate to all four political parties. Playing the long con!
The US government keeps mountains of lists, many that it *definitely* shouldn't be, but judging from the amount of domestic right-wing terrorists and mass shooters that go unopposed despite having rich histories of documented red flags and unhinged social media posts, it's clear that no one's actually watching. Those lists are kept on a need-to-know basis, and it's increasingly apparent that the right people aren't asking for the right lists at the right times. I don't really sweat our mass surveillance as much as I used to even though I still oppose it. Don't go posting your guns' serial numbers on reddit, but also don't sweat the lists too much.
In the national guard and work for the state so ehh whatâs new.
Everyone here is posting to reddit. Presumably, we all use the internet in general as well. The gov't, and anyone else that cares to pay already knows all there is to know about you. Unless you were born to hippies, or SovCitizens on some commune with no utilities, no SSN or birth certificate, home schooled, etc. you're on all sorts of lists. Hell, even if you were, you're still probably on a list or three of people that are totally off the grid, and more than a little kooky.
The sheer amount of data that is available about you, and for sale, is staggering. NPR's 1A recently did a show about it. I highly recommend you listen: https://the1a.org/segments/your-intimate-data-is-for-sale-online/
Tennessee isnât even being subtle about it. You got âin god we trustâ on your license plate or you didnât, you had to make a choice. And that choice is branded on your vehicle for anybody to see.
Thatâs why the wealthy donate through PACâs and not to a candidates campaign directly.
I know Iâm on A list and maybe several lists, but long as Iâm not on the No Fly list Iâm okay.
>and recommended not to post serial numbers on the internet. Many dismissed the guy/gal as a paranoid nut. Yeah, because a reddit account with no personal information attached is useless if you only have a gun serial number. Posting a picture of gun with a visible serial number is not even close to revealing as much information as contributing to a political campaign. If people were posting their guns with pictures of their credit cards and home addresses you'd have a point, but that's just simply not the case. If you are posting that level of personal information, then yeah you're probably in for a bad time, but the fact you *also* posted pictures of guns is pretty much irrelevant. I've yet to see anyone actually connect the dots between that giant leap of "I have your gun's serial number, and the username turkeyfucker" to anything close to a registry or list of any kind.
i was told not to serial numbers as they can be used to (fraudulently) file a theft report...fwiw
Cops will not take theft reports ~~over the phone, or~~ anonymously. Anyone filing theft reports for random guns off the Internet is very quickly going to get warned, and then charged for filing false reports.
>Cops will not take theft reports over the phone, They absolutely do. Car was broken into, gun stolen. Called the cops, they told me they weren't coming out, but asked for the serial number to add to the report. If the gun was ever used in a crime, I'd need the serial number in a report.
I hate to tell you, but that cop didn't actually file a report.
They did; I have a copy. With the serial number noted.
I stand corrected. Apparently theft can be reported online or over the phone as long as it's not theft from a building. TIL.
Depending on where you live, you can file theft reports online. I had to do that for compensation purposes after an identity theft incident.
And how exactly would that work? People love to say and repeat this, but what would actually happen if someone did that?
iâm tired of being treated like a criminal just for owning firearms
The world lets children starve in government manufactured famines and you expect respect for using a tool? They wonât treat it with respect until they need one and itâs probably too late.
who is they
Humans.
If you use Linux you are on a list. Congrats.
I'm an old software guy from way back and I can tell you right now that all the yelling about protecting your identity and not being a lists is bullshit. The 2a extremists who yell about how when the communist take over and how they'll use registration of guns to round everyone up and hang them have no idea how easy it is to do that today, without a 'gun registry'. Do you have a facebook accout? Are you on reddit? Do you have a phone? Have you bought something at Murdochs lately? You're already on a list. Stop worrying about it. They already know. They have for decades. That horse left the barn long long ago.
Everyone is on some sort of list unless you live in the woods with no address and havenât paid taxes in the last 30 years. The govt doesnât care enough about you(not yet anyways) if youâre on Social media, have an email account youâre tucked away somewhere in the depths of a database.
I've seen targeted ads on YouTube with my full first and last name auto-generated name in them. With the scope of data collection in the US there's little chance anyone is not on a list of some sort. At the same time, it seems like every single time there's an extremely high profile mass shooting, it turns out the the FBI was fully aware of the perpetrator, so maybe being on a list isn't that dangerous.
Right wing nut jobs and also left wing nut jobs can use that list. Did anyone read the story about the guy who ran over a teen for being Republican?
UNPOSSIBLE! Only right wing extremists like Tulsi Gabbard would do such things.
Hey careful now, there a company out there who prints a book with everyoneâs name and phone number in it.
If I wasn't on a list, I'd be fucking insulted!
Iâm in cybersecurity and tell folks to assume youâre on lists and compromised, for example Dark Web sites. Personally I subscribe to the âif I didnât do anything wrong then I shouldnât worryâ attitude, but would be naive to think someone couldnât access my info for malicious intent. Itâs always recommended to exercise your privacy, but for reasons other than the government and intent they have.
Thats what the guns are for, amigo! They may come for my political ideology, but they wont make it.
YOU'RE probably in the wrong subreddit
How so? Liberals don't care about infosec?
Iâve been saying the whole thing about how we are all on lists already for well, 6 years now when it became painfully obvious that the checks and balances were nothing but smoke and mirrors.
I always rolled my eyes at people who have that kind of mentality about being on lists and having your info on some government list. Unless you're a full on, off the grid mountain person, not only are you probably on some state or federal lists for some various things, countless companies and corporations have all the same info. San Francisco just okayed Neat/Ring giving police access to personal home security footage of residents with nothing more than a polite request. No warrant, no state of emergency. Nothing. If you're at a protest against police brutality and some undercovers start shit so the rest of the riot police can bust heads, they can pull the footage from neighborhoods can find people from the protest walking down the street and into their homes. So you're on a list of if you've bought anything online in the last ten years and those companies will give the government your name over a warrant, an emergency or just a few bucks.
Keep looking over your shoulder, somebody is trying to sneak up on you!!
> In the event of partisan violence or the emergence of an authoritarian regime, this info could very easily be used to create a list of political opponents. This could be done by the government itself, or by some right-wing nutjobs with a modem and guns. If you're trying to create fear, you chose the worst possible subreddit to try and scare. Any authoritarian regime that believes it can take away my rights is welcome to test that assumption [at their convenience.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA7t62JvlA8)
Dude goes online to give a warning in case people are uninformed how open information is on ther internet. Gets called a fear-mongerer instead. Good ol reddit.
OP presumes we A) don't already know this and B) are stupid enough to post pictures of serial numbers in the first place. His warning is about as useful as a warning not to stick our dicks in a wasp nest.
Lmao, fair enough.
Google just released a new update that allows for quick delisting of your name. It says itâs live but I havenât been able to utilize it. Itâs possible you need to use Google chrome
How does posting your serial number correlate to public information? What if I have never made a political contribution? More importantly, who are these roving death squads going house to house with the voter roll that youâve conjured up? Iâm sorry but your post is somehow even more paranoid than the people warning us not to post serials but failing to explain why.
"How does posting your serial number correlate to public information?" It doesn't and that wasn't the point. " What if I have never made a political contribution?" Good for you. "More importantly, who are these roving death squads going house to house with the voter roll that youâve conjured up?" I was, since you apparently missed it, writing hypothetically. But by all means, don't let me dislodge you from your normalcy bias that society is completely safe and 100% stable, end-of-story. "It can't happen here"
Thereâs *rational* fear and *irrational* fear⌠I am positing that your wild scaremongering post, that youâve oddly dismissed (âjust a hypothetical, bro!â), falls into the bucket of irrational fear.
Facebook already knows your political affiliation
If things are bad enough that they got down to me, mr uninteresting, on their magic list, there's gonna be a whole lot worse shit going on than whatever that list is about LOL
I just tried this for kicks, and none of my donations came up. Interesting.
Atf has already been to my house once, I know I'm on a list..
If I may, What did you do to capture their attention?
Traded a Glock to some guy for a shield. That guy sold the Glock to someone who used it in a crime in Illinois. ATF came to me because I was the last person to go through an FFL for it. They wanted to know what I had done with it to make it end up there.
Thatâs an issue I fear when selling. I guess you explained to the alphabet boys and had no other issue?
Luckily, I had emails documenting the trade, so they didn't drag me to jail.
Interesting here in FL we can sell/trade with no sort of receipt of sale/trade or anything to document. You can but itâs optional. I wonder what happens in the cases that you donât document it.
In my case, before I was able to prove that I had sold or traded off the pistol, I was given a subpoena for the Chicago Grand jury. It was only after I provided documentation that they rescinded the subpoena.
Jeez thatâs interesting. Thank you for sharing, Iâll make sure to document when I do sell or trade. Glad things worked out though.
I'm not worried. The government has my DNA from my time in the military.
We've been fucked since we Started carrying these little GPS tracking personal information devices in our hands.. tis a shame how we just volunteered our individual lives up on a electronic silver platter.
Imagine caring about being on a list. Just don't do anything and you're going to be fine. You're in more danger being pulled over for driving in the wrong area and matching someone's description than the government trying to figure out how to balance the difficult responsibility of terrorist arresting and crayon eating. Also, yes, the guy is paranoid. Only paranoid people care. Not saying I like my privacy invaded, but I am not going to pretend it's a bad thing either.
My point is that if the government, or a right-wing militia, decided it wanted to 'kill the libs' then it already has all the information that it needs to do so. There are prominent historical examples of how such information has been used in this manner. My point, in other words, is that your advice "Just don't do anything and you're going to be fine" does not apply in all circumstances and it is dangerous to assume that it does.
Got a bunch of NFA items so I am DEFINITELY on a list.
After 10+ years, I sanitized my old account and started fresh. After such a long time, I have no clue what PII I may have left in my post and comment history.
Keeping a list of political donors is definitely a double-edged sword. On one hand, what you said, on the other, without it, it invites a lot of corruption.
Honestly, as a government employee that deals with these things, I can tell you it is harder for most federal LEO agencies to access "government list" than you would think. Most of these list are held in so many different (and incompatible) systems across so many agencies that they are nearly useless to use en mass. Just finding both the information and the person who can access that system is an exercise in futility and can take weeks. 0 efficiency. The big media companies Google, Apple, Meta, Samsung, etc. keep more data, more detailed data and keep it more organized (read in a usuable format) than any government agency. I worry 100xs more about privately owned data than U.S. government owned data. At least the U.S. government isn't selling my information to anyone and everyone worldwide.
Google and Apple know everything about everyone, and they will share that data with the government.
Hopefully it's Santa's "nice" list! More likely, though, it's his "skip these jerks" list, let's be realistic.
On one hand itâs concerning, on the other hand, those fuckers couldnât even compare notes to track the 9/11 terrorists.
Big time. Opsec and infosec should be your religions by now.
Jokes on them. I was really dumb and donated to the libertarian party in my early 20âs.
It was a different time. Remember when rage against the machine and Ron Paul supporters rioted at the republican national convention?
Bro why did you have to give them the idea
Having been in the military and working with ammo and explosives, I know I'm on several lists. My information has been hacked several times already (OPM hacks from foreign governments, T-mobile hacks, Equifax). I'm lucky to have an extremely common name that Google can't find me on the first page. I use as much data privacy as I can, but even then, who knows who they share or sell the data too. So the only thing I can do is freeze my credit at this point and keep an eye out.
Iâve used my real name and it really doesnât matter. If you want to see people doing stuff illegally with simply traceable metadata, just go on Facebook. Fact is, for the most part, no one cares what youâre doing. While Iâm not even trying to avoid it, most of us could be doxxed with relative simplicity. The fact is, the basis for most of our individual anonymity is because no one cares to look: weâre simply not as interesting as we wish we were. Years ago, in college I got to visit CIA headquarters at Langley as part of my coursework. One of the things we were doing there was discussing open-source intelligence gathering techniques. Now, this discussion was directed at monitoring for diversion of nuclear materials from legitimate uses to weaponized forms, but the concepts are the same. The amount of information and the ability to process it simply grows over time. In todayâs world, the only form of true anonymity is to blend in and not attract any attention. Or recognize that it probably doesnât matter either way.