32 ms·
Gun owners’ private information leaked by California Attorney General
- mbfg 4y agoIf you want to know, it's pretty easy to tell whether a household has guns, so not sure this is such a big leak. Sure it's incompetence, but big picture, probably doesn't change anything.
- jaywalk 4y ago> If you want to know, it's pretty easy to tell whether a household has guns Oh, really? How so?
- asdff 4y agoIf you want to steal a gun, just wait around outside a gunshop or gun range and tail someone then rob them for the gun: https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/houston-police-crime-gun-jugging/285-936cf138-f6c7-4708-b417-e47346f06458 https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/houston-police-crime...
- hunterb123 4y agoThat's a great way to get shot.
- asdff 4y agoRead the article, apparently people are getting guns instead of shot.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- failTide 4y agoBumper stickers, t-shirts, 2nd-amendment-related flags are probably a good place to start. Campaign signs, etc. Voter registration, political donations, etc. I'm guessing pitbull ownership is also correlated. Souped up trucks. Mailers from firearms-related organizations.
- hunterb123 4y agoThis comment exposes your pre-conceived notions and is pretty offensive. I would like you to expand on your supposed pitbull ownership correlation as well. You'd be very surprised at the diverse demographics of gun owners.
- cryptonector 4y agoHeh, maybe they think pitbull owners need a gun in case the pitbull goes nuts.
- failTide 4y agoBecause a lot of people claim they want a pitbull for home protection purposes, so it makes sense that they'd be more likely than average to have other means of protection as well.
- hunterb123 4y agoPeople do have guard dogs, yes. But guard dogs aren't always pitbulls and pitbulls aren't always used as guard dogs. I'd say most pitbull owners aren't using them as guard dogs. That would be a stereotype. As is stereotyping the actions of pitbull owners.
- failTide 4y agoIf you asked pitbull owners what the benefits of their dog was, I assume most would put something like 'protects my family/house' on their list, or joke around about what would happen if an unlucky intruder chose their house to break into.
- xbar 4y agoI don't think you are right. Can you list the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the judges in California that have guns? Because without this data, I'm curious how you are going to answer such a question.
- jmspring 4y agoI have part of the data. It was not scrubbed. I know names and addresses in it. Working with a friend to get the rest. I think a DOXing lawsuit against CA DOJ is needed. The data isn't wholly accurate but relevant to 12/2021.
- smm11 4y agoBroadcasting you have guns is about as smart as broadcasting you have $15K of tools in your garage, or $15K of jewelry, or $15K of bicycles. The difference, though, is if any of the above is stolen, the gun owner will say "SEE?" and buy more guns for protection.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mikestew 4y agoGood job, jackasses, now this will get trotted out as an example against anything that ties a name to a firearm (i. e., registration). And though I might fall in with the "if not Sandy Hook, then what is it going to take?" crowd, I can't say it's an invalid argument. I mean, a government is unlikely to be so bold as to just outright publish the PII. But what if we suffered a "data breach"? If it's the way I'd do it, is it really a conspiracy theory? :-)
- cpwright 4y agoExcept in NY, where before the SAFE act they did. Westchester county responded to a FOIA request. Putnam county told the Journal News to pound sand. https://www.rcfp.org/journals/wake-journal-news-publishin/ https://www.rcfp.org/journals/wake-journal-news-publishin/
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoOK, that's two ways it could leak - data breach, and honoring an FOIA request. And that makes me think of a third way - improperly redacted evidence in a court case. Paranoia about my data in government databases wasn't on my radar 15 minutes ago...
- mulmen 4y ago> Paranoia about my data in government databases wasn't on my radar 15 minutes ago... Wait, really? If you really want to be scared check this out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List
- chucksta 4y agoYou've never seen DMV leaks? https://www.autoinsurance.org/worst-states-for-dmv-dot-data-breaches/ https://www.autoinsurance.org/worst-states-for-dmv-dot-data-... The government in most forms is my biggest fear for my personal data security
- 4y ago
- snsr 4y ago
- sokoloff 4y agoThis surely doesn’t seem like the way to go about creating that change, particularly since it increases the risk that these guns will become stolen.
- snsr 4y ago
- sokoloff 4y agoBecause everyone deserves privacy?
- vkou 4y agoUnless, of course, they want to get a medical procedure. (Because you somehow don't have an inalienable right to body autonomy, but you do have the inalienable right to own a gun.)
- HideousKojima 4y agoIf you murder someone in private, your right to privacy doesn't protect you from murder charges. The same logic is being used with abortion laws, your euphemizing it as "a medical procedure" notwithstanding.
- vkou 4y agoNobody else is entitled to occupy space in, or take nourishment from my body. It's their problem if they can't survive outside of it. Just like it's not murder to refuse to have your organs transplanted to save a life, because of your right to body autonomy, it's not murder to evict someone living inside it. Refusing help to someone isn't murder, even in a life-or-death situation - and if it were, I've got a long list of impositions for you.
- yardie 4y agoFor those that don't understand the implication of this: Criminals get guns through burgling and robbery. By included such detailed information on who's a registered gun owner, where they live, etc. It makes the gun owner a lucrative target. I'm staunchly pro regulation but this even I can't understand. Like someone just did SELECT * FROM GunOwnersDB and pushed is straight to the web.
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoIt's 2022. Every web dev knows you don't just spit out PII on your website. But everybody involved kept their mouth shut because they thought to themselves "this is dumb, but I'm not responsible for it and if I try and champion the cause of fixing it I will be" and so they took it to prod. These sorts of "incentive to not rock the boat" or "it will take me months to get clarification on this requirement" type failures are rife in government bureaucracy. Edit: Clearly I'm wrong and this is all malice from top to bottom /s Use your f-ing brains. You think someone is gonna risk their cushy government job to dox a bunch of gun owners and the managers are gonna risk their jobs signing off on it?
- tmp_anon_22 4y agoThats complete speculation.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 4y agoI don't think GP had any way to actually know or think the code involved did a "SELECT *", he was just using that as a clever jokey way of saying "looks like they published all the details they had on gun owners?"
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoWhether they selected * is immaterial. The requirement probably said "publish all", or something along those lines and the person who did it had probably been burned in the past when they had tried to do anything other than implementing requirements like a dumb robot so they rolled their eyes and implemented requirements like a dumb robot while counting down the days to retirement. Somewhere there's probably a closed Jira ticket in which they covered their ass.
- mulmen 4y ago> The Reload reviewed a copy of the Lost Angeles County database and found 244 judge permits listed in the database. The files included the home addresses, full names, and dates of birth for all of them. How did this ever go live? Like, was it a bug or did they actually think putting this on the web was a good idea?
- cobrabyte 4y agoWhy is any of this database online in the first place?
- jrochkind1 4y agoThat seems to be the question!
- HideousKojima 4y agoAlso given how political the process of getting a CCW permit is in California (i.e. if you're not in a county with a sheriff willing to give a permit to everyone you either need to be rich or have connections) a disproportionate amount of cops, jail guards, celebrities, and wealthy businessmen (along with their home addresses) are going to be on that list.
- xbar 4y agoIt is a tremendously valuable list to convicts and gangs who want to know where all the judges and correctional officers' families live.
- ak217 4y agoBug. Incompetence. It looks like they put a giant spreadsheet with all the PII into Tableau and then embedded a web view to serve a geo visualization of some of the columns. Except they made the full underlying table accessible by anyone in Tableau.
- vdqtp3 4y agoThey did redact PII on the DROS table, but not the CCW table. I ascribe it to malice, not incompetence.
- kristjank 4y agoEpic fail, it's pretty hard to discern if it's malice or incompetence that caused this. Either way, the jackasses responsible for this should have been mopping the floor in a grocery store by now, not explaining how this whole operation was to elevate trust.
- timapplesauce 4y agoObviously I have no proof for this, but the timing would definitely suggest malice. The Supreme Court just handed down an opinion that essentially struck down California's concealed carry law, not to mention Dobbs. This smacks of childish retaliation for not getting your way.
- Duwensatzaj 4y agoThey didn’t strike it down. They only eliminated requiring a “good cause” to obtain a CCL. Self-defense was not considered a good cause in a number of cities and counties. Being a celebrity or donating was. Bonte is leaning hard on the other requirement of “good moral character”, so there’s going to be more lawsuits.
- parineum 4y ago> They didn’t strike it down. They effectively did. Many counties were using the CCL as defacto gun control and/or sources of bribery and corruption. Now _anyone_ who is willing to follow the has equal access to a CCL instead of relying on the whims of a sheriff. California politicians don't use the phrase "only" when they talk about removing the "good cause" requirement.
- jonas21 4y agoAnd these are the folks responsible for enforcing the California Consumer Privacy Act. Sigh.
- howmayiannoyyou 4y agoThis is made possible - ultimately - by the absence of criminal and statutory civil penalties for exposure of confidential data. Congress (gotta be federal) needs to jump on this for domestic and national security reasons, but the tech/data/corporate lobby will fight this to the bitter end.
- Ekaros 4y agoAnd this is why there should be no registry and no limitations on ownership. Just get rid of all limitations and it will be for better.
- bell-cot 4y agoWould there be any noise ordinance issues if I'm practicing with my 25-pounder ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_25-pounder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_25-pounder ) between 10pm and 6am?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tastyfreeze 4y agoFirearm/weapons safety dictates that you wouldn't be practicing with your 25-pounder anywhere near people's homes.
- Ekaros 4y agoShall not be infringed. Ofc, night time practise is necessary for security of free state.
- quarantaseih 4y agoAgreed. And feel free to do so in your country home. Like the 1A, 2A isnt absolute, even conservatives say it isnt. You cant shoot guns for fun in a patio in NYC (but you should be allowed to own a mortar!). Not absolute but unconstitutionally stifled for decades.
- int_19h 4y agoYou are allowed to own a mortar in US. You just have to pony up $200 for the mortar itself, and then $200 for each shell, to register them with ATF as destructive devices. Well, and find someone to willing to sell them for you. Or make your own.
- throw7 4y agoSMH. Idiots.
- de6u99er 4y ago>the databases with detailed information were initially available for download via a button on the website’s mapping feature This is unbelievably stupid!
- jeffbee 4y agoThe article just says that the information is private, without backing up that statement. These permits are public records in California.
- xbar 4y agoThe article was right and you are wrong. To be clear, the AG wanted to make public the elements of permits that are public. The AG made technical mistakes that led to private information being leaked. That's why the site is now offline.
- jeffbee 4y agoCan I get a little more chapter and verse please? Your assertions are no more well supported than their assertions.
- xbar 4y agoAG Bonta's office statement: "We are investigating an exposure of individuals’ personal information connected to the DOJ Firearms Dashboard," his office said via email. "Any unauthorized release of personal information is unacceptable.We are working swiftly to address this situation and will provide additional information as soon as possible."
- happyopossum 4y agoPer Cal. Gov't Code § 6253(a) details such as when and where applicant is vulnerable to attack, information concerning applicant’s mental health, and home address and telephone number of prosecutors, public defenders, peace officers, judges, court commissioners, and magistrates set forth in the application and license is exempt from public disclosure and must be segregated to avoid being released.
- supercanuck 4y ago
- jaywalk 4y agoCharacterizing someone as "psychotic" for simply owning a firearm is pretty psychotic in my view.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoIs it a crime when the government doxx someone?
- ClumsyPilot 4y agonot a crime when equifax does it
- BudaDude 4y agoWe learned from our last president how much the law doesn't apply to those in power. The law is for the peasants.
- oldjavacoder 4y agohttps://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/18/state-department-hillary-clinton-emails-051380 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/18/state-department-hi... "State Dept. finds no ‘systemic’ classified violation in Hillary Clinton private-server emails" ... "38 individuals committed a total of 91 security violations involving emails sent to or from Clinton’s private server."
- timapplesauce 4y ago
- kerblang 4y agoJust googling around (not sure about accuracy) https://www.rcfp.org/open-government-sections/k-gun-permits/ https://www.rcfp.org/open-government-sections/k-gun-permits/ > Licenses and applications to carry firearms are public. CBS Inc. v. Block, 42 Cal. 3d 646, 652-53, 725 P.2d 470, 230 Cal. Rptr. 362 (1986). However, certain information contained in the application is expressly exempt. Cal. Gov’t Code § 6254(u) (information indicating when and where applicant is vulnerable to attack, information concerning applicant’s mental health, and home address and telephone number of prosecutors, public defenders, peace officers, judges, court commissioners, and magistrates set forth in the application and license is exempt). The agency must segregate the exempt from non-exempt material. See Cal. Gov't Code § 6253(a).
- Rebelgecko 4y agoThe data includes judges, police officers, and correctional officers. There's even a special column to identify them. The data also includes mental health information for people whose CCWs and RAWs were rejected (as well as physical health information for people who died during the application process, but maybe that's considered public knowledge)
- dang 4y agoRelated: Attorney General Bonta Releases Name, DOB, and Address of CCW Holders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31903486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31903486 - June 2022 (77 comments)
- jmspring 4y agoA friend grabbed most of the data. I plan on looking through to see just how obvious / easy it is to draw conclusions once I see it.
- sigzero 4y agoAccording to the article: The leaked information includes the person’s full name, home address, date of birth, and date their permit was issued. The data also shows the type of permit issued, indicating if the permit holder is a member of law enforcement or a judge. So that is "easy to draw conclusions".
- jmspring 4y agoWell, mapping between the databases. If DROS data is available, yet the individual doesn't have a CCW, what does the DROS info have? Given what I understand, if an individual has a CCW and the info exposed there, mapping to what firearms they own may be relatively straight forward. If they don't, then what info is available?
- Rebelgecko 4y agoFor transactions, the only PII is DOB, transaction time, and location. I think it'll be easier to correlate transactions with the Assault Weapon permit and FSC tables than with the CCW table (since there's a clear temporal relationship, and the firearm make/model carries over too)
- abduhl 4y agoI find this leak to be incredibly ironic in light of the recent California required political disclosure law that got struck down. One of the key arguments from the charities that challenged that law was that California has a history of leaking sensitive information and that they would likely leak this list of donors, and California's primary argument against this was "well, we've changed!" It's just funny to see it happen again. Here's from the transcript between Alito and the Solicitor General from California from https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/19-251 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/19-251 at around 1:19. Samuel A. Alito, Jr. All right. The brief filed by the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund says that we should regard your system as a system of de facto public disclosure because there have been such massive confidentiality breaches in California. And from the perspective of a donor, that may make sense. A donor may say: This is a state that has been grossly negligent in the past. No sanctions against anybody who's leaked this information. I have to assume that this may happen again. Why isn't that a reasonable way to look at this? Aimee A. Feinberg I don't think even the district court regarded it that way, Justice Alito. At 62a of the Law Center petition appendix, the district court said that the Attorney General's Office efforts to rectify past lapses and to prevent them in the future were commendable. Samuel A. Alito, Jr. It said your past record was shocking, did it not? Aimee A. Feinberg In the foundation decision, it did. Following the court's analysis of the evidence regarding the changes to the State's protocols, it called those efforts commendable. Its concern at the Law Center -- its concern at that point was that the State could not guarantee confidentiality.
- kyrra 4y agoLast year, SCOTUS ruled that California could not collect donor information from non profits. A large part of this was that California did a poor job of securing this information. They accidentally posted over 1700 Schedule B forms online for anyone to access over the last 10 years. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1004062322/the-supreme-court-guts-a-state-law-requiring-nonprofits-to-name-their-rich-donor https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1004062322/the-supreme-court-...
- aliswe 4y agoJust curious, would this be able to be used as material for conspiracy theorists on both sides?
- hobz22 4y agoIt's hard to avoid the obvious conclusion of this article.....gun owners need more guns, clearly. :)
- jonahbenton 4y ago
- nomel 4y ago> But guns are effing dangerous and it is important to know where they are. It might be important to know where they are, but it's definitely not important that you know where they are.
- jonahbenton 4y agoAs a property owner in another state, I don't care specifically about CA but I do very much for my own locality. IMO a CC permit holder and owner who is not a member of a regulated entity is more dangerous than a sex offender.
- nomel 4y agoCould you clarify that for me? You think that a convicted rapist/child molester/pervert, who has committed a crime (> 12 percent being repeat offenders [1]), is less dangerous than someone who has a gun, 24% being women [2], who has not committed a crime? > who is not a member of a regulated entity I think their name being in this database means they are a taking part in a regulated entity, does it not? 1. https://smart.ojp.gov/somapi/chapter-5-adult-sex-offender-recidivism https://smart.ojp.gov/somapi/chapter-5-adult-sex-offender-re... 2. Who claim they do it for their protection. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiN-8TPodH4AhUvK0QIHedXDyEQFnoECA8QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americas1stfreedom.org%2Fcontent%2Fconcealed-carry-data-reveals-the-truly-democratic-nature-of-the-second-amendment%2F&usg=AOvVaw01K8il0z-u5vPm5s2YT2Yb https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- zorpner 4y ago
- jonahbenton 4y agoSure. Sex crimes as a whole occur at an appalling high rate. I tend to believe the figures that in the US 1 in 5 or more women are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. The vast, vast majority of those occur through relationships. Stranger rape is pretty rare. The risk from a stranger recidivist in general falls into that category, even rarer. And non-stranger recidivist relationships- every woman develops her own spidey sense- imperfect, to be sure, but still there. In our family we work a great deal on developing that spidey sense when it comes to relationships, though comparatively speaking that's a much greater concern to me in general than stranger rape. I'm just not worried that my daughters or wife are going to find themselves assaulted by a stranger, one who doesn't have a gun. If that stranger has a gun, everything changes. And that's not a function of the risk of sexual violence, that's a function of the possession of the gun. In general guns represent an unacceptable- to me- escalation of violent potential. The availability of guns is the most extreme form- that of violence- of inequality between people. The reason we have a society, a political system, rule of law, regulated military- is so that disputes can be settled as much as possible without violence. Of course people participating in regulated violent entities- police forces, the military- have great difficulty controlling gun use. Many of them join because they want to use guns! But the use of weapons by those entities is vastly (!!) less dangerous than any category of use by even trained civilians. So that's why. The bottom line is that both sex crimes and gun use are about violence and power. Someone who wishes to exercise power without a gun is vastly (!!) less of a risk than someone who does so with a gun. And I see vanishingly few use cases for the possession of a gun that don't involve the exercise of power. Hope that makes sense. Best wishes. Thanks for the engagement.
- at_a_remove 4y agoI recall the Journal News, of New York, making an online map of locals who held gun permits, back around 2012. Of course, someone published the addresses of those journalists who were -- unsurprisingly -- all boo-hoo-hoo about it. I wonder just how "accidental" this leak was.
- fzeroracer 4y agoTo be honest, I expect this to become even more of a thing. With the erosion of Roe v Wade and the supreme court signaling that it's deciding to pull back on any rights to privacy, blue states will fight back by adopting the same measures that were used to curtail abortion against gun owners. Texas provides an excellent blueprint for a way you can do so without violating someone's rights, and the court even signed off on it. Nothing in the constitution signals you have a right to privacy as so decreed the court, so while you may have a right to own guns it can be made as public as the state wants with no recourse. In this scenario it's more pure incompetence, but that's the way I see it going down.
- happyopossum 4y ago> and the court even signed off on it Not really, the court refused to hear it on purely procedural grounds (it is constructed to be a civil lawsuit in TX and not criminal).
- parineum 4y ago> Nothing in the constitution signals you have a right to privacy as so decreed the court That's not true. There's a previous ruling that determines that "liberty" in the 14th amendment includes privacy for many things. Roe v Wade determined that abortion was one of those things. Overturning Roe doesn't overturn the precedent it was based on.
- notananthem 4y agoCriminals don't comb records of concealed carry holders to rob them, they do straw purchases or more often just buy guns with serial numbers already removed. Its just Cali gun owners worked up because gun regulation works well for the country.
- cryptonector 4y agoI invite you to read the definition of the verb "to case", as in "to case a known gun owner's home to burgle it when no one is home".
- rib3ye 4y agoEven if you are on the "pro" side of this, how can one justify publishing the home addresses of judges?
- bandyaboot 4y agoSo the information listed seems like information I would expect to be on something like a concealed carry permit. Are the permits themselves not public records?
- happyopossum 4y agoPrivate information, such as home addresses and good cause justifications (as they can contain highly sensitive info - ie details about an abusive partner, etc) are specifically excluded from public release by law.
- bandyaboot 4y agoThanks
- shaftway 4y agoA common justification is that you have to carry around large amounts of cash or other fungible valuables. If I dealt in gold or diamonds I wouldn't want my home address to be public either.
- BiggsHoson 4y agoNo one really believes this was an accident, do they?
- karaterobot 4y agoUntil proven otherwise, I'll assume it's incompetence. I mean, I can't imagine why the Attorney General's office would want to do it. What would they stand to gain? There's no question who is responsible for it, and very little question that they'll be punished for doing it. What would the hoped-for benefit be?
- snerbles 4y ago> very little question that they'll be punished for doing it The party of the state AG enjoys full control of the state, I'm pretty sure he feels quite secure in his position.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoThe Supreme Court recently forced California and 9 other states to loosen up CCW rules and there's probably going to be a large increase in applications. Doxxing people with CCWs will have a chilling effect and prevent at least some people from going through the process. Edit: something else I just thought of. Gun-owning judges are explicitly called out in the spreadsheet. Gun-owning judges are also probably less likely to agree with Attorney General Bonta when he's in court. Is it possible that those judges will have to recuse themselves in cases involving Bonta?
- option 4y agoContact your state representatives and demand they hold Rob Bonta accountable for this.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoAlthough probably a waste of time if you're in the 18th assembly district
- retr0grad3 4y agoI have a right to be free of guns. If someone had a CHP I, as a citizen, have a rihmght to avoid them.
- greesil 4y agoWhoops PII
- kradeelav 4y agoEvents/(choices) like this have disastrous consequences for any hope of bridging the widening polarization. I'm starting to think we may never get back to where we were.
- fsckboy 4y ago>The leaked information includes the person’s full name, race... why is the govt tracking the race of gun owners?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- randallsquared 4y agoAll the news stories say "leak", but the URL looks pretty official, and has "firearms data portal" built right in. Sadly, the site is currently down, so I'm not sure if they meant some other kind of firearms data.
- exabrial 4y agoI'm 100 percent against government "lists"; In order to have a right taken away, the only Constitutional way is through a guilty verdict in the the judicial system.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> In order to have a right taken away, the only Constitutional way is through a guilty verdict in the the judicial system. Except for the right against slavery and involuntary servitude, the Constitution doesn't say that.
- thrwawy283 4y agoThis is the most tactless thing they could have done to bring 2A proponents to the table to discuss responsible legislation. *puts on tinfoil hat*
- ttfkam 4y agoMore disruptive things will inevitably come down now that the Supreme Court has ruled that privacy is not a constitutional right. Left. Right. Doesn't matter. No one is safe anymore.
- giantg2 4y agoNot really a surprise, sadly. Philly did something similar when they created a map of all LTCF holders in the city. Disclosing that information is a felony under the law, but of course nobody was prosecuted for it. The city was of course sued and ordered to give each LTCF holder $1200 for the violation.
- nocoiner 4y agoBoy, if you don’t like your purportedly fundamental rights exposed as public records, just wait until you hear about voter rolls.
- zephrx1111 4y agoBased on my personal experience with California gov, this must be malice. Moreover, the personnel who made this “mistake” and who “discovered” it must be the same person.
- rasz 4y agoJokes on him - I have unregistered gun. /s Another case of criminals having more rights than law abiding citizens.
- stevenjgarner 4y agoHas the AG committed a crime here?