Comments on: Here we go again

By: Aaron Trost

Aaron Trost — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:50:39 +0000

I don’t really see why your getting your panties in a bunch about this series. You say that its not worth the five dollars to buy the article and read it but its worth taking time to right this long worthless argument against it. Posting the database isn’t going to hurt anyone. Its PUBLIC info. Anyone at anytime can get a hold of that info. They always have been able to and they always will be able to. I have a concealed carry permit and you dont see me crying about it. How about you get a hobby and stop worrying about it.

By: CSFreestyle

CSFreestyle — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:09:55 +0000

So much for keeping it on the DL – NRA-ILA spilled those proverbial beans…

By: Freiheit

Freiheit — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:36:45 +0000

Also before anyone goes nuts on this, read up on the Streisand Effect. We want this contained to one local paper behind a paywall, not making its way onto Digg.

By: Freiheit

Freiheit — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:24:13 +0000

Sorry to keep cluttering, but I’m applying some leverage to the site with the database. What information is useful to know?

With a single search I can get 147,443 of the supposed 318,000 records.

They were smart enough to thin it out a little, the entries are in the format STREET (no house number), CITY, COUNTY, NUMBER OF PERMITS, TYPE OF PERMIT .

Given a sufficiently short street, it is trivial to use this database to find out who owns and carries. I am genuinely afraid that a savvy criminal would use this to find houses with guns to rob and put more guns on the street.

By: Freiheit

Freiheit — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:17:06 +0000

The database is up.

By: Freiheit

Freiheit — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:12:36 +0000

For anyone looking for a ‘trial’ account BugMeNot is blocked for thier site, but not for their mobile domain. There are a few accounts at: http://www.bugmenot.com/view/htonl.mobi

I did not open or create these accounts, I just find BugMeNot a handy way to get around stupid rules.

By: Freiheit

Freiheit — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:54:51 +0000

I passed this along to my cohorts across the river in the Libertarian Party of Indiana to ask their members to take action, one of them replied:

“Why don’t we put a “Freedom of Info” request into Bloomington Police Dept. for all police issued “journalist passes” and “press parking passes”? Then we could publish that list of avail. Data online as well?

Turn about and all that.”

So what can we learn about Mr. Malik and perhaps the representatives from other public databases?

By: Rob K

Rob K — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:13:39 +0000

It doesn’t surprise me to see this come out Bloomington. At least you can only get to it with a subscription… Still, there are plenty of streets in Indiana with only a couple of houses.

By: Caleb

Caleb — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:31:49 +0000

Yeah, I’ve seen that. Basically, what it will do is give you the ability to plug in your street/city/county and see how many people with permits live on a given street. No names address just that “Anywhere St, Indianapolis” has 34 permit holders or something.

Frankly, it’s still bullshit – how would he feel if someone decided to publish a list of what streets had high concentrations of Jews or homosexuals? Then he’d be crying to high heaven about discrimination, but it’s okay to do it to gun owners.

By: Turk Turon

Turk Turon — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:10:46 +0000

…and he emailed back:

“You have been given bad information. Our searchable database will not include names, addresses or phone numbers. It will include counties, cities and streets.

Bob Z “