Jay McDaniel

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Prepaid debit cards are sold as gift cards at many stores and offered by Visa, Mastercard and American Express. These cards are purchasable with cash, which enables them to be used for anonymous, cash-like digital payments.

Once purchased the cards can be used like normal debit or credit cards, but to be used online, they must be registered on a Website. Purchasing goods with these cards doesn’t make much sense, since any physical item will require a real shipping address, but it’s an attractive option for paying for services. One could use an anonymous debit card to purchase VPN and prepaid cell phone services, both of which will contribute to preserving the privacy of your electronic communications.

When purchasing a prepaid card for anonymous use, it’s important to avoid cards which are reloadable. The reloadable cards usually involve actual credit and, as such, require a social security number to be activated. Non-reloadable cards only require a name and address. This information is never verified. It is only used in Address Verification System checks, which is the system that merchants use to verify that a person using a card to make an online purchase, is in fact the card owner. As long as the name and address you enter while registering the card is the same that you provide the merchant, the AVS check will pass.

Options

Visa, Mastercard, and American Express prepaid cards can be purchased at most grocery and drug stores. These stores will usually have a rack somewhere with a wide selection of store-specific gift cards, for places such as Amazon and iTunes, as well as calling cards, prepaid cell-phone cards and reloadable debit cards. The non-reloadable prepaid cards that you’re looking for will be somewhere on the same rack. They’ll be labeled as gift cards and tend to only be available in fixed amounts.

The nation-wide chain of Simon Malls all offer gift cards that can be purchased in any dollar amount from $20 to $500. You can choose between American Express and Visa cards. These gift cards are no different from the prepaid Visa and American Express cards available at your local grocery store, save for the Simon logo.

Simon claims that American Express cards do not need to be registered for online use. I’ve had trouble with American Express cards, both registered and un-registered and tend to avoid them now. I’ve never had problems with Visa or Mastercard cards at any merchant.

I purchase both types of cards. I’ve always paid with cash and I have never been asked for any identification.

Fees

The Simon gift cards require a $2.95 activation fee at the time of purchase, which is regardless of the value that you place on the card.

The un-branded cards also require an activation fee at the time of purchase. This varies based on the fixed-amount of the card that you’re purchasing. It tends to be somewhere between $3.95 and $6.95. The fees are the same for Visa, Mastercard and American Express.

Some of the cards will expire after a period of years and some of them will have monthly fees deducted for inactivity after the first year. These terms will vary depending on the card that you choose, but they tend to be irrelevant. You are not purchasing the card as a long-term value store. You are purchasing the card to use it and it will likely be depleted within a couple months, at which point you can go buy another one.

Limitations

Prepaid debit cards do have their limitations.

• They cannot be used to withdraw cash at ATMs.
• They cannot be used for subscription services with recurring billing.
• They can only be used with US merchants.

The first limitation doesn’t affect us, since we’re discussing using these cards online. The second limitation may impact your intended use, but despite the card’s claimed limitation, I have successfully used them to pay recurring charges. I imagine that this depends on how the merchant does their billing.

The cards can be used to fund a new PayPal account, which allows us to avoid the final limitation, if the foreign merchant accepts PayPal. You can also sign up for subscriptions with a PayPal account funded by an anonymous debit card to address the second limitation.

Tor

Before they can used online, the anonymous debit cards must be registered so that they are able to pass AVS checks. Registration of the card can be completed anonymously through Tor. Tor is an implementation of onion routing, which is a technique used to anonymize digital communications by bouncing the packets through multiple nodes in the network. Before leaving your computer each packet is encrypted multiple times, such that each node in the Tor network can remove only one layer — like peeling off the outer layer of an onion. This prevents any of the nodes on the network from knowing both the origin and destination of the packet. Every node on the network, with the exception of the final exit node, is also prevented from reading the contents of the packet. If the packet was encrypted before being handed to Tor (such as with common web communications using the TLS/SSL protocol), the exit node will also be unable to read its contents.

The easiest way to use Tor is by downloading the Tor Browser Bundle. This is a version of Mozilla Firefox that has been tweaked for privacy, and communicates solely though Tor. The Tor Browser is available for Linux, OS X and Windows. It is simply a binary that needs to be extracted and run. It doesn’t require installation or any configuration.

Registration

Each prepaid card comes with activation instructions that include the URL of the registration page. After visiting this registration page in the Tor Browser, you’ll be asked to enter a name, address and phone number. Remember that this address will only be used for AVS checks. No other verification will be done. Whatever name and address you use, make a note of it so that you can enter the correct billing information when using the card.

Use

After the card has been registered it’s ready to use. Any online use of the card should also be done through the Tor network to preserve your anonymity. If you decide to use the card with a PayPal account, register a new PayPal account through Tor.

Most online purchases will require an email address. Since you’re already in the Tor Browser, head over to Tor Mail and sign up for a new address to use with the card. If you want a quick disposable email address, try Mailinator.

It seems more often we read news stories where it is apparent that at least in some areas of the country, the inmates are running the asylum, meaning people who are irrational or just plain nuts are the people in power making the rules—or in some cases, the laws.

The most recent, “Are you kidding me?” news story came from West Virginia, where a 14-year-old middle school student was arrested and suspended simply for wearing an NRA T-shirt. I looked into the story, convinced that there had to be something else involved—an assault on a teacher, drugs, something.

Nope. Jared Marcum was arrested simply because he wore an NRA T-shirt to school and refused to take it off. On the shirt was a picture of a hunting camoed AR-15 and the words, “Protect Your Right” along with the NRA logo. The shirt apparently upset a teacher in the cafeteria, who told Marcum to take off the shirt or turn it inside out. Marcum informed the teacher that the shirt didn’t violate the school’s dress code, so he was sent to the principal’s office.

“When the police came, I was still talking and telling them that this was wrong, that they cannot do this, it’s not against any school policy,” Marcum told The Associated Press. “The officer, he told me to sit down and be quiet. I said, ‘No, I’m exercising my right to free speech.’ I said it calmly.” After the incident, local police charged Marcum with disrupting the educational process and obstructing an officer.

Check out the video from WOWK-TV in Charleston, W.V.:

According to the Logan County School District’s dress code, students are forbidden from wearing anything that displays profanity, violence, discriminatory messages or sexually suggestive phrases. Garments that glorify alcohol, tobacco or drugs are also banned. Still, Marcum’s lawyer, Ben White, insists that the NRA shirt did not constitute a violation of the dress code, let alone grounds for an arrest. White requested copies of the surveillance tape from the cafeteria.

Video evidence in the case, White said, indicates the situation in the cafeteria deteriorated when a teacher raised his voice while confronting Jared. Other students jumped up on benches and began chanting Jared’s name.

“I think the disruption came from the teacher,” White said. After his one-day suspension, Marcum returned to school wearing the exact same T-shirt that got him suspended. Marcum was joined by about 100 other students across Logan County, W.V., who wore shirts with similar gun rights slogans in a show of support for free speech.

“I’m still confused, thoroughly confused,” Marcum told a local TV station. “The school didn’t even make a statement to the news agencies, much less myself.”

The case has been turned over to the local juvenile prosecutor.

“My sense is that no charges will be imminent,” White said.

We at Guns & Ammo can’t believe any prosecutor would be stupid enough to press charges against Marcum, but then again, who would have thought Marcum would have been suspended and arrested in the first place?

This is a complete and total failure of leadership. Apparently there is no responsible adult supervision in Marcum’s school; if there was, the teacerh, the principal and the police officer should have been the ones punished for misbehavior.

However, there is one thing we all learned from this story: Jared Marcum’s parents are doing a darn good job.

What do you think? Is the school justified in suspending Marcum, or does the suspension violate his First Amendment rights?

In the wake of the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon and the identification, arrest, and charging of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I've been feeling very self-conscious. That's because lots of people are talking about federal criminal law and criminal procedure, subjects with which I am somewhat familiar. When they do, I ask myself: when I very frequently talk about things I haven't bothered to learn about, do I sound like that? God help me.

Today: nutty and deliberately ignorant conspiracy theories about Tsarnaev's first court appearance.

As I mentioned early in the week, Tsarnaev made his initial appearance from his hospital bed on April 22, 2013, the first court day after his arrest. At that hearing, United States Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler said this to him:

You have a right under the Constitution of the United States to remain silent. Any statement made by you may be used against you in court, and you have the right not to have your own words used against you.

In other words, Magistrate Judge Bowler informed Tsarnaev of his Fifth Amendment rights.

(The transcript suggests she did so incorrectly and confusingly — the last clause just isn't right unless you modify it to say "you have the right not to be compelled to say things against yourself," because the government certainly can use your words against you if those words aren't compelled. That may mean that the court reporter got it wrong, or that Judge Bowler had the sort of slip of the tongue any of us can have speaking extemporaneously.)

Judge Bowler reading Tsarnaev his rights has caused great consternation in some circles. It has been reported that he initially answered questions but stopped talking after read his rights. Outrageous! Critics want to know: why was he allowed to make a court appearance? Why did the judge read him his rights? More critically, what motive did the judge have to do so?

The jittery and uncombed are eager to rush in to answer that question.

First, I give you the one-vowel-short-of-aptly-named Pat Dollard, whose headline shrieks "SHOCK: JUDGE WHO ENDED INTERROGATION OF BOSTON BOMBER WITHOUT DOJ KNOWLEDGE LINKED TO MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD":

UPDATE: Judge Bowler lists herself as “a dedicated international traveler” on her bio in Business Week. Where does she travel to in such a dedicated fashion? Who does she see there, and what does she do, so regularly as to be self-described as “dedicated”. And, perhaps, “dedicated” to anything in particular? Did she take on a radical Muslim boyfriend in her travels?

International travel is, indeed, suspicious. An international travel is likely to encounter foreigners, some of whom are not even white.

Or take Daniel Greenfield of Frontpage Mag, who has this on "Boston Bomber Magistrate’s Middle Eastern Connections":

As FOX News reported and Robert Spencer noted, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stopped talking once he was prematurely read his Miranda rights. That helps the authorities establish the lone wolf narrative. Whatever else we might have learned from him is probably lost.

. . . .

While Islamic infiltration of our political system is well known, the infiltration of our legal system is less well known, but operates within similar parameters with foreign contacts being made. There is no way of knowing how much Bowler has been influenced by her connections with the legal and political systems of the Muslim world, but it is telling that her international judicial relations appear to begin and end with the Muslim world.

The very fact that there is no way to know how much Bowler was influenced by Muslims show exactly how shadowy and mysterious Muslims are!

Now, here's why these people are full of shit.

Magistrate Judge Bowler was required by federal law to tell Tsarnaev of his right to remain silent. Rule 5 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, governing initial appearances, says this:

(d) Procedure in a Felony Case.

(1) Advice. If the defendant is charged with a felony, the judge must inform the defendant of the following:

(A) the complaint against the defendant, and any affidavit filed with it;

(B) the defendant's right to retain counsel or to request that counsel be appointed if the defendant cannot obtain counsel;

(C) the circumstances, if any, under which the defendant may secure pretrial release;

(D) any right to a preliminary hearing; and

(E) the defendant's right not to make a statement, and that any statement made may be used against the defendant.

And how did Magistrate Judge Bowler wind up holding an initial appearance? The U.S. Attorney's Office — the federal prosecutors, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice — filed the criminal complaint on Sunday, April 21, 2013, initiating the criminal case. The docket for the case to date is here. Filing a complaint against a person in custody starts the federal criminal process moving, leading naturally to a first appearance. If the feds hadn't filed the complaint, there's no way Judge Bowler could have held a hearing with Tsarnaev without someone filing a habeas corpus petition. Judges can't initiate such federal criminal proceedings on their own.

The Patient Zero for this plague of derangement is Fox News' Megyn Kelly:.

The FBI filed a federal criminal complaint against the 19-year-old on Sunday, and federal District Court Judge Marianne Bowler [emphasis added] arrived at the hospital where he is being treated to preside over his initial hearing Monday, when she read him his Miranda rights.

[FBI officials told The Associated Press Wednesday that Tsarnaev acknowledged to investigators his role in the attacks before he was advised of his constitutional rights. He reportedly said he was only recently recruited by his brother to be part of the attack.]

But Fox News' sources say there was confusion about Bowler's timing, with some voicing concerns that investigators were not given enough time to question Dzhokhar under the "public safety exception" invoked by the Justice Department.

Someone with a saintly level of patience could probably teach prominent journalist Megyn Kelly the difference between a District Court Judge and a Magistrate Judge if she wanted to know for, say, the purpose of reporting accurately about the most important federal criminal case of the year. Maybe the same person could teach her how to use the Google to see which one Magistrate Judge Bowler is.

But Kelly is merely a carrier of the derangement. It is to her credit that she acknowledges being told that Rule 5 required Magistrate Judge Bowler to inform Tsarnaev of his rights — and that she acknowledges being told that the "Judge Bowler initiated the hearing too early" theory is bullshit.

Two officials with knowledge of the FBI briefing on Capitol Hill said the FBI was against stopping the investigators' questioning and was stunned that the judge, Justice Department prosecutors and public defenders showed up, feeling valuable intelligence may have been sacrificed as a result.

Yes, federal agents are often against application of the rule of law. But:

But Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd disputed the claims, saying that the suspect’s initial appearance was scheduled following the filing of the criminal complaint in a manner “consistent” with procedure – and that the agents were aware.

“The Rules of Criminal Procedure require the court to advise the defendant of his right to silence and his right to counsel during the initial appearance. The prosecutors and FBI agents in Boston were advised of the scheduled initial appearance in advance of its occurrence,” Boyd said.

A federal law enforcement official also told Fox News that the courts, not the Justice Department, made the decision on when and where to hold the hearing.

“The (FBI) agents and prosecutors were notified beforehand,” the official said, claiming those agents had already left the room when the judge came in.

So: some federal law enforcement official says that "the courts" made the decision when and where to hold the hearing. That is almost certainly literally true. But it's almost certain that first, the U.S. Attorney's office informed the court that they were ready for a hearing. Again, the feds initiate cases, and they initiate first appearances by showing up at court with someone in custody or asking the court to hold a hearing. Is it physically possible that Judge Bowler could, on her own initiative, scheduled a hearing after the feds initiated the case by filing the complaint? Yes. But it is an extraordinary claim, requiring some sort of evidence. Unnamed "federal law enforcement officials" are not known for their command of federal criminal procedure.

In short: the proposition that Judge Bowler was motivated by some sleeper-cell jihadist agenda to rush to inform Tsarnaev of his rights in order to shut him up is very stupid.

I recognize that federal criminal procedure is not common knowledge. But it's not hard to figure out either. I figured it out and I'm more than a little dim. A brief call to any first-year Deputy Federal Public Defender or Assistant United States Attorney, let alone any experienced federal criminal practitioner, would have cleared up these imbecilities.

But who wants to do actual research before accusing a judge of being a terrorist parisan? The wild-eyed people sniffing every falafel Judge Bowler ever ate are either (1) crazy (2) lazy (3) stupid or (4) dishonestly partisan, or some combination of those.

Update: A reaction from Pat Dollard:

Perhaps Pat Dollard is not able to understand the difference between an interrogation by law enforcement and an appearance in court. Or, more likely, he doesn't care.

Edited Again:

And in the category of "really ought to know better," consider Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

I have never practiced criminal law (except briefly at the international level) and have not studied it since 1974. Thus, like most Americans, much of what I think I know about criminal procedure comes from watching television and movies.

My viewing experience does not include any instances in which a judge read a criminal defendant his or her Miranda warning in the middle of police interrogation. Thus, I was shocked to learn that this happened in the case of the surviving Tsarnaev terrorist.

. . . .

I can’t help but that suspect that it was the Obama administration that decided Tsarnaev should receive the Miranda warning. After all, wasn’t it the prosecutor who brought the judge to Tsarnaev’s hospital room in the first place? And isn’t it almost certain that the local prosecutor, an assistant U.S. attorney, acted on instructions from the higest level of the Justice Department? Line prosecutors don’t make decisions about how to treat terrorists in high profile cases when there is time to consult the DOJ.

The party line is that the magistrate judge made the decision to Mirandize the terrorist because she deemed her appearance in the hospital as constituting an appearance in court by Tsarnaev. This strkes me as ridiculous, unless the prosecutor characterized the event as the equivalent of a court appearance.

Although Mirengoff might be known for engaging his mouth without engaging his brain, he's not a moron, and not lazy: he's a well-qualified attorney. But his post amounts to saying "please congratulate me for refusing to research and for assuming criminal procedure works like I see on TV." Mirengoff is perfectly capable of researching the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and confirming that Rule 5 requires the judge to inform a defendant of their rights. Mirengoff attempt to evade the issue by asking why the judge would "deem her appearance in the hospital as constituting an appearance in court," and calling this ridiculous. It is Mirengoff's response that is both ridiculous and willfully ignorant. If the hearing held in the defendant's room wasn't an initial appearance, what the devil was it? It wasn't a probable cause hearing — the judge had already found probable cause by approving the complaint, and no further probable cause determination was necessary until either an indictment or preliminary hearing. It was run, in every respect, exactly like an initial appearance. Federal courts sometimes conduct initial appearances by video or in a hospital room when the circumstances require, as minimal research would have shown. It's very likely that the U.S. Attorney's Office pushed for an initial appearance in the hospital in order to ward off any future argument that the government failed to take Tsarnaev before the magistrate "without unreasonable delay" as required by Rule 5(1)(A).

If Meingoff is embarrassing, the loathsome and amoral torture-fetishist John Yoo is infuriating:

This is an outright violation of the separation of powers. It is not for federal judges, or worse yet their assistants, to rove around looking for criminal cases in which to act as law enforcement agents. The decision whether to read Miranda lies up to the executive branch.

Like Meingoff, John Yoo is neither stupid nor lazy nor unqualified to research legal issues. At the most charitable interpretation, neither wants to make even the most minimal inquiry about law and true facts when their gut reaction suits their partisan narrative. More likely, they are both deliberately dishonest people.

Law, Facts, And Even Minimal Gestures Towards Research All Have Suspicious Muslim Connections © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Opera: The Netflix Queue Sorter userscript can rearrange your Netflix queue by date added, title, star rating, average rating, even length or year released. If your queue is a mess, this simple script will clean it up and make it easier to find the things you've been meaning to watch.

If you're like me, your Netflix queue is probably only organized by when you added the shows and movies in the list. It makes it pretty difficult to find something you've been meaning to watch without a lot of clicking or scrolling. This userscript gives you complete control over your queue—and actually reorganizes it for you, not just changes the way it looks on the web. You can sort by just about any common field, so if you want your TV shows first and your movies second, but you want them both in alphabetical order, this script will do that. Want the movies organized by star rating instead of alphabetical? Sure, the script can handle that too.

The userscript works for DVD and Instant queues, and if you're unfamiliar with how to install and use userscripts and styles, we have a guide to help, and the link below has installation instructions for each major browser.

Netflix Queue Sorter | Userscripts.org

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On April 16, like me, you were probably paying attention to the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, waiting breathlessly for intrepid journalists at CNN, the New York Post, and Reddit to implicate a series of innocent people in a manner suggesting the involvement of a doctor with a flashlight. If your attention wandered from that, you may have become preoccupied by a tremendous explosion in Texas, one not preceded by the traditional local incantation "hey, hold my beer." Then you probably looked back at Boston for a two-day chase involving stolen SUVs and grenades and gunfights and boats. It was a very American week in the media.

I know I was paying attention to all of that. Oh, and the kids were being the kids, and I was busy at work, and I was irritable.

Maybe that's why I didn't notice the release of a detailed report explaining how America has tortured people since 9/11.

Perhaps the most important or notable finding of this panel is that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.
This finding, offered without reservation, is not based on any impressionistic approach to the issue. No member of the Task Force made this decision because the techniques “seemed like torture to me,” or “I would regard that as torture.” Instead, this conclusion is grounded in a thorough and detailed examination of what constitutes torture in many contexts, notably historical and legal. The Task Force examined court cases in which torture was deemed to have occurred both inside and outside the country and, tellingly, in instances in which the United States has leveled the charge of torture against other governments. The United States may not declare a nation guilty of engaging in torture and then exempt itself from being so labeled for similar if not identical conduct. The extensive research that led to the conclusion that the United States engaged in torture is contained in a detailed legal memorandum attached to this report. It should be noted that the conclusion that torture was used means it occurred in many instances and across a wide range of theaters. This judgment is not restricted to or dependent on the three cases in which detainees of the CIA were subjected to waterboarding, which had been approved at the highest levels.

But, of course, it was necessary, right?

There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable. There are, nonetheless, strong assertions by some former senior government officials that the use of those techniques did, in fact, yield valuable intelligence that resulted in operational and strategic successes. But those officials say that the evidence of such success may not be disclosed for reasons of national security.

The report is lengthy and detailed. I'm still reading it. A report condemning the government is no more worthy of automatic belief than a statement supporting the government. My evaluation of the report would be aided by critical reviews, both pro and con, both in the "mainstream media" and amongst bloggers. I'm not holding my breath for it. Consider how little it's been reported during this tumultuous week. I could try to be outraged or smug about that, but the truth is that it is entirely possible that I will be distracted by other, simpler, funnier things.

This is how most of us have decided we are willing to live.

While You Were Freaking © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

First, just in case it's not utterly obvious, I'm glad that the two murderous cowards who attacked civilians in Boston recently are off the streets. One dead and one in custody is a great outcome.

That said, a large percent of the reaction in Boston has been security theater. "Four victims brutally killed" goes by other names in other cities.

In Detroit, for example, they call it "Tuesday".

…and Detroit does not shut down every time there are a few murders.

"But Clark," I hear you say, "this is different. This was a terrorist attack."

Washington DC, during ongoing sniper terrorist attacks in 2002 that killed twice as many people, was not shut down.

Kileen Texas, after the Fort Hood terrorist attack in 2009 that killed three times as many people, was not shut down.

London, after the bombing terrorist attack in 2005 that killed more than ten times as many people, was not shut down.

"But Clark," I hear you asking, "what about the lives saved?"

There is no evidence that any lives were saved by the Boston shutdown.

"Yeah, but you can't know for sure!"

True. I can't. But in London, Washington, LA after the El Al shootings, and so on and so on and so on, there were not lockdowns, and there were no further fatalities. It's not perfect proof, but it's suggestive.

"Then why the hell do you care, Clark?"

First, the unprecendented shutdown of a major American city may have increased safety some small bit, but it was not without a cost: keeping somewhere between 2 and 5 million people from work, shopping, and school destroyed a nearly unimaginable amount of value. If we call it just three million people, and we peg the cost at a mere $15 per person per hour, the destroyed value runs to a significant fraction of a billion dollars.

"Yeah, maybe…but in this day and age where the federal government is borrowing an extra $3.85 billion per day, a couple of hundred million doesn't sound like much. After all, if we're borrowing money that our children and grandchildren will have to pay back to fund Cowboy Poetry Festival and military golf courses, then what's another $200 or $400 million to keep people safe?"

I've got multiple answers:

First, just because you're already two hundred pounds overweight doesn't mean that another bowl of ice cream won't hurt you. It will.

Second, the cost isn't just measured in dollars – it's measured in the degree to which it trains a population to freak out over minor risk and to trust blindly in authorities.

Third, keeping citizens off the street meant that 99% of the eyes and brains that might solve a crime were being wasted. Eric S Raymond famously said that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". It was thousands of citizen photographs that helped break this case, and it was a citizen who found the second bomber. Yes, that's right – it wasn't until the stupid lock-down was ended that a citizen found the second murderer:

boston.com

The boat’s owners, a couple, spent Friday hunkered down under the stay-at-home order. When it was lifted early in the evening, they ventured outside for some fresh air and the man noticed the tarp on his boat blowing in the wind, according to their his son, Robert Duffy.

The cords securing it had been cut and there was blood near the straps.

We had thousands of police going door-to-door, searching houses…and yet not one of them saw the evidence that a citizen did just minutes after the lock-down ended.

"But Clark," you protest, "you may not trust the government to decide what's risky and what's not, but I do. If it saves even one life, then shutting down a major city is the right move. That's obvious!"

But the Boston police didn't shut down an entire city. They shut down an entire city except for the donut shops.

boston.com

Law enforcement asked Dunkin' Donuts to keep restaurants open in locked-down communities to provide… food to police… including in Watertown, the focus of the search for the bombing suspect.

The government and police were willing to shut down parts of the economy like the universities, software, biotech, and manufacturing…but when asked to do an actual risk to reward calculation where a small part of the costs landed on their own shoulders, they had no problem weighing one versus the other and then telling the donut servers "yeah, come to work – no one's going to get shot."

And they were right.

security theater, martial law, and a tale that trumps every cop-and-donut joke you've ever heard © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

PhotographyIsNotACrime.com points out the obvious: after years of warning us that photography is suspicious, the police were happy to accept all of those amateur photographs and videos at the Boston Marathon.

Adding to the hypocrisy is that these same authorities will most likely start clamping down on citizens with cameras more than ever once the smoke clears and we once again become a nation of paranoids willing to give up our freedoms in exchange for some type of perceived security.

After all, that is exactly how it played out in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks where it became impossible to photograph buildings, trains or airplanes without drawing the suspicion of authorities as potential terrorists.

I commented in this article on the repeal of the transparency provisions of the STOCK Act:

Passed in 2012 after a 60 Minutes report on insider trading practices in Congress, the STOCK Act banned members of Congress and senior executive and legislative branch officials from trading based on government knowledge. To give the ban teeth, the law directed that many of these officials' financial disclosure forms be posted online and their contents placed into public databases. However, in March, a report ordered by Congress found that airing this information on the Internet could put public servants and national security at risk. The report urged that the database, and the public disclosure for everyone but members of Congress and the highest-ranking executive branch officials -- measures that had never been implemented -- be thrown out.

The government sprang into action: last week, both chambers of Congress unanimously agreed to adopt the report's recommendations. Days later, Obama signed the changes into law.

The article went on to talk to four cybersecurity experts, all of whom basically said the same thing:

Bluntest of all was Bruce Schneier, a leading security technologist and cryptographer. "They put them personally at risk by holding them accountable," Schneier said of the impact of disclosure rules on Congress members and DC staffers. "That's why they repealed it. The national security bit is bullshit you're supposed to repeat." (Three of the four experts we consulted opted for the same term of choice.)

There was a security risk, but it was not a national security risk. It was a personal Congressperson risk.

EDITED TO ADD (4/25): Jon Stewart quoted my "the national security bit is bullshit" line.

Yesterday, in a disturbing report published on CNET, new documents obtained by EPIC reveal that Obama administration officials have authorized a new government program involving the interception of communications on Internet service providers, including AT&T—one of the key players in the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. 

Under long-standing federal law, the government needs to use legal process to compel service providers to hand over customer communications, yet reportedly, the government is promising these companies they will not to prosecute them for violating US wiretapping laws if they hand over the information voluntarily. And the secret surveillance authorization seems quite broad, touching on huge swaths of private, domestic activity:

The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors' Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.

CNET reported also that the National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Defense were “deeply involved in press for the secret legal authorization” further underscoring widespread worries that the military may be given access to Americans’ personal information through cybersecurity operations.  The report comes as Congress is debating CISPA, a dangerous bill that carves a “cybersecurity” loophole in all our privacy laws.

While we are still sifting through the more than thousand pages of documents—obtained by EPIC Privacy through the Freedom of Information Act and posted to their website—the most controversial aspect of this program seems to be that the government has not used legal process to obtain Internet traffic from AT&T and other ISPs involved in the program. Instead, the Justice Department has handed them what the Justice Department calls a “2511 letter”—named after a section of the Wiretap Act—which purports to immunize them from prosecution.

Section 2511 makes it a crime to wiretap—intercept electronic communications—with some exceptions, like a properly issued warrant. It provides no exception for a letter from the Justice Department. CNET reported an industry representative told them "the 2511 letters provided legal immunity to the providers by agreeing not to prosecute for criminal violations of the Wiretap Act. It's not clear how many 2511 letters were issued by the Justice Department."

Beyond what CNET reported, we still need to analyze these new documents to determine how pervasive this surveillance is and its impact on the American public. We are currently reading them over and will have a more detailed analysis soon.

As a gun writer, I like to consider myself a little more well-informed than the average gun owner about most things that go “bang.” Buying and selling guns, ammo and accessories online is no big deal, right? Well, thinking you’re smart and well-informed, and being smart and well-informed are two different things. As of right now, my PayPal account is restricted until I fill out their, “I’m sorry I broke your rules,” document, admitting I violated their Acceptable Use Policy. What did I do?

I had the temerity, the audacity, the cojones to sell an AR-15 magazine on GunBroker, and accept payment through PayPal. When Paypal found out, they restricted my account so that I can now deposit money into it—but not withdraw any—until I fill out and send in their Acceptable Use Policy affidavit.

EBay is well known to be hostile to gun owners, treating firearms, parts and ammunition like the plague, but I thought I was safe working through GunBroker, which specializes in hosting auctions of exactly those kind of products readers of Guns & Ammo would be interested in. Lesson learned. I guess that’s why sellers on GunBroker don’t have PayPal listed as a payment option, but instead take money orders, checks, credit cards, etc.

GunsAmerica has recently instituted a policy that states everything bought on their site has to be paid for with USPS Postal Service Money Orders. As GunsAmerica explains, “If you use USPS money orders and mail them USPS, you generate what they call a ‘nexus’ and if, God forbid, you are scammed online, they will respond to your complaint.”

The USPS has Postal Service Inspectors, and they take fraud seriously.

“Credit cards are the safest way to pay for internet purchases, but only gun dealers are allowed to have a merchant account that can take payments for guns online.” If somebody trying to sell you something online is saying something different, they’re either wrong or somehow trying to scam you.

In doing research for this article, I also found this on GunsAmerica: “Paypal is not an option. Please do not attempt to use it to pay for or to get paid for GunsAmerica sales. Paypal is violently anti-gun and has suspended and frozen thousands of legitimate gun seller accounts over the years.” Too bad I didn’t know that earlier, but hopefully my pain can be your gain.

GunBroker and GunsAmerica are the two of largest Internet auction sites devoted to firearms and accessories, but not the only ones. There are also GunAuction.com, ArmchairGunShow.com and ArmsBid.com, just to name a few. If you’ve never used one of the online auction sites to buy or sell guns, ammo, or accessories, there are a few things I’ve learned over the years that will help you out.

To buy or sell anything through an online auction site, you’ll have to set up an online user account. Sellers on these websites live and die by their reputation, which is referred to by various terms such as their “feedback” or “user level.” GunBroker uses a grading system that should be familiar to anyone who went to school, A+ being the best. How many total votes they’ve received is also listed, so a seller who has a high grade with a huge number of sales is always the best bet. Sellers to look for on GunsAmerica have a user level that says they are “Trusted” or “Gold.”

Online auction sites are so popular and useful, they are used by gun stores and professional sellers as much or more now than they are by private citizens. This isn’t a bad thing. Selling stuff online requires very little investment and reaches a wide audience, so gun stores and FFL holders can often sell guns more cheaply online than stores who only do face-to-face business.

When you have something to sell and have an account set up, most of the auction sites have easy-to-use walkthroughs to show you how to set up your own auction. The fees they charge for putting up a listing can range from a few bucks to a few dozen, and the fees are usually only charged after the item has sold. Most of the time the fees are calculated as a percentage of the selling price—1 to 2 percent on GunsAmerica based on your membership level, and 1.25 to 5 percent on GunBroker based on the price of the item sold.

One helpful hint: Always upload a photo of what you’re selling. If you don’t, not only will most potential buyers pass up your listing, anyone still interested will just email you asking for a photo.

GunBroker and its like aren’t the only useful places to track down good deals online. Whatever type of firearm you fancy, chances are there is a forum devoted to it somewhere—such as ColtAutos.com, where collectors gather.

Perhaps the largest firearms forum is AR15.com. “Arfcom,” as it is known, is a huge site that isn’t just devoted to ARs, and gun companies know this. Manufacturers have a large presence on the site, not just through ads but through forum posts talking about new products, or talking their customers through problems they may be experiencing. Many companies frequently have special deals available only to members of Arfcom. Arfcom also has their Equipment Exchange, where members who want to buy, sell, trade or get involved in group buys send emails back and forth.

When dealing with individual sellers, the potential for being scammed is always higher. There’s no way to completely eliminate fraud, so just use common sense—if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. Also, if the seller only provides stock photos, wants you to mail your payment to a P.O. Box or maybe a different state even though they’re selling one of their “personal” items, or does anything else that raises your red flags, you have only yourself to blame if you send your payment and never see anything in return.

When is the best time to buy and/or sell? Well, if you’ve got any sort of semi-auto, magazine-fed rifle you’re looking to part with, now would be the time. The same goes for any ammunition or AR or AK magazines—they are all drawing premium prices. Legally, buyers are responsible for making sure the products they’re purchasing are legal in their city/state, but as a seller, you should learn which states have banned certain items. That is why so many gun companies have stopped sales of ARs and standard capacity magazines to departments and even individual law enforcement officers in ban zones such as New York, because they don’t want to run afoul of new and ever-changing gun laws.

When you post your listing, you want as many people as possible to have the chance to look at it, so don’t have it run over a holiday weekend. Again, use common sense—Hawaiian shirts sell better in June than they do in January. If you live in a place which sees snow on the ground six months of the year and only want to sell your competition rifle to a local, February is not a good time to put it up for sale.

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