Posted on 12/27/2012 10:11:53 AM PST by Slings and Arrows
Yesterday we told you about the interactive map of local gun owners published by the Journal-News, a newspaper serving the Westchester and Rockland counties of New York, and the outcry it immediately drew. Turns out the stunt was so unpopular with gun owners and privacy advocates alike that a blogger named Christopher Fountain took it upon himself to dig up and organize the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the Journal-News staff, starting with editor Cyndee Royle. The post is called "Keep up the heat" and encourages readers to pester the paper and prevent them from...report[ing] gun-owner addresses.
As long as they were keeping it to letters to the editor(s), the staff list was, at first, small potatoes as far as payback goes: the allure of the paper's original map of gun owners was the ability to see who, and how many people, owned a gun near a specific address the paper's stunt was a map, not just a (sparsely populated) list of names. But overnight a different retaliatory blogger decided to map the newspaper staff addresses culled thus far (from Google and elsewhere). Here's what Robert Cox, of Talk of the Sound, came up with:
-snip-
It's an open question whether the retribution is misplaced. In a morning interview with CNN, Fountain said he was angered by calls from victims of domestic abuse with gun permits who were worried their whereabouts had been inadvertently revealed. And, more philosophically: "In the aftermath of Newtown, it was obviously one tragedy, but somehow they were conflating legal gun owners with some crazed tormented devil up in Newtown and putting the two together."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Why,,nothing of course. But the paper seems to think it’s ok to reveal personal details about peoples lives. If you can find out something that would humiliate them personally, and maybe even cause them misery in their domestic lives, it can do something very important.
It can cause them (and other papers) to be afraid to pull such a stunt again. And it can also teach them that if you attack non-public people’s personal life, that you risk retaliation in kind. This is especially effective because most journalists are hard leftists, ie,,promiscuous, homo, lesbian, etc,,or some combination of that. Basic insurgency 101, attack the enemy where they are weak.
Seems very fair.
A regrettable necessity on the road to the totalitarian state. Surely you remember what Comrade Stalin said about breaking eggs?
No, it was General John Allen that I was thinking of, although Jack Ryan’s situation also shows the rank hypocrisy of Obama who cares so much about the children that for his own political gain he’d have his skank (David Axelrod) expose divorce records that both parents wanted kept under seal for the sake of their young children. And the same Obama who believed it too burdensome for mothers if the child they unsuccessfully tried to kill through late-term abortion was actually taken care of and allowed to live and be adopted. Etc, etc.
These people are worms of the lowest sort. The tapeworms of society. And they have taken over the White House, courts, media, every regulatory body, law enforcement, etc.
A very apt illustration can be seen in “The Book of the Dun Cow” by Walter Wangerin. Recommended reading. The American public see the basilisks swarming all over the land and go out to greet them as friends, just like the stupid geese in that book. Agents of Wurm, stinking like the sewer, and devouring everything in their way...
Response: Very good.
I think people ought to call, saying that they appreciate the map, as it shows those neighbors who have not only passed a background check (I doubt the newspapers staff could), but are also a deterrent to the kick-in-the-door “Where’s My Free Sh!t” crowd.
Place the call(s) around 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., etc. ;-)
All those at the addresses not published as gun owners are called targets. They should expect company soon.
Oh, here’s a link I meant to give, about the NSA’s snooping: http://angiemedia.com/2012/12/15/former-nsa-employee-william-binney-discusses-massive-surveillance-of-us-email-phone-and-text-communications/#.UNybk-TWLXA
Also any and all criminal records, divorce, and civil fines/etc. Drunken disorderlies, domestic violence, etc.
Cyndee got her fannie handed to her.
bump!!
Um no, not really. It's an object lesson for the newsies. Specifically, just the thought that they might out some woman who had been abused by an ex and bought a firearm to defend herself should have stopped these moral morons in their tracks.
See post #22.
I think AIDs data is protected.
Point taken.
I’ve always had this fantasy that a Republican President would hire a team of private investigators to dig up dirt on all the media hacks in the White House Press Room and begin asking THEM about their affairs, unpaid bills and DUI’s during a live press conference.
I know, I know, it will never happen.
Any small-town reporter who made daily checks of court filings, marriage licenses, birth certificates, police logs, etc., knows that, and knew it back to the days that records were exclusively kept on paper and filled out via Underwood manual typewriters or handwritten fill-in-the-blank forms. That's nothing new and these reporters don't deserve and prizes for “finding out” something everybody involved in government recordkeeping always knew was available.
What **IS** new is that the internet is making things widely and easily available that until recently required spending massive amounts of research time or hiring a private investigator to visit records offices, college libraries, etc., in every community where a person had lived. As more and more things get put on the internet, lots of people are finding out the hard way that long-forgotten things done 20 or 50 years ago can be located with a Google search.
Many government records are public and have to be public for legitimate constitutional or legal reasons, and if people don't like it, that's their problem. For example, it may be embarrassing for a woman to have her age and address publicly available on voter registration records, but there are issues involving potential voter fraud that make it important to have that information available for public inspection.
I think a legitimate question can be asked by New York state legislators of what public purpose it serves to make this gun-related information publicly available. I can't think of a valid public purpose, and unless someone can show me the public purpose, perhaps the law should be changed.
In the meantime, however, I believe the best response is what was done with publicizing the names, addresses and phone numbers of the newspaper's staff and putting it on Facebook. What's good for the goose is good for the gander and if some people's info is public, so is the info about the reporters and editors and publishers.
Over on the FOX News website, a person commenting said someone actually answered the phone at the home number of the CEO of Gannett Corporation, and listened politely to his concerns about the list.
My guess is that the local editor and publisher who approved this story are going to have to answer some very hard questions coming from Gannett corporate headquarters about the newsworthiness of this list.
Point taken.
Why? You like breaking up families?
Stupid should hurt.
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