Tag: doxxing

New Zealand Keeps Doxxing Registered Gun Owners

A data breach in New Zealand exposed the personal information of some of the country’s gun owners, and not for the first time. It’s another indication of how even well-intended government policies can become civil liberties nightmares.

After the 2019 mass shooting at a Christchurch mosque, the country enacted a series of reforms intended to prevent such tragedies in the future. Along with a ban on most semi-automatic firearms and a gun buyback that netted more than 50,000 weapons, one provision empowered New Zealand’s Firearms Safety Authority to “effectively regulate the legitimate possession and use of firearms.” In other words: a national “firearms registry” that will “link firearms to licence holders, so there is a clear picture of the legally held firearms in New Zealand and improved ability to trace firearms,” according to Executive Director Angela Brazier.

Last week, a joint email went out from the Firearms Safety Authority and the Auckland Central Police District to 147 registered gun owners, advising them that their addresses might need to be updated. Unfortunately, the emails were all listed in the CC field instead of the BCC field, which would be hidden. As a result, each recipient of the email not only saw every single other recipient’s email address but, in many cases, first and last names as well.

As The New Zealand Herald noted, “The visible addresses included various prominent Auckland residents, including lawyers, company directors, police officers and government officials.”

This is not the only, or even the most severe, breach of New Zealand gun owners’ data in recent memory. During the 2019 gun buyback, the government set up a website for gun owners to register their weapons for relinquishment. Police later admitted that visitors to the site could easily access other registrants’ personal information, including names, addresses, dates of birth, and bank account information. And in 2022, thieves stole as many as 400 gun owners’ records from an abandoned police precinct after police officials neglected to destroy the files before moving operations to a new building.

In the U.S., national gun owner registries are prohibited by federal law, though they do exist in some form in certain states, and some progressive lawmakers and advocates support wider adoption. Giffords, the gun control advocacy organization named for former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D–Ariz.) who was shot and nearly killed while in office, says registries are “a useful method of curbing illegal gun activity and encouraging responsible gun practices.” Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) proposed a national licensing system for gun owners in 2019 as part of his presidential campaign platform.

Gun owners would have reason to fear that a registry today could be used to confiscate guns tomorrow. Not to mention, a plan like Booker’s would require the federal government to keep accurate and copious records so as not to accidentally arrest the wrong person—not exactly its strong suit. There’s also the issue of noncompliance: In New Zealand, it’s estimated that somewhere between one-third and one-half of all newly forbidden weapons were actually turned in. In neighboring Australia, often touted as an example of gun control done well, only about one-fifth of banned weapons are estimated to have been turned in.

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General, West Point Professor Ran Shadow Investigation to Hunt Down and Silence Military Whistleblower for Mean Tweets

An Army three-star general and a West Point associate professor used government resources in an unofficial investigation to hunt down and punish an anonymous active-duty whistleblower who criticized Army leaders and the Biden administration on social media, according to private emails and text messages obtained exclusively by Breitbart News.

Army Training and Doctrine Command Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais and Army Maj. Jessica Dawson — who is also an “information warfare research scientist” at the Army Cyber Institute — used their official authority and access to government resources to track down the whistleblower and get him identified publicly and punished by his chain of command.

Despite the lack of evidence, they repeatedly accused the whistleblower of being a “counterintelligence” and “insider threat” in a seeming effort to trigger action by Army Criminal Investigative Division (CID) — an independent federal law enforcement agency with expansive powers designed to investigate serious felonies.

Pat Wier, a civilian defense attorney and Navy reservist, said a CID investigation would require an assumption or designation of a serious threat and called Gervais and Dawson’s trumping up of accusations for exercising free speech rights “wrongful.”

“His alleged actions did not rise to the level of a serious crime, or any crime at all,” he said.

Rather, it appeared to be an attempt by rogue military officials seeking to use the levers of government to punish political dissent.

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Shaun King threatens to dox New York Post reporters: ‘I know where you live’

Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King is threatening to doxx multiple New York Post reporters and their families after the journalists published a series of unflattering reports about the controversial activist’s lavish spending and purchases.

King posted photos of New York Post journalists Isabel Vincent and Kevin Sheehan on his Instagram and Facebook accounts, encouraging his followers to send him photos of their families and homes. King has since deleted the series of posts but not before they reached his 3.8 million followers on Instagram and 2.5 million followers on Facebook.

“The amount of pain this woman caused my family is incalculable,” King wrote about Isabel Vincent across his Instagram, Facebook, and website, asking supporters to send her home address, according to Daily Beast. “Send me details and photos. Of her. And her home.”

King made similar requests in a series of posts on his platforms about Kevin Sheehan and said, “This is Kevin Sheehan of the @NYPost. He has been attacking me and my family. Send me photos of his home. Send me photos of him. And his family,” Daily Beast reports.

Shaun King claims he advocates for the poor and disenfranchised communities. He is retaliating against The New York Post journalists whose reports exposed King’s lavish spending, including a lakefront property purchase.

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Socialist Reddit group posts home addresses of Supreme Court justices, discusses hunting them down at their churches. TikTok user hint at using pipe bombs in retaliation to Roe v. Wade reversal.

One of the top posts in a socialist subreddit featured the addresses of Supreme Court justices that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Reddit users in the anti-capitalist group discussed hunting down Supreme Court justices at their churches and possibly sending them mail bombs.

The alarming threats were made in r/WorkersStrikeBack – a self-described “leftist, anti-capitalist, socialist subreddit that is dedicated to support worker strikes, protests and unions all over the world, address the obvious problems related to an average worker’s workplace, offer advice to a fellow worker struggling with their workplace problems and mock or satirize any kind of anti-worker sentiment.”

The post broadcasted the home addresses of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch.

At the time of publication, the post doxxing the Supreme Court justices had been allowed up in the subreddit for more than 22 hours. What is most concerning is the post received nearly 27,000 upvotes in the online socialist community of 97,000 users.

There were over 2,000 comments to the doxxing post – some suggested violence in retaliation for overturning Roe v. Wade.

A Reddit user urged people to hunt Supreme Court justices at their churches.

“Find their churches. The area they live in is super wealthy and they all definitely are part of local bloated churches. Find their churches, they can never be free, because you can track when they’re home by when they they go to their local church.”

One Reddit user asks, “Where are the 2nd homes?”

A mail carrier appears to request that domestic terrorists don’t use the mail service to deliver bombs to Supreme Court justices, but instead called for “more direct action.”

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Left-Wing Group Targets Homes Of 6 Conservative SCOTUS Justices

A left-wing group published its plans for protests outside of the six conservative Supreme Court justices’ homes, calling them “extremist.”

The group, going by “Ruth Sent Us,” published what it claims are the addresses of Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts, seemingly in response to the Monday SCOTUS draft opinion leak that signaled the majority of the court may vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“ANNOUNCING: Walk-by Wednesday, May 11, 2022! At the homes of the six extremist justices, three in Virginia and three in Maryland. If you’d like to join or lead a peaceful protest, let us know,” the website of “Ruth Sent Us” states.

“Our 6-3 extremist Supreme Court routinely issues rulings that hurt women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights. We must rise up to force accountability using a diversity of tactics,” it adds.

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DC elementary school gave 4-year-olds ‘anti-racism’ ‘fistbook’ asking them to identify racist family members

A public elementary school in Washington, D.C., gave children as young as 4 a lesson on “anti-racism” that asked them to identify racist members of their family.

According to a Nov. 30 letter from Janney Elementary School Principal Danielle Singh, students in Pre-K through 3rd grade participated in an “Anti-Racism Fight Club” presentation by speaker Doyin Richards.

“As part of this work, each student has a fist book to help continue the dialogue at school and home,” Singh’s letter stated, linking to Richards’ presentation. “We recognize that any time we engage topics such as race and equity, we may experience a variety of emotions. This is a normal part of the learning and growing process. As a school community we want to continue the dialogue with our students and understand this is just the beginning.”

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While Banning People for Facts, Twitter Openly Allows Threats of Murder Against The Establishment’s Political Rivals

Throughout the last two years, Twitter has purged countless voices in the name of preventing the spread of “misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.” World renowned doctors and scientific experts have found themselves wiped from the face of the platform for simply stating facts or predicting things that would eventually come true.

One of the people who has been censored the most is Robert W Malone MD, MS who is one of the inventors of mRNA & DNA vaccines. Dr. Malone has been outspoken about the way the establishment system handled, or rather mishandled, the covid crisis.

His Twitter account had grown to over a half million followers late last year before the platform decided that his alternative views on the pandemic were a danger to the narrative. So they banned him.

Instead of standing up for the free exchange of ideas by experts — which is how science works  — the left cheered for Malone’s censorship, calling him a kook while celebrating the tools of tyrants.

Before Malone, Alex Berenson, a prominent skeptic of the government’s response to COVID-19, was unceremoniously banned from Twitter for a week. His crime? He cited Pfizer’s own clinical trial data.

“Blocked again, for a week this time,” Berenson said on his Substack. “For this tweet, which is completely accurate and does nothing but quote PFIZER’S OWN CLINICAL TRIAL DATA.”

The list goes on.

There seems to be a common theme among those who are banned and those who are not and it has quickly become obvious. If you toe the establishment line and repeat their narrative, you can bend and even break rules that would otherwise result in bans and censorship.

Just last week, after Washington Post columnist and technology reporter Taylor Lorenz wrapped up an anti-bullying campaign for online journalists — literally coming to tears over it and stating that it is not okay under any circumstances — Lorenz began a campaign of her own. Her target, the woman behind the page Libs of TikTok.

Though the establishment left claimed that Lorenz didn’t actually dox the owner of Libs of TikTok, the first revision of her article (archived in this link) on WaPo contained her actual private home address.

The publishing of private addresses like this is not only against Twitter’s terms of service but it also borders on illegal activity — especially if it is meant to drive intimidation, harassment, or stalking. This intent was unmistakable in the piece published in WaPo.

Nevertheless, their piece flourished on the platform and received widespread and viral distribution. But it gets worse.

After the article was published, calls for murdering the owner of Libs of TikTok began to gain traction on the platform. One tweet in particular, directly called for the assassination of Chaya Raichik and included a video of a person loading an AR-15, clearly establishing their intent.

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‘Straight Trash’: Twitter Explodes As Washington Post Reveals Who Runs Libs Of TikTok Account

The wildly popular Twitter account known as “Libs of TikTok” simply holds a mirror up to the radical Left, but apparently that’s just too embarrassing for one media figure who doxxed the woman behind it.

The move, by Taylor Lorenz, a reporter at The Washington Post and formerly of The New York Times, prompted a massive backlash from prominent figures on Twitter. Critics say revealing the identity of the woman, who scours TikTok for extreme hot takes from the far-left and posts them without comment, serves no newsworthy purpose.

“This is wrong,” Tim Pool wrote in response to the Post article. “One of the most important journalistic ethics is to minimize harm. The story is not served by exposing a name, the story is served by explaining their background and motives. Based on the responses to the story you can see the true motivation was to cause harm.”

“So today the @washingtonpost decided to doxx an anonymous Twitter user who got popular for reposting TikTok videos, complete with a link to her professional license listing. Straight trash. Who’s the editor that gave this the green light? I’ll have more shortly,” Ed Morrissey shared.

“Taylor Lorenz is a terrible journalist and worse human. Targeting a Twitter account that literally just posts Leftists owning themselves because that account damages the Left is pure Lorenz,” The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro tweeted.

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Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Self-Victimize to Bar Criticisms of Themselves

The daily newspaper USA Today is the second-most circulated print newspaper in the United States — more than The New York Times and more than double The Washington Post. Only The Wall Street Journal has higher circulation numbers.

On Sunday, the paper published and heavily promoted a repellent article complaining that “defendants accused in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 crowdfund their legal fees online, using popular payment processors and an expanding network of fundraising platforms, despite a crackdown by tech companies.” It provided a road map for snitching on how these private citizens — who are charged with serious felonies by the U.S. Justice Department but as of yet convicted of nothing — are engaged in “a game of cat-and-mouse as they spring from one fundraising tool to another” in order to avoid bans on their ability to raise desperately needed funds to pay their criminal lawyers to mount a vigorous defense.

In other words, the only purpose of the article — headlined: “Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online” — was to pressure and shame tech companies to do more to block these criminal defendants from being able to raise funds for their legal fees, and to tattle to tech companies by showing them what techniques these indigent defendants are using to raise money online.

The USA Today reporters went far beyond merely reporting how this fundraising was being conducted. They went so far as to tattle to PayPal and other funding sites on two of those defendants, Joe Biggs and Dominic Pezzola, and then boasted of their success in having their accounts terminated:

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Biggs fundraiser was listed as having received $52,201. Pezzola had received $730. Biggs’ campaign disappeared from the site shortly after USA TODAY inquired about it….

Friday, a USA TODAY reporter donated to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Stripe. Stripe told USA TODAY it does not comment on individual users. A USA TODAY reporter was able to make a $1 donation to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Venmo, a payment app owned by PayPal. After being alerted by USA TODAY, Venmo removed the account. 

Soon a PayPal account took its place. PayPal caught that and removed it, too. 

Wow, what brave and intrepid journalistic work: speaking truth to power and standing up to major power centers by . . . working as little police officers for tech giants to prevent private citizens from being able to afford criminal lawyers. Clear the shelves for the imminent Pulitzer. Whatever you think about the Capitol riot, everyone has the right to a legal defense and to do what they can to ensure they have the best legal defense possible — especially when the full weight of the Justice Department is crashing down on your head even for non-violent offenses, which is what many of these defendants are charged with due to the politically charged nature of the investigation.

The right to a vigorous defense has always been a central cause of mine as a lawyer and a journalist (it also used to be a central cause of left-wing groups like the ACLU, years ago; it was that same principle that caused then-candidate Kamala Harris to solicit donations last summer that went to protesters charged with violent rioting). A federal prosecutor was recently referred for disciplinary procedures for publicly threatening to charge some of these Capitol protesters with sedition, one of the gravest crimes in the U.S. Code. That is how grave the legal jeopardy is faced by these people trying to raise money for lawyers.

What makes all of this extra grotesque is that, as The Washington Post reported, most of those charged with various crimes in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot, including many whose charges stem just from their presence inside the Capitol, not the use of any violence, are people with serious financial difficulties: not surprising for a country in the middle of a major economic and joblessness crisis, where neoliberalism and global trade deals have destroyed entire industries and communities for decades:

Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories. . . . The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.

This USA Today article is thus yet another example of journalists at major media outlets abusing their platforms to attack and expose anything other than the real power centers which compose the ruling class and govern the U.S.: the CIA, the FBI, security state agencies, Wall Street, Silicon Valley oligarchs. To the extent these journalists pay attention to those entities at all — and they barely ever do — it is to venerate them and mindlessly disseminate their messaging like stenographers, not investigate them. Investigating people who actually wield real power is hard.

Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano Wanted Government to Publicly Report Identities of Everyone Who Got Coronavirus

Republican Pennsylvania State Senator and Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano proposed rolling back medical privacy protections during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Friday report from the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The Capital-Star located several of Mastriano’s memos and press releases from 2020 — which were reportedly removed from his website — through an Internet archival resource. In one such document from March 17, 2020, Mastriano said he was concerned that “existing HIPAA regulations are threatening the lives of our citizens…” He went on:

I am concerned that existing HIPAA regulations are threatening the lives of our citizens and depriving Pennsylvania residents of knowing if – and when – they were exposed to a contagious person. This emergency measure is necessary to share vital and life-saving medical information with those who may have been subjected to this dangerous virus. The new information that would become available would help us combat the spread of the Coronavirus.

Mastriano, who has since built his brand around “personal freedom,” introduced a measure calling up the federal government to temporarily suspend HIPAA and “allow for full disclosure of details that are currently considered private, and are not disclosed to the public.” He said:

It is deeply concerning that the federal government did not proactively roll back this dangerous policy, which endangers our people. This situation changes daily – it remains my top priority to do what is in the best interest of protecting public health, and this measure will increase transparency in an effort to quell the spread of this virus.

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