Gun Companies Gave Customers’ Sensitive Personal Information to Political Operatives
2 years ago by HellsBelle to c/news
Those operatives, in turn, secretly employed the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians running for Congress and the White House, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America.
At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Marlin and Mossberg, handed over names, addresses and other private data to the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF then entered the gun owners’ details into what would become a massive database.
The EU has such, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), works reasonably well. Pretty good place to start.
Depending on the type of data and where you live, you can have some of its benefits.
There's FERPA for student data.
Credit card companies require very strict controls over their data, and how charges are made and encrypted.
I'm Europe there is the GDPR, which grants a right to remove your data from a particular site, among other protections. Some US states have followed with lesser versions, like California, Colorado, and Virginia.
I don't think you want HIPAA-level data protections over normal data, because it's a passion in the ass to have that level of restrictiveness over mere ordinary data. It costs a lot to protect it - you'd need documented written permissions on every aspect of your data.
No, that is what I want. It should be a pain in the ass and expensive to hold. It should be a liability. Ok, fair, just for actual PII and not things like account settings specific to that business. But I do want it.
And GDPR-style deletions while we're on the topic, I want that also.
If you were to have this, then there would be no social media. Probably no email, as both sides of the communication would not be allowed to forward it. You would not be able to communicate or post on forums.
It would take computing back to about 1990. The medical industry uses faxes for a reason. They are very secure point to point communication. That's the sort of security you're asking for, and it would cripple most communication.
The medical industry uses computers, actually. Healthcare providers may send medical information over the internet. They need to have a business agreement with the entity they send it to and follow the other rules in HIPAA.
faxes are only legally secure, not physically.
Most gun nuts I know fucking hate the manufacturers, its the gun fetishists that are the ones who wave it away.
Because the gun nuts usually know enough about how firearms work to just make their own guns.
Either they know enough to build their own or enough to restore inoperable ones. But yeah a lot of them unless they are professionally involved with the manufacturers arent quite about their hatred.
Now is not the time to talk about gun privacy control.

I have no idea what you mean by "DJT and his ilk." None of them were breaking into congress. The people that were wanted to install Trump as president and do it by executing Mike Pence. They made that very clear. So yes, that was a coup attempt. I'm not sure why you think Trump had to be directly involved to make it a coup attempt.
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I was going to mention exactly this, but it seems the article already beat me to it.
save