New CA law allows to pull identifying info of gun owners from state registry

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB173

by andyxor • 5 years ago

59 47 5 years ago

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

It's rather lengthy and contains lots of repeated verbiage but I didn't see anywhere in it penalties for unauthorized access or leaking of the PII collected. It lists the purpose for collecting the data, what they intend to use it for, and states it cannot be used for purposes other than those listed in the bill but without consequences for violating those provisions, there's little reason for the organizations who are given access to this data to treat it with respect and secure it appropriately.

CodeWriter23• 5 years ago

On the contrary, this law is entirely about leaking such information to select NGO’s.

loeg4• 5 years ago

Why shouldn't it be public record, like voter registration and property records?

chroem-4• 5 years ago

Voting history is explicitly not public record because it would lead to voter intimidation. This is the same reason why people are concerned about this legislation.

donw• 5 years ago

Why do you not have your full name, home address, phone number, and political affiliations in your HN profile?

Privacy matters. For everybody. Yes, even the people you hate.

david38• 5 years ago

For one, voter registration doesn’t encourage theft. Knowing the location of light portable weapons you can commit crimes with is bad.

YeBanKo• 5 years ago

One more way PII can be leaked, now enriched with another piece of data: gun ownership. Yet, it’s going to cause zero reduction in gun violence and illegal firearm possessions. So it penalizes legal gun ownership.

A4ET8a8uTh04• 5 years ago

Worse, it will actually entice people to consider owning 'undocumented' gun.

irl_chad2• 5 years ago

I wonder if ‘home_has_gun’ will be a useful feature in an ML model lmfao

bitcuration2• 5 years ago

If facebook and pornhub can leak pii, rest assure this will be leaked. Every neighbor and your friends, colleague, employer and gangsters would be eager to find out who has gun at home. What will happen next will be a no-brainer.

But that might just by design, shame and penalize those oppressed. End game will be nobody dare to legally own a gun, just like in mexico today, a gun "free" country. How did that work out?

Justin_K• 5 years ago

This is exactly what gun rights advocates have been saying would come, should owners have to register with the state. All this is going to do is punish and put law abiding citizens at risk. I'm sure politicians will be exempt from having their data shared.

subhro• 5 years ago

Genuinely curious, what do you contemplate/would law abiding citizens be punished for and what is the risk?

chroem-4• 5 years ago

We are witnessing the circulation of mass shame lists designed to deprive people of their livelihood. Whether or not you agree that the people on these lists deserve to be hurt for their political opinions, many innocent people are also being caught in the crossfire. This legislation will have a similar effect.

A4ET8a8uTh04• 5 years ago

The risk is always the same. Regular people who happen to own guns will eventually have access to that property removed. Actual criminals won't care, because they don't follow the law. It is an old dance, but it placates specific demographic, who is more scared of a tool than of government power.

lambdasquirrel• 5 years ago

Gun ownership can be politicized. Let’s not be naive. You would not want to be a known gun owner in some social circles of Alameda County, just as much as you wouldn’t want it to be publicly known that you are LGBTQ+ in Calaveras County.

Privacy is an important right for good reasons.

I don’t own a gun and tend to dislike them. But I work with perfectly fine, sane and normal people who do own guns, and shouldn’t have to be subjected to the judgments of the crowds, just as much as I’ve worked with perfectly fine, sane and normal LGBTQ+ who shouldn’t be subject to the judgments of the crowds.

harlanji• 5 years ago

If an extra-governmental criminal were to get access to the data and wanted to go steal some specific property they would have an efficient seed dataset to be combined with for example MyLife data which lists addresses and family members given a name to go on holiday with.

bitcuration2• 5 years ago

I believe it's documented already in <<mein kampf>> and the nuremberg trials.

Why human lose memory after merely two generations every single time in the history?

roenxi• 5 years ago

Hypothetically speaking, say we just assumed that basically everything the gun rights advocates are predicting is going to come to pass. Does it matter?

I'm making a guess here that the gun control advocates come in 2 flavours:

1) People who are scared of being shot, and prioritise that fear highly.

2) People who are committed to maintaining the status quo, and don't want there to be even a hypothetical potential for meaningful opposition to the police (such people, though relatively rare, are common in government).

I doubt either of those groups cares about the arguments being made by gun advocates, so I'm not sure what difference it would make if the gun advocates were right about everything.

jacobolus2• 5 years ago

Group 3: People who don’t want to live in a society where violent thugs use murder or threats of murder to impose their will upon their neighbors, and are tired of seeing their compatriots die easily preventable deaths, in numbers vastly exceeding any other developed country.

jimmckin1• 5 years ago

But who is watching Ca.gov?

paxys• 5 years ago

I'm sure this info will never be used for any nefarious purpose..

setpatchaddress• 5 years ago

Any actual lawyer want to confirm exactly what this law does? I read the text and I’m actually not sure, and one shouldn’t as a rule trust the submitter’s title as a summary on a politically-loaded topic without verification.

In particular, when is this information collected and by whom?

healsdata• 5 years ago

The assembly's analysis seems to provide the TL;DR:

    Clarifie the process and parameters of disclosure of specified information to the California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC Davis by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for research or statistical activities. The DOJ may at its discretion, also disclose specified information, to other nonprofit bona fide research institutions that are accredited by the United State Department of Education or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation for the study of violence prevention in the matter prescribed. Requires that any material identifying individuals to only be used for research and statistical purposes and prohibits reports or publications derived from the material from identifying any specific individuals. Requires DOJ to establish procedures for these requests and allows researchers to be charged reasonable fees related to their requests

Kliment• 5 years ago

I am not a lawyer, but here's my summary:

1. There's going to be a California-state-government-run list of gun owners. People who buy a gun or have it transferred to them get added to it. Not reporting a transfer is a crime.

2. When someone gets a restraining order against someone else, they can request information on whether said person is on the list and which/how many weapons they have. They are then allowed to use that information as they like. Law enforcement will be able to check whether someone is on the list.

3. There will be a second list of people ineligible to own a gun for various reasons. These are primarily the people who the state expects to fail a background check (which is required for purchase as I understand it). Anyone selling or transferring a gun will have to ask the registry whether the person they are transferring to is on the blocklist. Not doing so is a crime.

4. There will be a third list, which is the correlation of people who are on the first list and on the second list. This is a list of people who have firearms but would not be allowed to acquire firearms now. This list can be shared with universities and "bona fide research institutions".

As someone who lives in a place where gun ownership is not normal or tolerated for the most part, this is all really weird to me, so I'm not able to evaluate the significance of it, but this is what it says.

ajay-b• 5 years ago

So before committing a crime against someone, you can check to see if they have a gun?

New CA law allows to pull identifying info of gun owners from state registry

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