In what appears to be a continuing trend among bird cage liners “newspapers” throughout the country, one such rag up in Indiana (going by the name of the “Herald Times Online”) decided to post up a database of all the carry permit holders in Indiana. This particular database does not contain actual names or street addresses, but what it does is indicate how many concealed carry permit holders there are on a specific address in a specific city… which presents its own problems and assaults on personal privacy, as Caleb discusses. And, not to pass up on an opportunity, he does the world a favor and puts up the beginnings of an Indiana authorized journalist database, complete with a helpful Google map – you never know where those dangerous people will be lurking.
Speaking as a Tennessee resident and a handgun carry permit holder as well, this is all something of an old hat to me – in February of this year, the Commercial Appeal posted a database of handgun carry permit holders, documenting full names, cities, and zip codes of the permit holders in question. Deciding that turnabout was fair play, I used exactly that information (full name, cities, and zip codes) to generate my own database of the staff and employees of the Commercial Appeal, showing exactly how that “small” amount of information can be used to find even more data in this “information” world. Yes, my database does provide more information than the Commercial Appeal’s database – that is the point – however, all of that information was discovered only using the full name, zip code, and city of the individuals in question, and was discoverable through Google and other publicly-available sources in less than five minutes per person.
Come to think of it, given that the Commercial Appeal has been making a big deal of updating their database relatively frequently (though they seem to have fallen off, of late – I guess this hot-button issue is no longer generating the traffic it used to), I guess I should go through my database of the Commercial Appeal staff and make sure the information contained therein is still correct… Lord knows I want to be accurate in informing the public of the dangerous journalists potentially lurking in their neighborhoods…
Remind me again how violating the privacy of over 220,000 law-abiding, licensed, background-checked, trained Tennessee residents is a “necessary public service”? And explain to me how violating the privacy of hundreds of thousands of law-abiding, licensed, background-checked, trained Indiana residents is a good thing as well? The sooner these records are sealed (or restricted to the point where they cannot be publicly republished), the better it will be for all parties involved.
related posts:
guilt by association | moving things around | five minutes of fame |
http://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2009/02/public-records.html
I still want to know what makes them “authorized” when no licensing is required to practice “Journalism.”
The only “authorization” I can ever find is that they just happen to work for a locally/nationally/internationally-recognized newspaper/television station/webpage/etc. Not even all of them have attended school for journalism, so you cannot even use that as a metric…
Basically, straight-up employment superiority.
i sent you a link to the persobal information of the commercial appeal’s editor, but i guess you thought it was spam because you have blocked me. bow i can only read your blog on my phone
Hey, Divemedic – sorry about that. Either Akismet or TypePad Anti-Spam consider links-without-text to be automatic spam, and file them appropriately. Then, once an IP has been identified as being a spam-producer, BlackList automatically stops it from ever visiting my webpage ever again. The combination really cuts down on spam (the number of IPs responsible for mots of the weblog spam on the internet are finite, after all), but false positives really suck.
I do recall a lot of people posting similar information for all Commercial Appeal staff they could back when this whole story broke, but, honestly, I disagree with bringing their families into the situation as well. Sure, they are endangering not only handgun carry permit holders but also their families with their reckless and careless database, but that is just a line I cannot bring myself to pass. Either way, providing their information for the public to see assuredly levels the playing field…
playing in the big leagues
While it is likely to make him even more insufferable, it looks like Caleb will be appearing on Fox and Friends tomorrow morning at 0620, putting forward his side of the argument concerning the Herald Times Online’s flagrant and inexcusable…
commercial appeal compilation
(I tried to make an independent, non-dated “page” containing this information, but I seem to have broken that aspect of my weblogging engine. I will strive to keep this page updated as best I can, so feel free to refer…