RKBA News: The HALOS App That Shows Location/Concentration of Gun Carriers

 

 

Would you like to know if other legal gun carriers frequent the same areas that you do?

An iphone app is available.  Android users can be put on a wait list. From halosforce.com:

Halos is a revolutionary app for the exclusive use of individuals in the United States who have their state-issued concealed carry handgun license or otherwise fulfill the concealed carry eligibility requirements in their state of residence and are 21 years or older.

Halos anonymously allows members to see the approximate location of other members on a map. A member’s specific location is obscured (without revealing either identity or exact location). Members are not able to communicate with other members.

The premise of the app has merit.  The idea is that people can make known that a non specified gun carrier is in the general area.  The specific location is deliberately obscured.  The app allows gun carriers to obtain some of the advantages of open carry while retaining some of the advantages of concealed carry.  People who look at the app will have an idea of gun carriers in the area, and their approximate locations.  The app will only apply to those who sign up.

If a fair number of people sign up, it will give some indication of where legal gun carriers tend to be.  It is not any sort of registration or tracking device that is useful to the government.  Why not?

If you have a concealed carry permit and a cell phone (remember you have to have a cell phone for this app to work), the government can already track you.

They can track you far more accurately than this app does. They can do it all the time your phone is turned on, whether the app is on the phone or not.

All cell phone companies track your location whenever your phone is turned on.  Several circuit courts have ruled that obtaining the information from cell phone companies does not require a warrant.  To think the NSA cannot recieve it in near real time requires some sophisticated naivite.

If you have a concealed carry permit, the government has access to your telephone number.  Correlating concealed carry permits with cell phone records is childishly simple for today’s computers.

If you worry about being tracked because of some app that you signed up for, you overlook the obvious.  If the government wants to track concealed carry permit holders, it is already doing so.  If it isn’t tracking them, it is because no one has decided to do it.  It does not need an app.

The government already has access to  everything it needs for the tracking. The difference is, if you have the app, and the government wanted to have the records of the app, they would be legally required to obtain a warrant.  No warrant is required for what they already have.

If you live in a “Constitutional” carry state, and do *not* have a concealed carry permit, then the government could possibly get a warrant for the names and telephone numbers of the people who have the app, and track you when they would not have before.

They could as easily obtain the names of people who purchased ammunition or guns, who rented time at a range, who visited gun friendly sites on the Internet.

They would not need a warrant, if a credit cared was used.  The information on commercial transactions is sold and traded all the time.  Google collects lots of information on commercial transactions, and ties it to you.  To think the government cannot access those records is very trusting.  If the government wants to track a certain phone number, they can do so.

Aside from government tracking, there are real concerns.   Private parties who sign up for the app might be able to figure a way to track you with it, or find you, in certain circumstances.  I do not worry about private parties as much as I worry about corruption in the government.

The app has limited usefulness.  It might be amusing.  It could provide a bit of education.  I might even sign up for it. The app is fairly cheap.  The amusement factor might be worth the price.  If you sign up quickly, it could be free.

Membership is free for the first 100 people in each state, after that members will pay $1.99/year. In the near future, Halos will offer a view-only version to the general public for an annual fee as well.

If I sign up, I will not be worrying about the government doing what they can already do without the app.

We have lost any privacy protections we had in terms of the government and phone metadata.  If you do not want to be tracked, put your phone in a portable faraday cage. You cannot remove the battery on most iphones.  A metal ammo box would probably do the job, if it doesn’t have holes in it.

Other than that, when your phone is on, assume you are being tracked.  The data is already out there.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch

Read the Original Article at Gun Watch

The Average Civilian Pistol Permit Holder is Better with Their Weapon Than Most Cops

This is something I have known for some time, but it is good to see a Sheriff finally saying it. Maybe this will prompt some of the “Dunkin Donut share holders” in Police and Sheriff Depts. across the nation to sell off their shares and hit the range more than once a year. -SF

New York State, with its liberal politics and highly restrictive gun laws, might be the last place you’d expect to have a sheriff who actively encourages private citizens to get trained, licensed, and armed in order to help counter the nation-wide rash of mass shootings.  However, that’s exactly what happened.

Paul Van Blarcum is the Sheriff of Ulster County, New York.    Back in December, The New York Times quoted Sheriff Blarcum as stating,

“In light of recent events that have occurred in the United States and around the world I want to encourage citizens of Ulster County who are licensed to carry a firearm to PLEASE DO SO.”

As one might expect, this common-sense approach to responsible gun ownership generated nation-wide outrage.  How DARE competent and law-abiding citizens assume responsibility for their own lives and safety! Something must be done about Sheriff Blarcum and his outrageous, and dangerous ideas!  …or something.  His advice seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Now Sheriff Blarcum is taking heat yet again for something that he said, but this time it’s related to quotes attributed to him in an article posted in the National Rifle Association’s online magazine, America’s First Freedom.  This is what he had to say:

“I think the people that are out there who do carry concealed right now are at least as proficient with their weapons as police officers are. Actually, my deputies have to qualify with their pistols twice a year and for many of them that’s all the shooting they do; whereas, people who chose to carry are typically into guns, so they shoot more and are probably even better with their weapons than most cops are.”

While a lot of people, especially our readers in the Law Enforcement community, will take issue with Sheriff Blarcum’s statement, I think there is some truth in it.  Police officers have many, many responsibilities, of which firearms proficiency is but one.  The average officer, in a low-crime area, might never have to use his or her weapon, so they spend their time training for the types of activities that they are more likely to encounter during their day to day police work.  In these types of situations, I can envision firearms proficiency becoming, at best, merely a semi-annual requirement.  So, I think that the good sheriff is right.

Well, partially right, anyway.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the average handgun enthusiast is better with a handgun that the average police officer.  While many of my pistol-toting friends are quite good shots, I’ve known many people who have gone out and gotten handgun permits, and did very little with an actual weapon.  In these cases, even if the gun ends up getting carried and doesn’t in up relegated to a dark safe or a tall closet shelf, the only trigger time its owner ever had was in the training course required for the permit.   Even an average police officer shoots more times a year than “never.”

The same thinking holds when it comes to the average member of the military.  Even combat arms troops rarely train with handguns, because to most members of the military, a handgun is just something you use until you can fight your way to a long gun.  I (thankfully) never fired a handgun in combat; that’s what the rifle was for.  In fact the only thing I ever saw get shot with a handgun, in any of my deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, was the clearing barrel outside of one of the mess halls at Balad Airfield.  Yes, I know a handful of veterans who used handguns at some point, but they were the exception that proved the rule.

I also know plenty of police officers and members of the military who train extensively with handguns and are quite good with them.  But when we’re considering the average non-tactical police officer, or the average non-specialized member of the military, what Sheriff Blarcum says about handgun proficiency is probably true.  What do you think?

Read the Original Article at The Havok Journal