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U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

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Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#81

Post by rurp »

jjkeddo199 wrote: post #33

Seeing drone dropped grenades everywhere in Ukraine has made me worried about normalized "drone drop murders" spreading to the rest of the world. With widely available addresses gang violence, political killings, and even online flamewar escalations will become much much uglier. Who needs to do a driveby shooting if you could drop a homemade bomb from a McDonalds bathroom 20 miles away using some jailbroken drone? Vi…

Changing posession of personal user data from a financial asset to a liability is probably the most effective thing the government could do in the near term to protect people's information. Companies right now are incentivized to collect tons of personal data because it's worth real money to them and others, and the liabilities mostly fall to the users. If there were heavy financial consequences to leaking personal data then companies would self regulate away a lot of terrible behavior that is currently common.

Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#82

Post by jjkeddo199 »

cycomanic wrote: post #56
jjkeddo199 wrote: post #33

Seeing drone dropped grenades everywhere in Ukraine has made me worried about normalized "drone drop murders" spreading to the rest of the world. With widely available addresses gang violence, political killings, and even online flamewar escalations will become much much uglier. Who needs to do a driveby shooting if you could drop a homemade bomb from a McDonalds bathroom 20 miles away using some jailbroken drone? Vi…

Sometimes the US perspective of things is completely surreal for me as a European. In a country where you can buy assault rifles with minimal background checks, people worry about addresses being available because someone might be able to look up the address to kill them with a drone and a home made bomb.

As other commenters have mentioned, US American's ease of access to firearms does not extend to their usage. If you buy a weapon and wrongly shoot someone, there is a system in place to make sure you are found and punished. There is no such system in place for catching people flying drones.

Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#83

Post by oaththrowaway »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #75
oaththrowaway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what you define as "minimal background checks" and "assault rifles" as

Not American, and curious about the checks required for different weapons. I get lot of contradictory information online. Also read in many places buying illegally is easy. How true is that?

To purchase a firearm from a store or any "licensed" individual (someone who has an FFL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Firearms_License) you must pass a background check done by the FBI. You can read more here: https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-an...

If you buy a gun from someone on a classifieds site or friend/family, in most states you don't have to get a background check to transfer ownership of the firearm. This is typically the "loophole" that people refer to when they want Universal Background Checks.

I'm not sure what you mean by buying illegally - whether you mean to someone prohibited from owning firearms (like a felon or something), or buying "illegal" guns... Either way there are usually stiff penalties for owning restricted devices. For example if I were to 3D print an auto-sear for an AR-15 (making it full-auto), that's a ticket to a 10 year sentence in federal prison. Assuming I don't have the permission slip from the ATF. As for prohibited persons buying a firearm, I'm not sure what the penalties are, but at the least it'd be a violation of their release?

Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#85

Post by dwringer »

marfil wrote: post #68
cycomanic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the US perspective of things is completely surreal for me as a European. In a country where you can buy assault rifles with minimal background checks, people worry about addresses being available because someone might be able to look up the address to kill them with a drone and a home made bomb.

As a European who has been living in the US for a decade, yeah, you're pretty spot on. Americans are a scared people, probably the most scared I've ever seen. Afraid of the gov't, the neighbors, and random people they don't even know. I've gotten a ton of hate as a foreigner and I am not surprised a hateful, greedy and selfish population like here is afraid somebody will take them out with an improvised device.

Generally making disparaging bigoted comments about a nationality is to be avoided here. It's certainly not productive to this discussion to label anyone as hateful, greedy, and selfish, and it runs afoul of the HN comment guidelines.

There are plenty of ways to contribute to discussion without making remarks that are emotionally charged and inflammatory.

Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#86

Post by PrimeMcFly »

marfil wrote: post #68
cycomanic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the US perspective of things is completely surreal for me as a European. In a country where you can buy assault rifles with minimal background checks, people worry about addresses being available because someone might be able to look up the address to kill them with a drone and a home made bomb.

As a European who has been living in the US for a decade, yeah, you're pretty spot on. Americans are a scared people, probably the most scared I've ever seen. Afraid of the gov't, the neighbors, and random people they don't even know. I've gotten a ton of hate as a foreigner and I am not surprised a hateful, greedy and selfish population like here is afraid somebody will take them out with an improvised device.

Non-American also been living here for a decade, and can only say your experiences are not representative, and you seemed to have picked a poor place to live.

Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#87

Post by 23B1 »

swells34 wrote: post #26
akira2501 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Service members are uniquely vulnerable. They are employed by the government which makes them a target of hostile foreign powers, and they're often ordered to give away their personal information while in service often out of habit and not out any genuine need to have the service members SSN.

All very correct, and to add to this as someone who's had direct consequences due to my information being sold: we have more sensitive personal information, and that information is more sensitive than that of an average civilian. The holy Grail of documents is the DD-214, which has every single piece of sensitive personal information a civilian has, all in one place, and we are REQUIRED to keep it indefinitely, to pr…

You mean SF-86, not DD-214

Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#88

Post by jjkeddo199 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #75
oaththrowaway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what you define as "minimal background checks" and "assault rifles" as

Not American, and curious about the checks required for different weapons. I get lot of contradictory information online. Also read in many places buying illegally is easy. How true is that?

Buying legally in the US isn't that hard to make it worth it to buy illegally unless you are a broke teenager buying one to try and "look cool and tough" to your friends.

Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#89

Post by 23B1 »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #84

Most people's data is being sold. No reason military people would be exempt.

The reason is twofold:

1. Servicemembers hold security clearances and thus access to critical things.

2. Leaked PII is a national security threat. This report, I'd argue, is good 'marketing' for the very real need for privacy protections nationwide. The U.S. military is, despite its best efforts, still an admired and respected institution.

Re: U.S. military members' personal data being sold by online brokers

#90

Post by slingnow »

marfil wrote: post #72
justrealist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, you live here. Annals of revealed preferences.

Oh no, don't get me wrong, I've been dying to leave, nothing I would like more. But I am sure you've heard of the term economic slavery, and that's what I have become. Don't make enough to make the ends meet, and don't make enough to leave. Have to pay the debts before I can give up the passport.

You poor soul. Moved to such a terrible nation full of those awful people you described and now you seem to be completely powerless to leave. And I'm 100% sure this is everyone elses fault.

At what point do you look inward for someone to blame for your circumstances?

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