From owner-cdn-firearms-digest@broadway.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Tue Jul 29 15:16:12 1997 From: owner-cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@broadway.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V1 #923 Content-Length: 23736 X-Lines: 579 Status: RO Cdn-Firearms Digest Tuesday, July 29 1997 Volume 01 : Number 923 In this issue: Re: July, 1997 Point Blank Issue Re: I Believe I Am Within the Law NFA Merchandise Winners Re: Must Read Books - Cdn-Firearms Digest V1 #922 Two F.A.C.'s More CFC nonsense; Registration of hydroponic equipment Automated Shotgun Patterning Re: About encrypting the hard drive Re: WARNING! Ecrypted Hards Drives Encryption for protection, PART TWO ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 19:09:47 -0600 From: "David A. Tomlinson" Subject: Re: July, 1997 Point Blank Issue >I received the latest issue of Point Blank and was not amused. It was >not the technical or the legal issues in the letter that pissed me off >(because I am in total agreement), it was the phrases, "THAT'S a >public-servant way of handling the public ?" and "Civil servant means >Uncivil master". Certainly, not ALL civil servants are "uncivil masters." The quotations were in response to "uncivil master" attitudes and actions in a specific case, and were not intended as a general criticism. >Mr.Tomlinson, I am a certified Canadian Firearms Safety Course >Instructor / Examiner in the province of Ontario, a member of the NFA, >Ontario Handgun Association, Toronto Sportsmen's Association (handgun), >hunter and a FEDERAL CIVIL SERVANT! I do not appreciate nor will I >accept the NFA's finger pointing at civil servants for the flawed and >unrealistic firearms control laws. I do not blame the civil servants for the laws. I can, and do, blame them for their ignorance of those laws, their creation of new laws that are not included in the existing laws, and their frequently abusive methods of administration and enforcement. True, not all civil servants in the adiminstration of firearms control are lazy, ignorant or abusive -- but a surprisingly high percentage are. It is necessary to COMPLAIN when such behavior is detected -- or it will continue and expand. >The firearms community for years has be trying to stress that firearm >related crime was the work of criminals and not the law abiding >shooters. The firearms community made several attempts to educate the >public that THEY were not the problem and THEY should not be the targets >in the Firearms Act. Why then would you label civil servants (and I took >that as an assault on ALL civil servants) as the problem in the firearms >debate? Not all us civil servants are "uncivil masters". It was not an assault on ALL civil servants. It was a complaint against civil servants who DO behave badly. >As a Customs Officer and firearms enthusiast, I have never treated a >member of the public in an "unreasonable or unmature" way (unless of >course they came looking for a battle). If you had access to Canadian Firearms Digest (the e-mail magazine), you would have a much clearer appreciation of how widespread and pervasive abuse is. At this moment, ALL charges in the million-dollar case against Marstar Trading have been DROPPED -- after 18 months of Hell for the Marstar people -- because there never was a case against them. The only thing ongoing is one appeal by the Crown against having one of their cases thrown out of court. Kearns & McMurchy have had ALL of their seized goods returned -- EXCEPT for five guns illegally turned over by Customs to Quebec's Surete. They CANNOT be returned -- because they are clear evidence of criminal activities by Customs and/or the Surete. That one is a royal mess. >I totally agree that firearms knowledge is nil to none existent at least >within my department, but I make every attempt possible to educate >myself prior to making any decision in an unfamiliar area. I am not a >firearms expert and I do not sell myself off as one. And that is the CAUSE of much of the abusive administration and enforcement. >How does one become a so called expert? I would be more than willing to >expand my present knowledge in firearms to the ranks of the experts. If >you can help me in this field that would be great, because my department >is not willing or interested in broadening my firearms knowledge (I was >recently denied departmental funding for a gunsmithing course.I thought >it would enhance my abilities to better serve the public. The department >obviously looked at it differently). I am recognized as an expert by the courts. I gained that status by 50 years of self-education. Firearms expertise is usually found in people with a NARROW band of knowledge -- Colt handguns, WW I rifles, etc. Wide-band experts are VERY rare, and come from a special band of collectors who collect by buying a firearm, tearing it apart, studying its mechanism for weak and strong points, altering or testing it, then trading it off to acquire a "new" firearm for study. That includes acquisition of a large technical library. There are VERY few such people in Canada, and firearms control systems are lost without them. >In conclusion, I realize that every government worker is a civil >servant, but lets start referring to those responsible for the firearms >fiasco in a more specific term. I'll try. Dave Tomlinson, NFA ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 19:09:54 -0600 From: "David A. Tomlinson" Subject: Re: I Believe I Am Within the Law >I recently moved to a new location in town. My new home is equiped with a >good-sized shop. As soon as I could, I located spaces for my reloading >equipment and an additional spot for cleaning my firearms. > >The other day I had to clean and re-scope one of my rifles: this meant >taking my gun from my house to my shop two or three times in a one hour. >Consequently, I was seen by a neighbor across the street. A day later, I >overheard a conversation between my neighbors opposite and adjacent which >amounted to an objection of me carrying guns around the area. > >Am I within the law's dictates when I carry an unlocked firearm on my own >property? In other words, could I lawfully clean my (or work on) guns >anywhere on my private premises without fear of paranoid citizens calling >the Gestapo? You are within the law, but some people have become paranoid about the sight of a firearm. You may be visited by the police, and they may request permission to enter your premises. If you grant them permission, they may lay charges against you for improper storage of firearms, ammunition, powder or primers. The NFA can and does help when charges are laid, but it is better not to have to fight in court -- that is just too costly for most people. In a mature society, there are only two necessary laws: 1. You must not annoy your neighbors. 2. You must not allow yourself to be annoyed too easily. Those laws apply to BOTH you and your neighbors. In your case, I suggest that guns being carried back and forth be carried in cases or wrapped. It makes you less a subject of conversation -- and therefore less likely to be targeted by burglars or other home invasion criminals. Dave Tomlinson, NFA FOCUS: Here lies the body of Johnathan Day, Who died defending his Right of Way. He was Right, dead Right, as he sped along -- But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 19:09:58 -0600 From: Remington Nevin Subject: NFA Merchandise Winners Congratulations to our three latest winners of the NFA Merchandise draw for subscribers to the cdn-firearms-digest: Bob Dixon Sulo J. Viherjoki Terry Readman This month's winners can choose between a five-colour NFA Cap Pin, or a five-colour NFA Crest. You can view these and other pieces of NFA merchandise at http://www.nfa.ca/merchandise/ Winners should reply to my email with their choice of prize and a mailing address to which it can be sent via Canada Post. All non-winning subscribers are still eligible for future draws, so there's no need to re-enter. Full contest details are posted at http://www.nfa.ca/subscribe/contest.html Good luck to all our subscribers in the next draw in about three weeks time. - --- Remington Nevin NFA Web Site Maintainer remington.nevin@utoronto.ca ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 19:10:03 -0600 From: MAC/SOG Subject: Re: Must Read Books - Cdn-Firearms Digest V1 #922 On : Sun, 27 Jul 1997 12:39:59 -0600 From: mtoma Subject: Books of interest wrote:>>> Must read Book List: The Samurai, The Mountie, and the Cowboy by David B. Kopel Guns, Crime and Freedom by Wayne Lapierre Unintended Consequences by John Ross, THE BOOK on encroachment of government and the ultimate solution Anything by Jeff Cooper. Nobody today writes as succinctly and principled as Cooper does. The Paladin Press catalog. Numerous titles of interest to shooters, hunters. The Ultimate Sniper by Major John Plaster. "FBI Sniper Training" Advanced Rifle Training for the Observer Sniper is available. . M. Toma, >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mr. Toma is right however there are over 600 hundred books on these very subjects along with the books there are video's that show in detail exact training methods, and video's that show the effects of the "Unintended Consequence" in action. Most of these books and video's are red hot contravercial in Canada. For that very reason ,SSAC has made available a unique service to the Firearms Community as well as others.To get any of these materials and items without winding up on a government/law enforcement hit list. SSAC has over 9000 books and video's on all these and other related subjucts available to anyone in Canada. For inquires contact: SSAC care of mac_sog@istar.ca. NOTE: None Of These Items Are Illegal To Own, Only When Put to Practice Do They Become Illegal. Rod. Bugarersti ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 19:10:05 -0600 From: "Lawrence F. Hill" Subject: Two F.A.C.'s Could someone please let me know if I will be able to get two F.A.C.'s. I have two now. I think that everyone knows why you need two,but I will explain for those that don't. If you want to buy a firearm from some long distance away you have to send your F.A.C. And if you borrow someones restricted firearm you have to have a valid F.A.C. on your person, so the need for the two F.A.C.'s. I have read the preposed reg's and they say that they will only issue one licence only. Is this true? Lawrence ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 22:03:56 -0600 From: jean hogue Subject: More CFC nonsense; Registration of hydroponic equipment >In my view, a person cannot be convicted of an offence under >section 106 of the Firearms Act for making a simple, honest >mistake. I would agree with you, however, that it would be >most unfortunate for an innocent person to have to go through >the court process at all and incur legal fees. Hopefully, by >proper training of the police forces, there will be little if >any abuse of this section. >While I agree with you that a charged person is always in great >jeopardy, financial if nothing else So the reassurances are: - the personnal opinion of a single individual at the CFC not binding in any way for the governement and its hordes of "inspectors" - the ordeal of undergone by people dragged to court will not occur very often -- hopefully for the few unfortunate ones, well "shit happens" and, as Heidi says: "too bad !". - ----------------------------------------- In its obsessive crusade to de-invent firearms, the Kukier Klone Kompany frequently uses authority figures to lend credibility to its anti-gun claims. For instance, police officials favoring registration. Recently, a secret report from the RCMP`s Criminal Intelligence Directorate was released under the Freedom of Information Act. Alarmed at the mushrooming use of hydroponic installations set up by the Hell's Angels to grow marijuana, the RCMP concluded with the need to register this kind of equipment as a means to defeat organized crime. The Montreal Gazette, the Queen Mother of political correctness, published the following editorial rejecting the RCMP's wish. Considering how fanatic the Gazette was in its unconditional support of C-68 and registration, it is ironic to note their comments on the lastest RCMP plan. Source: The Montreal Gazette, July 26, page B4 "A growing danger" "... Even in a country where many people have an almost pathological need to control other people's lives, members of our federal police force have made a suggestion that goes over the top. They think it would be a good idea to require the registration of water pumps, plastic tubes and lamps used for hydroponic gardening." "... Those Hell's Angels will be running scared now. The'll pack up their legally registered .44's and .357's and the licensed explosives they have in storage and move to friendlier territory after checking-in, of course, with their parole officers." "... And we'll have a new database in our federal computer system of dozens of indoor cucumber and tomato growers and a bunch of phony names. What would come up for licensing next, baseball bats ?" "... we would not want to make the private business of law-abiding citizens the subject of public record..." "... we must also remind these people [RCMP] ...the potential intrusion and waste of time far outweigh any possible law enforcement benefit." ___________________________________________________________ "I came to Ottawa with the firm belief that the only people in this country who should have guns are police officers and soldiers." Allan Rock, Author of C-68 law on gun "control" Maclean's "Taking Aim on Guns", April 25, 1994, page 12. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 22:03:55 -0600 From: Ron McCutcheon Subject: Automated Shotgun Patterning >> If you are going to automate this, I would suggest doing it right at >>the target with a camera feeding a PC. Take a frame of the target before >>and after. >[Taylor Buckner comments: I think this might work. Once the data was in >the computer the circles could be drawn electronically around the centre of >mass of the pellets. The distance of the centre of mass of pellets from >the aim point could then be calculated to see if the shotgun or the shooter >had a consistent bias. By Jove, I believe you have the answer. You should only need to take the "after" picture. All the "before" pictures would be the same. To increase the contrast, you could use dark colored paper and put a light behind the paper to shine through the holes. Ron McCutcheon P. Eng mccutcrg@mail.rose.com Good gun control is a keen eye and a steady hand. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 04:36:48 -0600 From: jf_avon@citenet.net Subject: Re: About encrypting the hard drive On 28 Jul 97 at 10:31, jean hogue wrote in CFD V1 #922: > Refusal to provide the decryption key will simply result in your arrest > based on your refusal to assist. They could put you in the clink for "mepris de cour", but not for an alleged crime. And usually, they will keep you in only for a certain time. Apparently (as discussed extensively on Cypherpunks mailing list). > The "inspectors" can't get you based on what you encrypted ? Fine. They'll > just get you for having encrypted it. Hard to believe, but I can't say that it is not true. "having encrypted *IT*" means "something". But what exactly is this "something"? How could they convict you for having encrypted something they do not know the nature? Might just be your love letters or your favorite fried chicken secrets. Or trade secrets, or anything you do not want divulged. They would not be able (I suppose) to indict you on topic A by your refusal to answer a question about a totally unrelevant topic B. Does C-68 permits them to do without that? Ciao jfa - -- Jean-Francois Avon, Pierrefonds(Montreal) QC Canada JFA Technologies, R&D physicists & engineers Instrumentation & control, LabView programming. PGP keys: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon and: http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html PGP ID:C58ADD0D:529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 PGP ID:5B51964D:152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 04:36:49 -0600 From: jf_avon@citenet.net Subject: Re: WARNING! Ecrypted Hards Drives On 28 Jul 97 at 10:31, Bruce wrote in CFD V1 #922: > I would like to give a BIG word of caution to anyone with an = > idea of thinking that the data in that hard drive is totally safe. No, it is not. > Encryption (wheather hardware or some PGP scheme) is deciferable, by = > anyone with the inclination and a good computer. Please substantiate. There is a raging debate on the topic. Have a look at the Cypherpunk mailing list. As far as civilian research goes, IDEA is unbreakable. Recently, a message got posted on the internet to the effect that there is a way to drastically reduce decoding time, but this apparently exploits failure to apply cryptographic in a strict, holeless way. > Good encrypted files = > can usually be cracked in only a few hours of computing time by the = > experts. Remains to be seen. Beside, if everybody encrypted their drive, the sheer volume of data to process would make the process impractical but for the most prosecutable cases. > The best defence I've come up with is to have a program installed into = > your computer that will erase AND overwrite any 'sensitive' material. = Tunnelling microscopy technology can, apparently, track data down to the fifteenth to twentieth overwrite due to minute head misalignement during the write process. With this technology, they can image individual atoms in a crystal. But this requires megabucks installations like only the NSA can afford. Practically speaking, from three to seven overwrite is considered secure (commercial and military). PGP saved the skin of many individuals running civil liberties defense associations. Theses cases are well documented. Any group working in the direction of the CFD should set up a secure server. The expense is under 500 bucks (an old 100$ 486DX ISA running DOS only with a network card will do just fine). Ciao jfa - -- Jean-Francois Avon, Pierrefonds(Montreal) QC Canada JFA Technologies, R&D physicists & engineers Instrumentation & control, LabView programming. PGP keys: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon and: http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html PGP ID:C58ADD0D:529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 PGP ID:5B51964D:152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 14:57:24 -0600 From: starwind@ibm.net Subject: Encryption for protection, PART TWO ...continued from part one... >The best defence I've come up with is to have a program installed into = >your computer that will erase AND overwrite any 'sensitive' material. = BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT. THIS WILL NOT RENDER YOUR HDD SAFE!!! There are tools that can be used, without tremendous expense, and which are not uncommonly available, that will READ THE HDD even after it has been "erased" and "overwritten" MANY times. With more normal data recovery equipment you would have to have erased AND fully overwritten SEVEN times in order for it to not be readable with accuracy. The number of times it must be done in order to not be readable by the more sophisticated equipment has not been disclosed to the public. Unfortunately, an erase and write can take a fair bit of time to do, on machines it can take hours... for ONE pass... Consider that there are corporations who make an awful lot of money from recovering data off of damaged/"erased" hard drives... they are downright COMMON... plus, many large corporations have the ability to do it themselves[ woudl YOU want your CEO's HDD going to an outside company if something happened to it?? I didn't think so...]. The can recover data form HDD's that have been erased, burned, flooded, dropped, crushed, had chocolate syrup glopped on 'em, etc... >This program would have to be able to be activated in an inconspicuous = >manner so that when you are supposed to be helping the police look at = Quite achievable... consider a password protected hard drive with one password that allows you access to everything, another that allows you selected access, and one that will appear to allow access, but which actually erase and overwrites... There are of course many other options, including manual switches and a host of other things... Also keep in mind that YOU MIGHT NOT BE THERE when the police are... remember those C-68 warrant provisions... so, with younot there your data is wide open [this applies to burglars, corporate espionage, your kids, etc etc as well]. >some records, you are actually obliterating them so nobody can read them = >again (even you!) Except that on most machines it would take MANY hours to do the required minimum seven erase and overwrites, and even then with more sophisticated equipment it would still be readable. Of course, using the more sophisticated equipment runs into the same cost-benefit argument as with using the heavy duty mainframes to crack PGP, and they may not be willing to do i [although more of the machines to allow them to probably exist]. Most such programs erase and overwrite only once, unfortunately, which is absolutely not safe enough. >Remember, encryption is like putting a lock on a door. If someone wants = >in bad enough they will succeed, with or without a kay! This is true. If nothing else, they can do a brute force method [running each possible combination one by one until they hit upon the one you used] to crack any encryption scheme, including PGP. For some of the software, it is unbelievably easy to crack the scheme and may take only a few minutes. For others, it is exceptionally difficult, requires high-tech VERY expensive [millions to hundreds of millions of dollars worth, depending on how long you want to take] equipment, and can take minutes [if you're lucky and find the key right away] to months to perhaps even years [is the machine dedicated to this purpose or not?] if you are exceptionally unlucky. There are other considerations as well when protecting your data. WHAT are you protecting? How important is it that the police don't read it? Yes, I realie there is the principal of them not reading something because they don't really have the right to, or because there is nothing illegalabout what you have. However, we know from history that what the police are *allowed* to do and what sometimes gets done are not always the same. So, sit down and think: is there anything on the computer that will be a BAD thing on legal grounds if the police can read it? Set aside prinicpals of whether or not you want them to read it. If there are such files, then you have another series of problems on your hands aside simply from just how you save your data and protect your files. id you know that with the right equipment the police can see everything that you are doing on your computer without even being inside your house or running wires to it?? So, every time you access soemthing, if they are monitoring you for some reason, they can see everything you see... [continued in part three] ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V1 #923 **********************************