Witch Hunt: Newspaper publishes Google Map of NY Gun Permit Owners

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The commercial appeal in Memphis, TN has had a look up available for years. I wish the state would fix this.

Time to email the link to my reps again and ask them to include language to fix this when they pass the law that lets teachers carry at school. :rolleyes:

Jim
 
Its sad to think that this is only the beginning of the critisim of law abiding gun owners. I fear that we will get a much bigger lashing before it is all said and done. What ever happened to common sense?
 
It only took 19 posts for someone to figure out that the outed people are even more safe now compared to their niebores.

OR
Dear Mr. News Paper Guy, thank you for letting me know what house not to break into.
A. Criminal.
 
That map is a lot of crap. I know several people who hold permits and not 1 is on there.
 
Dont think of it as a map for criminals to steal guns, hopefully those permit holders will defend their home accordingly, think of it as a map of homes not to rob, but all homes without a permit holder icon = more than likely unarmed homes that can easily be pillaged with little resistance.
 
A fellow former officer had this reply after I told him about the map:

"It's all right, you know when they'll get mine from me...
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!"

Fortunately I live in FL now and this information is not available to the public for both LE or law abiding citizens.
 
This seems like a huge breech of privacy. Just because the law requires govt and police know you have a gun, that doesn't mean everybody needs to. It sounds almost like the sex offenders list, but these gun owners haven't done anything illegal. I agree that if a criminal even looks on this list, he will avoid the one where he might get shot like the plague.
 
hey, i sc we all got guns--no need for foia--all a bad guy has to figure out is who ain't armed. :evil:
 
This is exactly like a sex offender's list. If you read the article you will see that it starts off talking about a murder committed by a mentally ill person owning illegal handguns, and talks about how people should be informed so that they won't unknowingly move to an area where people have legal guns.

This is a link to the article which referernces the maps: http://www.lohud.com/article/20121223/NEWS04/312230056/
 
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Under the New York Personal Privacy Act:

(7) Personal information. The term "personal information" means any information concerning a data subject which, because of name, number, symbol, mark or other identifier, can be used to identify that data subject.

Here are the prohibited act:

§ 96. Disclosure of records.

(1) No agency may disclose any record or personal information unless such disclosure is:
(a) pursuant to a written request by or the voluntary written consent of the data subject, provided that such request or consent by its terms limits and specifically describes:
(i) the personal information which is requested to be disclosed;
(ii) the person or entity to whom such personal information is requested to be disclosed; and
(iii) the uses which will be made of such personal information by the person or entity receiving it; or
(b) to those officers and employees of, and to those who contract with, the agency that maintains the record if such disclosure is necessary to the performance of their official duties pursuant to a purpose of the agency required to be accomplished by statute or executive order or necessary to operate a program specifically authorized by law; or
(c) subject to disclosure under article six of this chapter unless disclosure of such information would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy as defined in paragraph (a) of subdivision two of section eighty-nine of this chapter; or
(d) to officers or employees of another governmental unit if each category of information sought to be disclosed is necessary for the receiving governmental unit to operate a program specifically authorized by statute and if the use for which the information is requested is not relevant to the purpose for which it was collected; or
(e) for a routine use, as defined in subdivision ten of section ninety-two of this article; or
(f) specifically authorized by statute or federal rule or regulation; or
(g) to the bureau of the census for purposes of planning or carrying out a census or survey or related activity pursuant to the provisions of Title XIII of the United States Code; or
(h) to a person who has provided the agency with advance written assurance that the record will be used solely for the purpose of statistical research or reporting, but only if it is to be transferred in a form that does not reveal the identity of any data subject; or
(i) pursuant to a showing of compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of a data subject, if upon such disclosure notification is transmitted to the data subject at his or her last known address; or
(j) to the state archives as a record which has sufficient historical or other value to warrant its continued preservation by the state or for evaluation by the state archivist or his or her designee to determine whether the record has such value; or
(k) to any person pursuant to a court ordered subpoena or other compulsory legal process; or
(l) for inclusion in a public safety agency record or to any governmental unit or component thereof which performs as one of its principal functions any activity pertaining to the enforcement of criminal laws, provided that, such record is reasonably described and is requested solely for a law enforcement function; or
(m) pursuant to a search warrant; or
(n) to officers or employees of another agency if the record sought to be disclosed is necessary for the receiving agency to comply with the mandate of an executive order, but only if such records are to be used only for statistical research, evaluation or reporting and are not used in making determination about a data subject.

(2) Nothing in this section shall require disclosure of:
(a) personal information which is otherwise prohibited by law from being disclosed;
(b) patient records concerning mental disability or medical records where such disclosure is not otherwise required by law;
(c) personal information pertaining to the incarceration of an inmate at a state correctional facility which is evaluative in nature or which, if disclosed, could endanger the life or safety of any person, unless such disclosure is otherwise permitted by law;
(d) attorney's work product or material prepared for litigation before judicial, quasi-judicial or administrative tribunals, as described in subdivisions (c) and (d) of section three thousand one hundred one of the civil practice law and rules, except pursuant to statute, subpoena issued in the course of a criminal action or proceeding, court ordered or grand jury subpoena, search warrant or other court ordered disclosure.

Civil action available for those who are outed:

§ 97. Civil remedies.

(l) Any data subject aggrieved by any action taken under this article may seek judicial review and relief pursuant to article seventy-eight of the civil practice law and rules.

(2) In any proceeding brought under subdivision one of this section, the party defending the action shall bear the burden of proof, and the court may, if the data subject substantially prevails against any agency and if the agency lacked a reasonable basis pursuant to this article for the challenged action, award to the data subject reasonable attorneys' fees and disbursements reasonably incurred.

(3) Nothing in this article shall be construed to limit or abridge the right of any person to obtain judicial review or pecuniary or other relief, in any other form or upon any other basis, otherwise available to a person aggrieved by any agency action under this article.

I think we have oodles and oodles of civil actions awaiting, unless the disclosure of this type of information is authorized by statute.

Could also be conspiracy to violate civil rights
 
only 4 (!) gun permits in ALL of manhattan? and only a few in Queens? C'mon.... not sure what database he used but that awfully incomplete....
 
I have the opposite view as those that see this as a list of places not to rob: it may well be a list of places not to invade, or burgle at night, but it is also a shopping list for thieves who specialize in waiting until a target goes to work.

Curse that paper. I hope a lack of subscribers takes them down.
 
interesting that you use the term "witch-hunt" as in the 1600s, the witch hunts were spread by two things... first, a small group of people began to spread rumors about supposed witches, claiming they would kidnap and eat babies, or boil them up into potions.... well, the left wing media is using the connecticut shooting as an analog to this 17th century story

so out of the complete and utter 17th century ignorance, these stories and rumors heard by the uneducated and irrational combined with their complete fear and cowardess of the unkown, of the things they couldnt explain lead to the wrongful persecution and murder of many, many people

so i completely agree with the term "witch hunt".. and what this newspaper made an attempt at doing was make formal accusations of who are the witches in this mess hoping the people will march to their houses with torches and pitchforks because the people who wrote the article is too spineless to confront them theirselves
 
I'm not familiar with New York but how many dots are in perceived "good" areas compared to "bad" areas.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2
 
Not that I'm advocating it, but you can take the Google map object from the page source and reverse geocode it via a client-side Javascript run into a locally written file.

(Un?)fortunately, Google only allows 2500 calls of that API call per day per IP, so it'd take a few days to aggregate everything, but it most certainly can (and probably has been) done.

Good data in bad hands is worse than bad data in good hands.
 
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