Don't let your gun licence expire

[rob love]

I thought I would post a little warning to those who have firearms liscences and figure that they can just let tham lapse and join the thousands who didn't bother to register either themselves or their rifles in the first place. This topic is especially relevant since the million POLs that they sold for $10 in the malls five years back are now set to expire. If you let your liscence expire, you will lose any grandfathering rights you currently have. Second, everytime the police pull you over, and run you on the CPIC computer, they also access your file in the CFC database. If your liscence has expired they will know it, and the OPP has been instructed to act on it.
Also, apparently the CFC is claiming that the registration certificates are revoked if the owner is no longer liscenced, and the local PDs will come to take away your property.

So while the conservatives are likely removing the longarms registry, the requirement for liscencing still exists. And, especially if you hold grandfathered firearms, don't let your liscence lapse.

[chris vickery]

Funny how they were $10 5 years ago and now $60. Bastards!

[rob love]

I don't think any of this process is about saving firearms owners money; it's about wearing us down until we just give up. After unlocking the gun room, unlocking the ammo, placing the firearms, trigger locked, into boxes, I have to make sure I have my liscence, my ATT , and the registration certificates, after which I can head to the range, by a direct route. And how many times do you think I've gone through all that and forgotten either the magazines or the trigger lock keys or both.

The $10 thing was just an inducement to get guys into the system, where they now have you trapped. Now they can squeeze you like one of those katsup bottles until you have nothing left, and just give up.

I don't know about Ontario, but I meet many, many guys here who just didn't get involved with either the liscencing or registration thing, period. If 2 million of us had the same attitude, this whole system would have collapsed years ago.

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

Not wanting to make you paranoid, BUT.....

Gun registry's security questioned

By MARK BONOKOSKI

A fortnight ago, and in the wake of another calculated but seemingly out-of-the-blue robbery of a registered gun collector, even the Toronto Star finally entertained the possibility that the national gun registry might have been compromised and that sensitive information might have leaked to criminals.

Trouble is, this is hardly cutting-edge news.

Legitimate gun owners -- including cops and ex-cops who are shooting club enthusiasts -- have been publicly pointing their finger at the Canadian Firearms Centre registry, particularly since its database is linked to the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC), the all-things-criminal computer operated by the RCMP under the stewardship of National Police Services.

There are, of course, the usual suspects who will quickly deep-six such a notion, among them Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, who maintains gun collectors either talk too much or are followed home from the gun clubs to which they belong.

As for the gun registry being compromised, Cukier said it is "silly" to believe this could possibly happen.

"It's as secure as the police CPIC," she has said.

If that is truly the case, then licensed gun owners and collectors have some legitimate concerns.

According to an Access to Information request -- File: 03ATIP-20402 -- which was filed in late 2003 and responded to in early 2004, the federal force admitted that there were 1,495 breaches of the CPIC system reported between 1995 and 2003, and that 306 of those breaches had been confirmed, with another 121 cases categorized as still under investigation.

According to the RCMP, all these breaches of the CPIC system were considered to be inside jobs by those with security-cleared access to the database, complete with its link to information stored in the national gun registry.

The sanctions imposed were as follows:

* Six individuals were either demoted, fined, put on probation or imprisoned. (Note: There was no further breakdown as to the severity of the sanction imposed, i.e. demotion or fine, probation or imprisonment, and that goes for the remainder of sanctions handed down.)

* Forty-four individuals were charged, convicted, disciplined or counselled.

* Thirty-five individuals were retrained in CPIC policy regarding operational guidance.

* Eighty-eight individuals were reprimanded or dismissed or had their resignations accepted.

* Forty-seven individuals were suspended or penalized by a loss of pay.

* Sixty-five individuals received what was referred to as "other warning."

The RCMP, in its response to the access to information request, was adamant, however, that only internal personnel had breached the system and that the "number of penetrations to the CPIC system through unauthorized connections is nil."

This left Tory MP Garry Breitkreuz, the most aggressive critic of the registry, incredulous.

If the CPIC system was so perfect that it had never been hacked by an outsider, then why, asked Breitkreuz, did the Canadian government pay a private company $27 million to develop safeguards for government computers rather than simply ask the RCMP to duplicate its "CPIC success story" and apply it in every federal department?

The follow-up answer from RCMP Chief Supt. David Gork, the federal force's departmental security officer, was not one that mirrored the initial response.

As Supt. Gork put it, "CPIC is but one of many applications that are protected by the National Police Service Network (NPSN), and attacks on the network cannot be broken down as to which application is the intent of the attack.

"Therefore," he concluded, "there are no stats that are collected that would indicate where any of the attacks are directed."

In other words, the RCMP has no way of knowing if CPIC had been breached by outside hackers, let alone if it has ever been attacked by unauthorized parties, because there was no qualitative tracking system in place.

That alone ensures that CPIC cannot be described as fail-safe, even if anti-firearms crusaders such as Wendy Cukier wish to believe it is "silly" to think otherwise.

The fact that computer hackers broke through federal firewalls several times in 2003 should have opened even the most blinkered eyes to the possibility that CPIC is vulnerable -- particularly since one of the networks compromised by those hackers was the department of national defence, complete with its treasure trove of highly classified records.

According to a 2004 Canadian Press report based on Access to Information documents, the defence department's computer incident response team tracked 160 breaches of its security system, supposedly the most impregnable due to its role in protecting Canada's national security secrets from cyber-terrorism and international espionage agents.

If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

If there are still doubters, however, then perhaps those doubters should make their way to the website of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters.

In their April hotline, the organization tells the story of former firearm registry webmaster John Hicks -- who has never owned a gun -- who warned authorities that the supposedly impregnable registry site was an easy target.

"It took some $15 million to develop it, and I broke into it in about 30 minutes," he said, indicating he warned his superiors repeatedly before resorting to filing an official complaint with the privacy commissioner.

"Basically, a 16-year-old kid could have broken into that system in a heartbeat."

[chris vickery]

What would stop police officers from "jotting down" specifics whilst running legitimate checks trough CPIC, other than the fact they're supposed to be honest?
Let's just say, a dirty officer stops a motorist for a traffic violation. It's his job, and his duty to run you through CPIC. Now he sees you are a firearms owner. Maybe he doesn't give you a hard time or say anything, but, what you don't know is that he "jots down" all your info, address, types of firearms etc, and keeps lists. Would these lists not be of value to some lowlife denegrades that an officer may be in cahouts with? We all know that officers use informants etc to do their dirty work and I'm sure that this info would suppliment an officers salary quite well.
The Toronto Sun who published a map of the highest concentraion of firearms owners should also be ashamed for releasing such info as should the Firearms Centre. This is not public knowledge. If anyone believes for a second that the database is secure, they ought to have their head examined.
Remember that this data base is also manned by civilians with clearance. Wonder how many of them are honest???
And BTW, don't try and tell me that there's no dirty cops...

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

The sooner they scrap the whole thing, the better off we all are. Harper should insist that records pertaining to long guns are destroyed under RCMP supervision, and that control over the registration of restricted weapons should pass back into RCMP hands as before.

[rob love]

I wonder if the firearms registry access is logged and accountable in any way. Would it be possible to audit any access'es to the information of those broken into lately, and then find out the who's and why's?
The anti-gunners are claiming victory in their 5000 hits a day to the registry. Not only are these hits, for the most part, useless (the registry is checked automatically in most jurisdictions any time the police check for you on the CPIC, so even when you are stopped for speeding, and they run your name, bingo, theres a useless check), but now it's appearing to be dangerous to my own security.
Methinks it's time for a complaint to the privacy comisioner. Information as to my property ownership is being accessed when it's irrelevent to the situation. If I am involved in some kind of flip out, or a case of violence, then maybe. But for routine traffic stops, my firearms information surely does not provide any kind of value.