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Days After Parkland, Its Business as Usual at a Florida Gun Show

Days After Parkland, Its Business as Usual at a Florida Gun Show 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s another week after another mass shooting in the U.S., and something finally feels different. In the days following the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 students and faculty members, a vociferous movement of young people has risen up to say enough is enough. The generation that grew up in the wake of the 1999 carnage in Columbine is demanding new gun restrictions. The teenagers are adding a fresh voice to a gun control debate that has plodded, despite a number of high-profile massacres in the past several months, from the record-setting Las Vegas incident that killed 58 to the shooting a few weeks later at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, that killed 26.

But as students plan protests and schedule a sit-down with President Donald Trump to discuss gun violence, it’s important to remember what they’re up against. Three-in-10 American adults own a gun, and three-quarters of them think that doing so is fundamental to their sense of freedom, according to a 2017 Pew poll. This engrained culture of gun rights was on display over the weekend, where it was business as usual at a Miami-area gun show. Merchants displayed hunting knives, tactical gear, and semiautomatic assault rifles, including the same AR-15 model used by 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, just an hour north, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in neighboring Broward County. At the Miami weapons bazaar, parents pushed babies up and down aisles of carefully stacked magazines and ammo; older children played with toy firearms.

Free admission offered with NRA membership sign-up or renewal at the gun show on Feb. 17, 2018.
Photographer: Nathan Crooks

Gun shows are a staple in the American firearms community, with several thousand held annually. Gun control activists have called for closing the “gun show loophole,” which allows some gun sellers to perform a transaction without running a background check on the buyer. According to data collected by Pew, the majority of gun owners, 77 percent, advocate ending the loophole, but a proposed bill to do just that found little traction in Congress when it was introduced last March.

Indeed, the state of gun control legislation appears to be divorced from public sentiment. According to the Pew poll, among gun owners, 89 percent support a proposal that would prevent the mentally ill from purchasing a gun, 82 percent support barring those on the no-fly list from buying guns, 54 percent support a federal gun sales database, and 48 percent support a ban on assault-style weapons such as AR-15s. These measures, though, often dissipate in the legislation process. Congress, which promised a bipartisan bump stock ban after the device was used in the Las Vegas shooting, failed to deliver. On Tuesday, Trump signaled a willingness to consider a bump stock ban, directing his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to draft rules prohibiting the accessories.

In a sign of how hard it will be to change the state’s gun laws, on Feb. 20, Florida legislators voted against an assault rifles ban as students from Parkland watched in the gallery. A similar proposal failed to gain traction in the wake of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting that left 49 dead. The state is home to some of the nation’s most lax gun laws and a governor with an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association. Marion Hammer, head of the Florida gun lobby, was involved in the state’s notorious Stand Your Ground law and supported the state’s concealed carry initiative. In a state where concealed carry is popular, the license allows those shopping at a gun show to avoid the three- to five-day waiting period.

At the weekend gun show in Miami, few people wanted to talk on the record, stating they’d been misrepresented in the past in the media. Many simply sighed when asked about the AR-15 first made infamous in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. The price tag on one read $449. Asked what it would take to buy one on the spot, a salesman replied, “If you have a Florida driver’s license and a concealed weapons permit, you can walk out with one today.” Short of that, you need to go through a background check and the mandatory waiting period.

Handguns on display at the gun show on Feb. 17, 2018.
Photographer: Nathan Crooks

Many of the talking points seemed similar. Multiple sellers mentioned that a 19-year-old who wanted to inflict mass casualties could just as easily buy a Ferrari and mow people down by speeding on a busy street. A common refrain was that gun owners are good people in favor of smart regulation but that an outright ban would never work, as there were already millions of guns in public hands.

Robert Geisler, a 34-year-old from Orlando, was working behind the busy, large booth for gun retailer Shoot Straight Florida. Business sometimes picks up after a mass shooting, he said, though this show is always busy. “We’re on pace to do the exact same amount of sales as we did about a month ago when we were here,” he said. The conversation soon turned to the AR-15 and all the misconceptions that Geisler said surround the weapon. “There’s a lot of guns that are like that, that have been out for a long time that shoot just as far and shoot just as fast. It’s gotten a bad name since that Sandy Hook thing,” Geisler said, referring to the 2012 killing of 20 elementary school students and six staff members. “The gun has been around since the Vietnam era, it’s just in the last 25 or 30 years where these kids have been using them in the school shootings.”

“We are a free society,” Robert’s uncle, Scott Geisler, 56, said as he walked over and talked at length about all the reasons why someone might want to purchase an AR-15 for self-defense instead of a simple handgun. “People want some choices,” he said. “They like that look. They grew up with it. They see it, they see it on TV, and they like to own it. It’s a sexy rifle.”

The conversation shifted to a changing society and video games. “Society has changed,” the elder Geisler continued. “The kids have changed. We didn’t grow up playing with all these Game Boys or these PlayStations with shoot’em-up programs and going to schools and shooting up schools, shooting up whatever. We didn’t grow up with that. Now these kids think it’s fun and it’s a toy, and it’s not.” As Geisler spoke, a child played with a toy gun nearby as his mother looked at handguns.

Meanwhile, in the hours after Trump announced the possibility of a ban on bump stocks, prices for the accessories went wild on the resale market. On Gun Broker, a firearms auction website, Slide Fire-branded bump stocks were selling for between $245 and $1,200. The devices usually retail for between $99 and $199.

    Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/days-after-parkland-it-s-business-as-usual-at-a-florida-gun-show

    Ubers Secret Tool for Keeping the Cops in the Dark

    Ubers Secret Tool for Keeping the Cops in the Dark

    by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

    In May 2015 about 10 investigators for the Quebec tax authority burst into Uber Technologies Inc.’s office in Montreal. The authorities believed Uber had violated tax laws and had a warrant to collect evidence. Managers on-site knew what to do, say people with knowledge of the event.

    Like managers at Uber’s hundreds of offices abroad, they’d been trained to page a number that alerted specially trained staff at company headquarters in San Francisco. When the call came in, staffers quickly remotely logged off every computer in the Montreal office, making it practically impossible for the authorities to retrieve the company records they’d obtained a warrant to collect. The investigators left without any evidence.

    Most tech companies don’t expect police to regularly raid their offices, but Uber isn’t most companies. The ride-hailing startup’s reputation for flouting local labor laws and taxi rules has made it a favorite target for law enforcement agencies around the world. That’s where this remote system, called Ripley, comes in. From spring 2015 until late 2016, Uber routinely used Ripley to thwart police raids in foreign countries, say three people with knowledge of the system. Allusions to its nature can be found in a smattering of court filings, but its details, scope, and origin haven’t been previously reported.

    Uber Uses 'Ripley' in Times of Panic

    The Uber HQ team overseeing Ripley could remotely change passwords and otherwise lock up data on company-owned smartphones, laptops, and desktops as well as shut down the devices. This routine was initially called the unexpected visitor protocol. Employees aware of its existence eventually took to calling it Ripley, after Sigourney Weaver’s flamethrower-wielding hero in the movies. The nickname was inspired by a Ripley line in , after the acid-blooded extraterrestrials easily best a squad of ground troops. “Nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

    Other companies have shut off computers during police raids, then granted officers access after reviewing a warrant. And Uber has reason to be cautious with the sensitive information it holds about customers and their locations around the world. Ripley stands out partly because it was used regularly—at least two dozen times, the people with knowledge of the system say—and partly because some employees involved say they felt the program slowed investigations that were legally sound in the local offices’ jurisdictions. “Obstruction of justice definitions vary widely by country,” says Ryan Calo, a cyberlaw professor at the University of Washington. “What’s clear is that Uber maintained a general pattern of legal arbitrage.”

    “Like every company with offices around the world, we have security procedures in place to protect corporate and customer data,” Uber said in a statement. “When it comes to government investigations, it’s our policy to cooperate with all valid searches and requests for data.”

    Uber has already drawn criminal inquiries from the U.S. Department of Justice for at least five other alleged schemes. In February, the exposed Uber’s use of a software tool called Greyball, which showed enforcement officers a fake version of its app to protect drivers from getting ticketed. Ripley’s existence gives officials looking into other Uber incidents reason to wonder what they may have missed when their raids were stymied by locked computers or encrypted files. Prosecutors may look at whether Uber obstructed law enforcement in a new light. “It’s a fine line,” says Albert Gidari, director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society. “What is going to determine which side of the line you’re on, between obstruction and properly protecting your business, is going to be things like your history, how the government has interacted with you.”

    About a year after the failed Montreal raid, the judge in the Quebec tax authority’s lawsuit against Uber wrote that “Uber wanted to shield evidence of its illegal activities” and that the company’s actions in the raid reflected “all the characteristics of an attempt to obstruct justice.” Uber told the court it never deleted its files. It cooperated with a second search warrant that explicitly covered the files and agreed to collect provincial taxes for each ride.

    Uber deployed Ripley routinely as recently as late 2016, including during government raids in Amsterdam, Brussels, Hong Kong, and Paris, say the people with knowledge of the matter. The tool was developed in coordination with Uber’s security and legal departments, the people say. The heads of both departments, Joe Sullivan and Salle Yoo, left the company last year. Neither responded to requests for comment.

    Ripley’s roots date to March 2015, when police stormed Uber’s Brussels office, say people with knowledge of the event. The Belgian authorities, which accused Uber of operating without proper licenses, gained access to the company’s payments system and financial documents as well as driver and employee information. A court order forced Uber to shut down its unlicensed service later that year. Following that raid and another in Paris the same week, Yoo, then Uber’s general counsel, directed her staff to install a standard encryption service and log off computers after 60 seconds of inactivity. She also proposed testing an app to counter raids. Workers in Uber’s IT department were soon tasked with creating a system to keep internal records hidden from intruders entering any of its hundreds of foreign offices. They used software from Twilio Inc. to page staffers who would trigger the lockdown.

    The security team, which housed many of Uber’s most controversial programs, took over Ripley from the IT department in 2016. In a letter shared with U.S. attorneys and made public in a trade-secrets lawsuit against Uber, Richard Jacobs, a former Uber manager, accused the security group of spying on government officials and rivals. Jacobs’s letter makes an oblique reference to a program for impeding police raids. A 2016 wrongful-dismissal lawsuit by Samuel Spangenberg, another Uber manager, also references its use during the May 2015 tax authority raid in Montreal.

    The three people with knowledge of the program say they believe Ripley’s use was justified in some cases because police outside the U.S. didn’t always come with warrants or relied on broad orders to conduct fishing expeditions. But the program was a closely guarded secret. Its existence was unknown even to many workers in the Uber offices being raided. Some were bewildered and distressed when law enforcement ordered them to log on to their computers and they were unable to do so, two of the people say.

    Later versions of Ripley gave Uber the ability to selectively provide information to government agencies that searched the company’s foreign offices. At the direction of company lawyers, security engineers could select which information to share with officials who had warrants to access Uber’s systems, the people say.

    Another option was contemplated for times when Uber wanted to be less transparent. In 2016 the security team began working on software called uLocker. An early prototype could present a dummy version of a typical login screen to police or other unwanted eyes, the people say. But Uber says no dummy-desktop function was ever implemented or used, and that the current version of uLocker doesn’t include that capability. The project is overseen by John Flynn, Uber’s chief information security officer.

      BOTTOM LINE – From San Francisco, Uber routinely protected foreign offices from police raids by rendering computers unusable, often shielding evidence from warranted officials.

      Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/uber-s-secret-tool-for-keeping-the-cops-in-the-dark

      The Strange Case of the Look-Alike Credit Cards

      The Strange Case of the Look-Alike Credit Cards

      by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

      First National Bank of Marin was a small Las Vegas lender with an image problem. Federal investigators accused it of issuing credit cards to strapped consumers, then piling on so many fees and obligations that some new clients couldn’t buy a sandwich without hitting their credit limit. But by 2006, it had settled the claims and was ready to expand. It changed its name to Credit One Bank and adopted a new logo, placing the company’s signature swoosh above its name, arcing leftward from the letter O.

      Source: Credit One Bank

      If that looks familiar, there’s a good reason. In 2008, credit-card titan Capital One Financial Corp. unveiled an almost identical insignia, adding a swoosh that arced leftward from the letter O.

      Source: Capital One Financial Corp.

      And so began the improbable story of how one of the top U.S. card lenders—admired in the industry for its innovative marketing—gave an accidental advertising boost to a then-obscure rival. That company would soon take off, reshaping the competitive landscape for subprime lending to U.S. consumers.

      To outsiders, it looked like a classic branding trick: an underdog trying to mimic the look of an established company, hoping new customers wouldn’t notice. Except Credit One had adopted the logo first. “We had already invested heavily in the rebranding, and then their thing popped up,” says Sam Dommer, Credit One’s longtime chief marketing officer. “It would have been easier for them to change, but I think they were far down the road with their investment.” A Capital One spokesman declined to comment.

      As the twin logos first emerged, lawyers on both sides bristled, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The companies let it be. In the years that followed, Capital One poured more than $13 billion into marketing, flooding televisions with its quirky “What’s in Your Wallet?” commercials, sponsoring music festivals and athletics, and stuffing mailboxes with enticements. Its business soared. And so did Credit One’s.

      Nowadays, if you tarnish your FICO score and need an all-purpose credit card, chances are good that you’ll sign up with one of those two companies. By the end of last year, Capital One had issued more than 32 million cards to consumers with FICO scores below 660, according to data from the Nilson Report, an industry publication, and Capital One filings. Credit One, which largely caters to subprime borrowers, has issued 9.7 million, according to Nilson.

      Subprime is such a big part of American lending that even among all types of issuers of Visa- and Mastercard-branded cards, Credit One now ranks ninth—up from 25th place in 2005. This year, J.D. Power and Associates decided the company is big enough to include in an annual customer-satisfaction ranking for the industry. It came in last. 

      Credit One attributes its growth to a data-driven approach to identifying and luring new customers. It also helped that many banks pulled back from subprime lending after the 2008 financial crisis, opening the way for a more aggressive pitch to win market share. So how important was a mere logo? Marketing consultants say the Vegas company hit the jackpot.

      “Capital One has spent years building up a very powerful brand image behind that identity,” says Allen Adamson, founder of Brand Simple Consulting. “I suspect a majority of their customers are unclear that they’re not one and the same company.” The similar looks sometimes befuddle consumers, who vent online about mix-ups. “I called Capital One and they told me I didn’t have an account with them and to look at the card,” one person wrote on consumeraffairs.com, a consumer complaint website where dozens of Credit One users have said they thought they were signing up with the bigger lender. 

      Credit One is taking some steps to differentiate itself. Last year, it unveiled the Credit One Nascar credit card—its first nationwide co-branding deal. In November, it became the main sponsor for driver Kyle Larson, one of the sport’s rising young stars. The company is also moving out of its longtime home, a low-profile building tucked between Las Vegas’s main airport and Interstate 215. This month, it’s opening a new 152,000-square-foot headquarters eight miles to the west, with sweeping views of the Red Rock Canyon mountains. The new offices take cues from Silicon Valley, with conference tables resembling ping pong tables.

      The building also will house the company’s data center, one of the largest in the Southwest. Credit One says it pores over information on its cardholders and their transactions to identify new groups of people likely to respond to its ads and pay their bills. Several times a week, it applies those models to Experian Plc’s database of 220 million U.S. consumers, scoring potential customers. Then the mailers go out. “When we engage in a direct-mail campaign or any kind of marketing initiative, we’re not crossing our fingers, hoping it works,” Dommer says. “All these are based on statistical certainties.”

      Last year, Credit One’s outstanding credit-card loans jumped 29 percent to $4.8 billion, making it the fastest-growing card provider among the nation’s 15 largest, according to the Nilson Report. Because the company is privately owned, it isn’t required to report how much it earns, and regulatory documents provide only a partial picture. A filing to the Federal Reserve, for example, shows it generated $427 million in income from fees including servicing and credit-protection charges during this year’s first nine months. It is hard to compare this with what the company earns on interest: The form lists only $1.2 million in interest income because the firm holds many loans outside its banking unit. A spokeswoman did not elaborate.

      Credit One is owned by Sherman Financial Group, which also runs one of the largest consumer-debt buyers in the country. When Credit One borrowers don’t pay their balances, the company sells those obligations at discounted prices to Sherman and other debt collectors.

      The company has a history of getting into trouble over fees. Once owned by car dealer Kjell Qvale, Bank of Marin moved from California to Vegas in the late 1990s. In 2001, to settle an investigation by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the company promised to set aside $4 million to repay customers who cancelled their cards after realizing fees and a security deposit would leave them with little or no credit to make purchases. In 2004, it agreed to set aside $10 million for allegedly encouraging people to charge security deposits to new cards, leaving some with less than $3 in available credit. In both cases, the bank didn't admit wrongdoing.

      Consumers still hate the lender’s fees, often citing them in forums. Others grumble about waiting on hold, only to reach customer-service agents who aren’t prepared to help resolve issues. While fees can vary among cards, one of the company’s Platinum Visa cards comes with an annual membership fee of $75 for the first year, billed upfront, even on cards that come with credit limits of a couple hundred dollars. On some cards, the company offers no grace period, meaning that as soon as a purchase posts to a cardholder’s account, it begins accruing interest.

      Jim Miller, senior director of the banking practice at J.D. Power, says Credit One’s poor showing in this year’s survey wasn’t a surprise, given that it works with people at the bottom of the credit spectrum. He says lenders in that market charge heftier fees and rates to offset potential losses. “Customers are less satisfied when they pay interest and don’t accrue much in rewards,” no matter who the issuer is, Miller says. “So if you have more of those customers in your portfolio, you would tend to have lower satisfaction.” And the fees and rates that Credit One charges aren’t “really unusual in the subprime category for an unsecured card,” says Beverly Harzog, a consumer advocate who’s written a book on paying off credit-card balances. “This is pretty much what you need to expect.”

      Dommer says Credit One’s own surveys show it has above-average net-promoter scores—a measure of how willing clients are to recommend its products to other people. The company  also points to reviews of its mobile app, which outrank those of American Express Co., the leader of this year’s J.D. Power rankings. Credit One is dedicated to improving, Dommer says. Whenever clients point out a problem, managers take note, meet, and figure out how to prevent it from happening again. “Your card-member relationship is everything,” he says. “And if we screw that up, then we’re in big trouble.”

        BOTTOM LINE – Credit One has come out of nowhere to become a big player in subprime credit card lending. A lucky coincidence in logos may have helped.

        Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/the-strange-case-of-the-look-alike-credit-cards

        Uber Losing Battle in London After Regulator Revokes License

        Uber Losing Battle in London After Regulator Revokes License

        by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

        Uber Technologies Inc. was struck with a stunning rebuke in London, where regulators revoked its license to operate and chastised its corporate culture, adding to the expansive list of controversies facing the beleaguered ride-hailing company. 

        London is one of Uber’s largest and most lucrative markets, with 40,000 drivers and 3.5 million people who use the app once every 90 days. The broadside is a striking move against the free-wheeling business practices that contributed to the ouster of former chief executive officer Travis Kalanick. The company is also grappling with allegations of sexual harassment, labor-rights abuses, skirting regulation, bribery of government officials and a lawsuit accusing it of stealing self-driving car technology.

        Transportation authorities in London concluded Uber isn’t “fit and proper to hold a private hire operator license.” The agency cited a failure to do proper background checks on drivers, report crimes and a program called “Greyball” used to avoid regulators.

        The company has 21 days to appeal and can continue to operate during the appeal process. “We intend to immediately challenge this in the courts,” said Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber in London.

        Uber has faced resistance in markets from Paris to the Philippines, but London’s ruling is one of the most threatening to date. The decision pits the popularity of the company among millions of customers, against regulators and taxi drivers who want tighter controls.

        The outcome also has financial implications for Uber at a time when its backers are in talks for a potential stake from SoftBank Group Corp. and others investors of as much $12 billion. Uber has been valued at about $70 billion.

        QuickTake Q&A: Uber Heads to Court Over London License

        As Uber has upended the global transportation industry, it has also invited controversy. Authorities faulted Uber earlier this year for allowing a London driver who had sexually assaulted a rider to get back on the road. 

        Uber’s “approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility,” the regulator, Transport for London, said in a statement.

        The decision was cheered by the city’s traditional black cab industry, which has been hurt by the proliferation of Uber drivers and has aggressively pushed for tighter regulation of the San Francisco-based ride-hailing service. Taxi drivers, many of whom now use the rival apps Gett and MyTaxi, must go through extensive testing before receiving a license, while Uber drivers have fewer requirements.

        “All companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standards we expect,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan said in a statement. “Providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security.”

        Uber cars have filled London streets since its arrival in the British capital in 2012, identifiable by the smartphones drivers keep holstered to their windshield. 

        While its corporate image has taken a hit in recent months, city officials are now risking a backlash from customers who find it’s often cheaper and more convenient than hailing a black cab. In a previous showdown with New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, Uber lobbied its customers to fight proposed restrictions.

        Uber has already begun borrowing pages from that playbook. Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, head of Uber’s Europe region, laid out a plan to mobilize supporters through email and social media, and cultivate new allies in politics and business while it drafts a legal challenge, according to an email to staff obtained by Bloomberg. He also said Uber is pushing a Twitter campaign, #SaveYourUber, and an online petition, which gathered more than 300,000 signatories in just a few hours.

        “As the date for renewal approached, our team prepared for all scenarios,” Gore-Coty wrote. “While the appeal process could take several months, we are ready to engage in a vigorous legal defense as I know we play by the rules.”

        London’s decision adds to the problems facing Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s new CEO, who is juggling a host of inherited controversies. Khosrowshahi wrote in a tweet that Uber is “far from perfect” but asked the city to work with the company “to make things right.”

        “No company can behave like it’s above the law, and that includes Uber,” said Maria Ludkin, legal director of GMB, the U.K.’s drivers union. “No doubt other major cities will be looking at this decision and considering Uber’s future on their own streets.”

        Uber disputed the allegations made by regulators. The company said it conducts thorough background checks of drivers and had made several changes to improve safety. The company also said the Greyball program had never been in the U.K. “for the purposes cited by TfL.”

        “By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice,” said Elvidge, the Uber manager in London. “If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport.”

        Some are already coming to the defense of Uber. “It’s not in the interests of our economy, people in London and in this case, drivers, to restrict new products and services,” said Tom Thackray, director at the Confederation of British Industry.

        Although the conclusion of the ruling may take some time to play out in the U.K. courts, rivals are already circling Uber users. Daimler AG-owned Mytaxi, a black cab hailing app, was offering half-off fares on Friday.

          Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-22/london-authority-revokes-uber-s-private-hire-license