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Police Drop Charges Filed Against 19-Year-Old Archivist For Downloading FOIA Releases (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report form Techdirt: Last month, [...] an unnamed 19-year-old was facing criminal charges for downloading publicly-available documents from a government Freedom of Information portal. The teen had written a script to fetch all available documents from the Nova Scotia's government FOI site -- a script that did nothing more than increment digits at the end of the URL to find everything that had been uploaded by the government. The government screwed up. It uploaded documents to the publicly-accessible server that hadn't been redacted yet. It was a very small percentage of the total haul -- 250 of the 7,000 docs obtained -- but the government made a very big deal out of it after discovering they had been accessed.
Fortunately, Nova Scotia law enforcement has decided there's nothing to pursue in this case: "In an email to CBC News, Halifax police Supt. Jim Perrin did not mention what kind of information police were given from the province, but he said it was a 'high-profile case that potentially impacted many Nova Scotians.' 'As the investigation evolved, we have determined that the 19-year-old who was arrested on April 11 did not have intent to commit a criminal offense by accessing the information,' Perrin said in the email."
Fortunately, Nova Scotia law enforcement has decided there's nothing to pursue in this case: "In an email to CBC News, Halifax police Supt. Jim Perrin did not mention what kind of information police were given from the province, but he said it was a 'high-profile case that potentially impacted many Nova Scotians.' 'As the investigation evolved, we have determined that the 19-year-old who was arrested on April 11 did not have intent to commit a criminal offense by accessing the information,' Perrin said in the email."
Whether you choose to accept it or not, the NRA represents a significant block of grassroots voters.
The NRA represents gun industry interests under the guise of pretending to be a grassroots interest organization. This didn't used to be true but it is unquestionably true today. While it is true that there is a large block of voters who are members and who care strongly about 2nd amendment rights, the NRA is only indirectly represents their voice on the issue at this point. The organization has been co-opted by corporations to advocate primarily for them. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing I leave up to you but don't be mislead into misunderstanding where the money in the NRA comes from or what strings are attached.
It is entirely funded by its members and represents a large voting block.
The NRA is decidedly NOT "entirely funded by its members". Significantly less than half of the NRA's money comes from program fees and membership dues. This is not conjecture - it is a known fact. Most of the NRA revenue comes from corporations with financial interests in selling firearms and related products. The NRA is de-facto the lobbying organization for the gun industry. It hasn't been a grassroots organization for several decades though it pretends to be one as there is political value in maintaining that fig leaf of a lie. Sort of like the NCAA pretending to care about "amateurism" and "student athletes" while they rake in literally billions in revenue for the colleges.