Half of the joke was probably the Cupertino city council being jealous of Google providing free wifi for Mountain View.
Jobs has a good point about "paying taxes." In the last few years, a lot of people in the Bay Area outside tech are saying things like "why doesn't tech do more to build more housing." They pay taxes, and tech workers living in the cities are paying income and property taxes. The communities should be asking themselves why they, themselves, aren't building more housing. What did they think these added tax dollars should be going it?
When the planning commission of a city likens housing advocacy to "an onslaught of anarchists and YIMBY Neoliberal fascists", rational process has pretty much broken down.
Places like Japan have negative birthrates and restrictive immigration policies.
NIMBYism is a reaction to a sudden influx of newcomers to an area. As such, hot remote work spots like Bend, OR are very likely experiencing a similar NIMBYist mindset.
Tokyo has continuous growth, and almost no NIMBYism. While Japan as a whole has negative birthrates and restrictive immigration policies, Tokyo has neither.
The comment you’re responding to is a real, important difference between Japan’s response to growth (in the Tokyo area) and other cities and regions’ responses to growth. Handwaving it doesn’t help.
I'm curious what you think is the difference between Japan's response to growth versus other places. Given the fact that Japan zones on a federal vs local level, this already reduces the potential of NIMBYists blocking new development. However this does not mean that NIMBYism does not exist there.
"We pay our taxes" sounds a bit disingenuous from a company that is famous for aggressively offshoring its profits to avoid paying US and California taxes, the latter of which would directly contribute to local housing programs.
Normally, I'd say that actually cheats the federal government out of tax revenue (for now), but Apple actually is incorporated in California, not Delaware, and California has various corporate taxes.
That said, it doesn't make sense for the global profits of a company like Apple to get taxed in California or Cupertino. The accounting isn't necessarily easy, but it makes more sense to tax where was money was made (which is murky and complicated) than to funnel it all to the HQ; Apple is more than just a spaceship in one city.
This isn't to say Apple isn't doing things to avoid paying taxes, either. My point is that using corporate taxes of a company with global sales to solve local issues doesn't make sense.
Apple's marketing is that the money is made in California. Designed by Apple in California has long appeared as a feel good on their products that are assembled overseas.
I would point you to all that cash sitting offshore that they can't repatriate back to the US, and can't seem to find productive use for in the countries where it sits. That is the direct result of tax planning. I haven't been keeping up with the cases, but I know Amazon won, and Coca-cola just lost, not sure where Apple's cases are in tax court. Hopefully they aren't an EY audit/tax client.
Apple's effective worldwide tax rate is ~25%, which is actually slightly higher than other US multinationals. That is also not counting taxes on income/capital gains paid by California employees, which are obviously pretty sizable.
"Apple’s effective U.S. federal income tax rate was just 7.3% in 2011. Apple claimed its tax rate in 2011 was 24.2%, one-third less than the official tax rate of 35%. But the Senate subcommittee found its rate was no more than 20.1%, allowing "Apple to claim credit for $3 billion of deferred taxes on overseas income that are not owed until the profits are brought back to the United States. Since Apple has said that is not likely to happen, its effective tax rate in 2011 was just 7.3% – $2.5 billion in taxes actually paid against $34.2 billion of income before taxes. [Exhibit 1a, pp. 38-39]"[0]
Sure it does -- Apple's effective worldwide tax rate is ~25%. Like every US multinational, Apple structure themselves to optimize their tax burden, but it's not like they "have a history of not paying taxes".
Thank you for posting. This is exactly what I thought about. Anyone other than Steve probably would have said something like “that’s something we can look into and explore.” Leave it to Steve to be like “nah. We pay our taxes. That’s good.”
Steve: I'm a simpleton I've always had this view that we pay taxes and the city should do
those things. That's why we pay taxes. Now if we can get out of paying taxes I'll be glad to put up Wi-Fi.
> Steve: I'm a simpleton I've always had this view that we pay taxes and the city should do those things. That's why we pay taxes. Now if we can get out of paying taxes I'll be glad to put up Wi-Fi.
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It was probably more "even a broken clock is right twice a day" than a principled stand. He was notoriously cheap. He avoided paying child support for a long time, short-changed Wozniak, etc. [1]
After working there for a bit the most amazing story I heard is that he would lease a new car every six months so that he wouldnt need to get a plate put on it so he could park in the handicap spot without getting ticketed.
1) How does not having a plate let you park in the handicapped space? The regulation is probably written such that you are required to have the handicapped plate or placard, and displaying no plate would be probable cause here.
2) Why not just have Apple reserve a parking space for the CEO or Steve Jobs outright? There's no regulations against reserving parking spaces in such a manner that I'm aware of.
3) Why is there so much worship in the tech industry of complete assholes like this?
I thought the handicapped spot story and the every-six-months-new-car-for-no-plates story were separate. Steve didn't want a license plate on his car because he thought it messed up the aesthetics. He was also a jerk and parked in the handicapped spot because he could.
They’ve always been separate stories to me too and I’ve heard the same “aesthetics” point a bunch too (which doesn’t make it “true”, but sounds plausible anyway).
I was always under the impression this was less about being cheap, but more about being really idiosyncratic about the way license plates look on cars.
Leasing a new car every 6 months is not cheap. It literally costs 6x as much as leasing the exact same car every 3 years (the industry norm).
I’m sure you’re joking, but I think Jobs was referring to property taxes. I’m not sure how much other tax they could contribute to a local town (sales tax is probably much less than the property tax).
I recognize the clever point. Investigations in cases such as these will gather evidence to bring to a grand jury, which will issue indictment. So investigation would either proceed to either the grand jury trial, or be abandoned due to lack of evidence. In the case of jokes, it would be the latter, and experienced offices would recognize this early, perhaps before beginning, and focus on other cases.
I'm not sure why people are treating this like it's bribery.
Free wifi would be something that inures to the benefit of the city / jurisdiction, not primarily to the individual decisionmakers or their department. It may not be something legitimate that they can make planning approval dependent upon, but an elected body trying to negotiate something that sweetens the deal for their electorate is completely legitimate.
Indeed, back before California ended development controls, my city's planning department effectively ran a huge reverse auction, picking the housing developments that would make the biggest street and park improvements in excess of the statutory minimums to authorize for each year's development quota. (A bit more complicated than that: various ways that the development exceeded building code or had additional amenities also counted for points in the "competition").
Can't believe all the Apple apologists here. Bribing public officials is a crime, period. It isn't an "unfortunate situation" or anything else that people are calling it. It also doesn't matter who initiated the bribe. The employee, and potentially the company itself, absolutely need to be charged and prosecuted for it.
A private citizen of limited means paying a bribe is somehow reasonable because there's a huge power imbalance.
Refusing to pay a bribe is also a refusal to participate in a racket. Local police can be extremely petty and extremely violent [1]. If a police officer told me he'd let me off for a bribe, I would probably pay it. I wouldn't be paying to get what I want. Rather, I would be paying to avoid the appearance that I disapprove of the bribery (and the possibility of resulting reprisal).
E: And, of course, I would report that bribe as soon as it was safe to do so. And, of course, I'm referring to a scenario where I, as an individual private citizen, am told to pay money to a person with a gun who controls my immediate safety... which, importantly, brings us to the second half of this comment:
But this isn't that.
A high-level exec at one of the world's most powerful companies paying off a local LEO for a permit instead of, IDK, contacting the State or the Feds, is beyond inexplicable.
> A high-level exec at one of the world's most powerful companies paying off a local LEO for a permit instead of, IDK, contacting the State or the Feds, is beyond inexplicable.
The problem is that, at least in many jurisdictions, gun permits basically only exist as a means for police to solicit bribes. There's literally an entire industry of people whose job is bribing police departments to get gun permits. C.f.: https://www.google.com/search?q=nyc+concealed+carry+bribes
This sort of thing is the result of a permitting policy called may-issue. Basically it means the party that issues permits, usually the local sheriff or police department, can deny a concealed carry application for any reason. States adopt this policy as a way of punting CC policy making down to the local level.
In practice the may-issue policy has repeatedly proven to be an irresistible opportunity for graft. Despite this some states continue to maintain may-issue policies, including California and New York.
This is exactly right! When there's no clear set of criteria for a permit and people get denied for this or that or maybe no reason at all. Just try getting a (unrestricted) LTC in Boston, near impossible -- unless you "have friends". This is how LTCs (License To Carry) work in Massachusetts, it's city by city dependent on the Chief of Police.
The criteria should be clear and contestable in court. Like it or not, it's a constitutional right and the law should be "shall issue" (unless good reason not to -- and I'm all for reasonable "good reasons not to").
I say this as a big proponent of the right to self defense on a personal level, the current legal view is that, gun possession in the public square is not a right, it is a privilege, one that can be revoked as seen fit by the government. What is a right, is to keep and bear arms, this means one can maintain possession of their arms without fear of confiscation on their personal property or property in which they have expressed approval of the private owner.
This is why even as far back as the early 1800's it was not uncommon for local sheriff's to mandate a leave your guns at the sheriffs post at the edge of town policies. Yet, the local barkeep could still have a shotgun under the counter. Town was the public square, where the local bar, while a public establishment, was a private proprietorship.
Many of these type of rights extend from the pre-US castle doctrine laws which summed up shortly basically conferred the concept, that a person is king of their castle, the states rights should be significantly curtailed, when it comes to a personal private property. More modern day utilization tends to just boil it down to self defence, in ones private property, but historically it held a view which helped shape many of the personal liberties that were incorporated into the Bill of Rights.
Since nearly the foundation of the USA public possession has always been seen as a privilege extended by the state. In earlier times this was generally pathwork local law and the local sheriff view of guns carried in their town. Now it is generally more formalized via a state based licencing scheme.
A good read on rulings that imply it is a privilege:
Converse to the last paragraph though is that while precedence and the lack of challenges early on to public restriction lead to the concept of public possession being a privilege, the subject is now in modern day being battled out in the courts, and there have been some rulings ignoring history policy precedence
With all that being said, may issue is fraught with corruption and unnecessarily restrictive, in my state we have a shall issue and it works well, especially coupled with our strong castle doctrine laws. So well, that at the entry of my state an anti-gun group put up a billboard that said "Visitor's Warning - Florida residents can use deadly force". The billboards actually has the opposite effect than the group had intended so they removed them.
I would be a proponent of each state going to a shall issue system and extending the public privilege to a national recognition and reciprocity system, much like the state's driver licence systems are. That being said, it's fairly consistent that the state has almost since the beginning seen public possession as a privilege extended and not an absolute right.
A good read on the subject and precedence for public gun carry, from a purely historic perspective is this article:
on a completely tangential rant, class 3 FFL transfers, require a sheriff's signature and are just as rife with corruption and cronyism. I used to live in a county where the local sheriff was very vocal about the fact that he would not sign for class 3's, yet every deputy or buddy, cousin or uncle had one. I would love to see the local law enforcement sign off requirement, for Class 3 be removed and rather just make it a duty to inform local law enforcement that one is in possession of a class 3.
> gun possession in the public square is not a right, it is a privilege, one that can be revoked as seen fit by the government.
Right or privilege, it should not be conditioned by bribes. And when a LEO is involved in a bribery case their punishment should start at several times that of the other (non-authority) person because it seems like that right/privilege comes at the end of extortion.
No argument there, I am not a fan of may issue, just ban public carry for everyone in those states and let the chips fall, but the connected don't like it when their bodyguards can't carry guns. In essence it is a ban for only a certain class of people.
As a matter of principle, I will contest any attempt to frame the right to carry on one's person a weapon into the same vein as a driver's license. It is an explicitly granted right. If you look at how traffic enforcement has worked out (in spite of the fact we still play it up as a privilege), senior citizens and the disabled are still at a major disadvantage in mobility in their more enfeebled years, and no semblance of lessening of the regulations of any option to move around ever becomes apparent. It is also utilized as a significant source of revenue generation as particularly notorious small towns are well known for changing up speed limits ob chunks of major roads they straddle just for the bump in revenue.
It is also notable, that gun control also fell under that same set of "State's rights" contributing to the original Civil War, and to hell with the well soap boxed dolts who insist that the only issue the Civil War was predicated on was Slavery. It wasn't. It was only indirectly so because the framework for expansion of Slavery was seen as falling under the banner of State's rights at the time, just as much as gun control itself was also seen as falling under State's rights. It's not a dog-whistle, it's what it bloody was.
Tangent aside, it basically boils down to the fundamental division of "rural v. Urban" in the United States, and to be frank, I side with the ruralites. Just because a bunch of people gather together in one place should not generate some emergent privilege that everyone loses an explicitly granted right except law enforcement. Period. Gun control almost universally arises out of some group being uncomfortable with another group having guns, and the group that's uncomfortable tends to be fine and dandy letting the authorities strut around with them, and would be unlikely to carry anyway; much like how pro public-transit folk seem to be more than okay with onerous vehicle regulation, but balk when the same laws or tenets are applied to them. Better to just not throw anyone under the bus at all.
Call me a yokel if you want. I've seen too much flung in the way of wrapping up other folk's rights in my lifetime in the name of public safety with no signs of a return in sight. Until I see some loosening up, or some honest give and take, I"m in the "not one more inch" camp.
I am not your opposition on this, just stating how the law currently looks at it, and citing the precedence that has been cited before, specifically gun control in the wild west. That being said, I am OK with it being a privilege if it were a universal shall issue. I would prefer that it be decided that it is a universal right, but I am ok with either outcome. I am not a fan of may issue as it tends to be a privilege that only well the privileged gets to enjoy.
With all that being said, I see magazine capacities, foregrip bans, scary gun cause it is plastic and black and those kind of rulings as a direct affront to the 2A because they apply to stuff in my home, I would be a felon if I lived in those states, literally one day I would be legal and the next I am a felon. With no recourse, even the Automatic Weapons Ban in the 80's allowed for the FFL 3 classification and the tax stamp to keep the weapons one already owned and while I am not advocating for a grandfathering of reasonable capacity magazines, and black rifles I am citing that in the AWB there was at least a path to keep your existing stuff legal.
You seem much more level headed and well informed than most of the people arguing gun ownership on either side of the issue. I'd just like to point out a small thing, that by calling the automatic weapons ban in the 80's the "AWB" you are conflating terms between the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 (known as FOPA) and the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994 (known as the AWB). People are generally confused between the legal definitions of "automatic weapon" and "assault weapon". I find it useful to be very specific about which you are discussing to avoid confusion and petty arguments about terminology that can keep the discussion from moving forward.
You are right I got my facts confused, meant to say fully automatic weapons ban. I apologize for the misinformation, I misspoke on automatic/fully automatic and I know that is a huge issue of contention so it was an unacceptable slip, as well I should have looked up the actual laws name. Again I apologize for misleading information and thank you for clarifying the information for people.
I believe that I am level headed (at least I like to believe that I am), because I am first and foremost a pacifist but I acknowledge the logic that if someone is trying to harm you, you have a right to not be harmed. I respect devout pacifist and totally understand their logic, that the principle of pacifism is more important to them than self defense because violence flows from a few wells, fear/insecurity, despair/desperation, anger and jealousy. They believe to neutralize violence you are not violent against those that are in one of those states, rather one should be merciful on their them due to their torment, and that mercy is show in love for them and all people. I honestly admire that level of pacifism but don't know if I can ever get there, I get it, I accept that these are the primary drivers of violence but it's hard to be that principled and understanding while standing down the barrel of a gun. As VanZant so aptly put it in "gimme 3 steps", "Well it ain't no fun staring straight down a 44". I may be able to in a situation involving only myself, but with my wife and kids I just cannot see myself getting there. Thus I only carry a firearm when I am with my family. I used to be anti-handgun when I was young and would have been fine with a ban on them. It was not until later in life that I realized that people will literally, pick up a stick and kill someone else, so while handguns primary purpose is human on human violence, I realize that it is just an object and ascribing the violence to the object only blurs what we all need to fix as humans and that is man's inhumanity to man.
That is the questions being proposed, and to be honest I am a 2A person, I would like it to mean bare in public for non criminals but that is not the current ruling or historic rulings by the supreme court. As it sets bare means you can pull out your gun and use it as part of a state sanctioned militia (don't really exist anymore) or as the most recent ruling specified, in self defense. What is not "legally" clear is "where". Well it is legally clear, the only place right now you have the right is on your private property, or property you have been given permission to possess a weapon on. In states if you have a CCW or they have other carry laws, you are afforded the privilege of being able to bare in public and common property with some restrictions. Again this is not my definition, this is what they have ruled.
And that is the current arguments being made, as their is the implication that by the preamble about the state needing the people to be armed to supply the militias if needed, that if they were called into the militia they would almost certainly not be baring arms on their property. We also have to take into account history, and historically the government did not strictly control open lands they were considered open lands or communal so pre-1900's carry laws being what they where, generally only applied to entering and leaving town, pretty much everywhere else no one has beef with someone having a gun. Times have changed, federal uninhabited land is shut off from the people for the most part and rights generally don't extend there anymore, as well town is a whole lot bigger now. These are arguments being made in support that the framers actually meant the right was "in public"
It's not a matter of what I think it means, it's a matter of what the supreme court thinks it means. So far they have been a mixed bag, the inherent self defense ruling was good but honestly should have been a no brainer. Given that one of the founding fathers was killed in a dual, and duals up until the 1900's where pretty much considered mutual self defense.
I think the ninth court hosed the decision on the Federal Assault Weapons Ban as this directly affected guns of similar features but different looks one could own or features that could be placed on guns. None of that really bothered me as a Browning BAR 300 win-mag with a modified magazine for high capacity would absolutely dominate the battlefield, but the key there is the precedent because by being able to ban pieces of the gun (because they only recognize the receiver as the legal gun), they have set the path for the current bans on magazine capacity and that is concerning because if it stands based on precedent, the 7 round magazines restriction, can legally be reduced to 1 round magazines, in effect only legalizing single shot weapons and while I know in the movies and video games, everyone dies from the first shot, the reality is a higher percentage of people survive shoutouts than die from them, even after receiving multiple gunshot wounds.
"This is why even as far back as the early 1800's it was not uncommon for local sheriff's to mandate a leave your guns at the sheriffs post at the edge of town policies. Yet, the local barkeep could still have a shotgun under the counter. Town was the public square, where the local bar, while a public establishment, was a private proprietorship."
I wish people had a better sense of this earlier social arrangement.
It was the most conservative of approaches to gun possession and was imposed by the town elders who wanted to regulate and order behavior in the public sphere.
Now we find ourselves in bizarro world where firearms politics are exactly flipped: a free wheeling "let-do" policy is championed by "conservatives" and a highly regulated policy is championed by "liberals".
In reality, a historical perspective shows us that the ownership of modern weapons by average citizens is off the charts liberal. That is absolutely where it sits on a political spectrum of rights. It is, historically, the prerogative of the most conservative and reactionary interests to prohibit/restrict arms.
All that to say: I prefer the conservative approach. I, too, was very young once and very excited to exercise my rights and privileges ... I open-carried regularly, had a CCW, etc., and the result was a lot of discomfort and bad feelings. Carrying a firearm is a provocative act and it makes sense that conservative actors in a community would try to keep that at bay.
I wish people had a better sense of this earlier social arrangement.
I think some of that has to do with the everreal presence of government in today's day and age. In the wild west, well it was the wild west. Other than the long arm of the law there was very little government or regulation, people did not feel the need that the founding fathers did. In all reality they were pretty free.
Contrast that with today and we have moved more and more issues to the federal level, we have pretty much abandoned the republic for an empire and now we are pushing social issues and regulation to a federal level. This does not end well, it never has.
When we has 50 strong independent governments that had more to do with peoples day to day lives and the federal government just stepped into the states business or rights issues, people had 50 shots at finding a representative government. Not so today, as more and more, the states (governmentally) look like cookie cutters of one another. I think this has set the "all or nothing", "I am not giving one inch" mentality that pervades discussion today, on almost every subject and it is coming from both sides. At a certain point, one side or the other is going to believe they need to stand up to federal government, because they no longer have a representative government and the ones that have guns tend to be of the mentality that those chickens are coming home to roost for their side.
The thing is that liberalism is now basically the only mainstream political philosophy in western countries. "Conservatives" and "liberals" are arguing over different aspects of liberalism.
Sorry, I caught this comment late, but I agree I consider myself an enlightenment era liberal. Most people today peg me on the conservative spectrum, which is not true both parties have been in lock step on the real issues and squabbling it out on "emotional" issues. This is the reason that Clinton doubled down on Regan's/Big Bush's foreign policy and Little bush -> Obama progressed similar domestic controls. They honestly don't fight about anything they care about, just trigger issues, like sectional rights, the second amendment, abortion. I call them trigger issues, as they serve to divide people but honestly they could care less which way the chips fall on those issues which is why they never get resolved, but just keep getting stoked by the politicians.
To be honest even classic liberalism is dead, both are progressives when it comes to free trade, and unification of regulations across the globe.
> Like it or not, it's a constitutional right and the law should be "shall issue" (unless good reason not to -- and I'm all for reasonable "good reasons not to").
I believe the state of the law is that either concealed carry or open carry must be available. They can't both be may-issue, but one can be if the other isn't.
And I tend to agree that that's enough to satisfy the argument "it's a constitutional right".
>States adopt this policy as a way of punting CC policy making down to the local level.
They implement it as a wink and nod end run around the 14th amendment. The whole purpose is so that the states can play dumb when the towns "accidentally" install sheriffs/police chiefs who turn out to be racist and deny all the irish/blacks/latinos their rights.
No, this has American politics inside out. Red states are typically shall issue and blue states are typically may issue. To the extent that it's about introducing discretion as an means to accomplish a specific policy objective by stealth, that objective is gun control, not racism. An end run around the 2nd amendment, not the 14th.
Rights are for everyone. Government privileges always end up favoring particular groups for personal or political reasons. To demote a right to a privilege is to prefer this kind of favoritism over equal protection of the laws.
If "blue" states just didn't like guns, then they would simply ban all CCW permits. But they do like guns -- as long as the "right" kind of people have them and the guns look the "right" way.
Agreed that rights are for everyone, equally applied. It only has to do with it insofar as the conditions he mentions: red states tend to be shall issue, blue states tend to be may issue. If you doubt that's true, look at this map:
Now, that map is 18 years old and things may have changed a little since then, but I doubt it's changed much. This is why, as mentioned above, "may issue" is ripe for graft and corruption.
Army and Navy laws, Cruikshanks v. US, point systems for handguns, gun control in CA are irredeemably motivated by the fear of giving black men the means to defend themselves and their rights.
The 1967 Mulford Act originated in California with the goal of disarming BLack Panther Party members to restrict their (lawful) armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods.
It was introduced by a Republican, garnered bipartisan support, and enacted by (then governor) Ronald Reagan, with support from the NRA, with the espoused claim of "not harming a single honest citizen."
Arguably, 1967 is not today, but even to people like myself, who try my absolute damnedest to look for non-racial motives where others ascribe racially motivated malice, it looks like it was just designed to disenfranchise Black Panthers of the same 2A right as their white peers.
"Throughout the late 1960s, the militant black nationalist group used their understanding of the finer details of California’s gun laws to underscore their political statements about the subjugation of African-Americans. In 1967, 30 members of the Black Panthers protested on the steps of the California statehouse armed with .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns and .45-caliber pistols and announced, “The time has come for black people to arm themselves.”"
...
"The display so frightened politicians—including California governor Ronald Reagan—that it helped to pass the Mulford Act, a state bill prohibiting the open carry of loaded firearms, along with an addendum prohibiting loaded firearms in the state Capitol. The 1967 bill took California down the path to having some of the strictest gun laws in America and helped jumpstart a surge of national gun control restrictions."
Nearly all gun control measures in the US are rooted in racism. Some in Jim Crow, some in other eras -- but most of them were to ensure that the "wrong people"* couldn't protect themselves.
There's two answers to this, that both have a bit more nuance than I expect HN to be okay with.
One is that the AWB wasn't a racist provision of the overall bill. The gun control measure was not rooted in racism.
The second is that the bill as a whole wasn't "rooted" in racism. It certainly was a bad bill that had terrible consequences, and we should undue a lot of the damage it did, but the intent of the bill was, in part, to help the black community (and it had support from many people in the black community at the time). Horribly misguided in hindsight though.
The crime bill was designed to stop the "super predators" (to quote two democrat presidential candidates). It was a racist depiction of black men. It included a provision to outlaw scary black guns. You can't really divorce the two and pretend they're not related.
I call BS considering 99% of sheriffs are locally elected officials. They aren't "accidentally installed".
On a side note, the nice thing about sheriffs being elected is they don't have to listen to a god damn thing the state tells them to do (within confines of law obviously). They work directly for the people of their community.
Exactly. In NYC retired cops can't even get them, but bodyguards of the rich can. Not to mention all gun laws are infringements of the second amendment.
Why would retired police have special access to this sort of permit? The entire justification for it is that their dangerous job necessitates special privileges. That justification doesn’t apply to retired people. It may apply to actively employed private security, I don’t know. At least the reasoning makes sense, though.
If you've been an LEO for 10 years or more there's a federal law that allows you CCW anywhere (without a specific permit, just some ID that affirms your LEO status).
So much for equal rights, some I guess are more equal than others!
You are referring to the LEOSA Laws but even they are problematic as a former LEO could be arrested for having a magazine that holds more than 7 rounds.
Good question. I believe if anyone would be qualified for a permit, it would be them. Not that they should receive special access. The current system isn't based on qualification, but on privilege.
"The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (LEOSA) is a United States federal law, enacted in 2004, that allows two classes of persons—the 'qualified law enforcement officer' and the 'qualified retired or separated law enforcement officer'—to carry a concealed firearm in any jurisdiction in the United States, regardless of state or local laws, with certain exceptions."
The 2nd amendment does not require "need". The whole "may issue" concept is broken. Why doesn't California have a reciprocity policy like most other states? Not only can I not carry there, I cannot even bring the gun I have in my pocket right now into the state because it's not "approved" there.
The issue, is that we have not even got to the CCW "need" part. The issue is they are still battling out is: is public carry a right or a privilege? Currently the state views it legally as a privilege, per the last supreme court ruling, thus at the moment it does not fall under the purview of the 2nd amendment. And can be restricted not unlike a drivers licence as driving is a privilege. If that changes, then all states would be restricted from placing any requirements on the public possession of weapons. The problem is there is a lot of precedence dating back to at least the early 1800's on the restrictions of carrying in public. See my post above for details on the right vs privilege of public carry.
To be clear, the argument that is being played out is not on owning weapons, that has been decided. The argument that is being played out is does the spirit of the 2A incorporate a conferred right to carry in public. History and precedent dating back to the early 1800's says it does not. But there is that tricky "bare" part in the 2A as the spirit of the law would assume that they were not just protecting the right to "bare" them on one's own private property, given the pre clause about people needed to be armed so that the militias had a good supply of armed men, to ensure a free state.
On a related note, I see magazine restrictions as a more direct affront to the 2nd amendment. If they stand, then it can be abstracted to the amount (any amount) of ammunition can be restricted, which means the most restrictive states can and will outlaw everything, but single shot weapons to comply with the letter of the 2A rather than the spirit.
Restricting CCWs in a manner that would absolutely not fly for free speech, voting, or some other right isn't the issue. The issue is that some states have set up discretionary license issuing schemes that in practice violate the 14th amendment.
I don't disagree that the may-issue / shall-issue is a 14A as people are not getting equal protection under the law. My GP post was addressing the issue that many are under the impression that the 2A is interpreted as a universal right to have a gun anywhere at any time and that we are are still legally addressing that question. The 14A is important but secondary to that question. If it is decided that public carry is a 2A right then this 14A issue disappears but if it does not just like speech it is subject to reasonable restrictions, I cannot have a nuke, I cannot have bio weapons, I cannot have destructive devices, these don't make sense to extend to privileges. Public carry for the reason of self defense, does. As I said, if they go to a will-issue like FL and TX and universal reciprocity like the drivers licence system. I have no problem with the interpretation remaining that it is a privilege. It is not an unreasonable infringement on the 2A.
There are restrictions on free speech in public, I cannot yell fire into a crowd, I cannot incite a riot, I cannot tell people to vote for Jo Jorgensen while I am waiting in line to vote. Same with voting, I cannot vote twice even if my freedom of expression wants to.
This issue at hand is with those rights, they do not logically make sense to extend the spirit of the law via allowing some of those prohibited things via privileges.
This is why the 5th is such a good parallel, because I have an inherent freedom of movement but I don't have an inherent right to do it via the public roads, using an automobile. I have the privilege to do so via a licence. Now I can own an auto, I can offroad all over my property, that is my right but as soon as I hit the public pavement it becomes a privilege.
going back to the first, I can yell fire in my house all day long that is my right, but if I pick up the phone and utilize the public networks via dialing 911 and yell fire it is a very different situation. Again, it just does not make sense for the 1st to have some of it's limitations extended into privileges.
My overarching point is the 2A issue is not settled, many tend to take one stance or the other, but it is very much in flux, that will decide if the 14A issue is really a moot point.
That's not actually correct, it says "arms", not "some arms". If you take guidance from the "militia" part (possibly dubious, as it's generally interpreted as a preamble), a militia, in a current defensive war, would require anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets and missiles, at the very least. The problem with that is, in Heller, the militia is not really part of the test anymore. You might be able to argue against suitcase nukes, and they don't really have a defensive or targeted offensive purpose, and are only really useful for terrorism.
The clear intention of the second amendment is that the citizens have the right to have and carry around anything that would be needed to wage war at the highest level, in order to defend themselves from anyone including the government. Just as the founding fathers had very recently finished doing.
You are clearly correct. All constitutional scholars seem to agree on this. The founding fathers were very concerned about the possibility of future tyranny from government they were crafting. Ensuring that the citizens had guns, and limiting the power of the government were both ways to prevent such tyranny. It's a shame that more people do not understand the mindset of the founding fathers. (Not to imply that they all had a common view on this. There was much disagreement and negotiation.)
>Why would retired police have special access to this sort of permit?
Ask New Jersey. They explicitly allow retired LEO to have CCP. Meanwhile the law is so complicated and it's so unusual for even security guards to get a CCP that they sometimes get arrested anyway even with the permit: https://reason.com/2020/03/10/new-jersey-security-guard-arre...
A CEO I know (billion dollar revenues, multinational corporation ) tells me that:
1.The tricky bit is knowing the right amount of the bribe to pay.
Pay a Senator or a member of the House too little and you have made a powerful enemy.
Pay too much and they figure that they have a sucker that they can keep milking. And of course, you have also wasted a couple of extra million that could have been directed to another Senator....
2.The bribes are structured as payments via "lobbyists" or as "campaign donations"
3.In every country bribes are structured just well enough to evade local scrutiny.
Thus in Indonesia it is suitcases of cash.
In the US it is directorships of companies or well paying board jobs for children of politicians or investments in a politicians son-in-laws hedge fund.
In The Netherlands it's kind of the same I think. Politicians often end up with very lucrative private sector jobs at the end of their political careers. No doubt at least part of the jobs granted is payment for services rendered and part to get access to a political party.
In the EU it's the same situation as well. I mean this situation [0] with Neelie Kroes is quite suspect as well, isn't it?
>Taxi app Uber, which continues to battle regulatory clamp downs and legal confrontations in Europe, has appointed a former VP of the European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, to its public policy advisory board as it looks to grease the gearbox of its regional fortunes.
The ex-VP in question, former digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes — who stepped down from her role in the European Union’s executive body in November 2014, after serving a five-year term in digital policy (and some 10 years in all as a European Commissioner) — was a vocal supporter of Uber during her time in post.
Prior to leaving office in 2014, for example, Kroes loudly condemned a ban of Uber in Belgium, publicly proclaiming that “Uber is 100% welcome in Brussels and everywhere else as far as I am concerned.”
I believe this kind of corruption is endemic in the Western world. For most "normal" voters this kind of corruption is quite invisible I believe, in contrast to people being payed directly a suitcase of money.
This claim is not something you need a CEO friend to tell you. Anyone on Reddit's conspiracy theory boards could give you exactly the same message. (BTW it's interesting to note that in my limited experience high level execs are just people, and prone to the same foibles as other people too. They don't automatically have insight into all things.)
So, at least in that issue, people on Reddit's conspiracy theory boards are less gullible than you, and other people believing these things don't happen/are rare, and that we live in a Disney world...
(And a difference with the CEO, that you probably missed, is that they have more likely than not done these kind of bribes themselves).
No, it's gullible because the CEO might not exist, and the boast might never been uttered to the OP...
...but the bribing and the situation described (including similar calculations) goes on every day, in every single country, since forever.
So to compare it to conspiracy theory takes a lot of gullibility on the good intentions, clean hands, and lawful operating of businesses, politicians, local officials, and/or the rich. Or maybe a better word would be "naivety".
This is not "Elvis is Alive", "The KKK killed Kennedy" or "PizzaGate".
I know an urban county in California where it's an open secret that one can greatly increase one's chance of having a carry permit approved by making the maximum allowed contribution to the sheriff's reelection campaign.
This kind of reminds me of the UC admissions bribery scandal. There are legally approved ways to bribe schools and politicians, so if one is inclined to do so, at least follow them. But in both cases the idiots in question have gone about it in a flagrantly illegal fashion. I am not condoning the practice, but merely recognizing the system as it actually functions.
The frustrating thing in the US is that bribing the sherrif or the head of the university is legal, but bribing the low level paper stamper is illegal.
That provides huge incentives for the most corrupt to rise to control the institutions they’re supposedly policing.
I work in a library. I've learned though our ethics training that we can't accept cookies from patrons because that might be seen as bribery. There's a strange requirement to accept food: you have to eat it in front of the giver. So we can't take cookies, but the legislator can be fed by lobbyists.
I can’t speak to your state laws, but at the federal level, giving certain officials free food would be a felony, unless it was finger food provided at a “widely attended event.”
I don't think these are the same thing. Donating to the Sherriff's reelection campaign is a lot closer to a bribe than donating to a university, because the Sherriff is benefiting personally a lot more than the head of a university is from a donation to the school.
It would be more analogous if the donations were somehow made to the Sherriff department's budget.
Your link specifically calls out New York City. I could not find anything related to concealed carry permits and bribery for Texas. This indicates a poor implementation of law/regulation.
This is because Texas is a shall issue state where generally, you apply, meet the specified requirements, get a background check, pay your fees and the state will issues you a permit. If you pass all the checks you get the permit, no other considerations are made.
New York is a may issue state which generally/usually means a local law enforcement official will make a judgment call. Some have a blanken no issue policy, others sometimes waive that blanket no issue policy if they can be persuaded.
That's probably one of the craziest things I've heard. Never commit a crime to look a certain way because it won't look that way tomorrow. The police could be trapping you. If not they now have dirt on you. How in the world can you explain that to a judge if it came to that?
Honestly, this sounds like it's coming from someone that lives in a country where bribes aren't commonplace.
It's good that you and I both live in countries like that; but, in some countries, you report your bribes on taxes, they're so common.
From the other comments in this thread, it's suggesting that the CCW permit process in California is very bad and broken and these bribes have been an illegal method of actually getting CCW permits.
I used to work for one of the oil giants. They had codified standards for bribery, a la: "While we do not approve of bribery, we recognize that in some places we do business, they are an unfortunate necessity. To that end, we have standardized our practices to keep everyone involved as safe as possible".
I hope there standard was to not do it, because it is a US crime for any US national, citizen or resident as employee, officer or agent of a US corporation to bribe or otherwise corrupt a foreign official.
One common exception is the so called grease payments which you’ll need to get anything done in any reasonable time frame.
> Regarding payments to foreign officials, the act draws a distinction between bribery and facilitation or "grease payments", which may be permissible under the FCPA, but may still violate local laws. The primary distinction is that grease payments or facilitation payments are made to an official to expedite his performance of the routine duties he is already bound to perform.
I have worked for a non-US company that was owned by a US company. I had to go through training and one of the courses was about bribery.
It was an absurd experience. The training material kept repeating that I absolutely could not bribe a non-US official. However, in my country ALL officials are non-US and bribery is also illegal so what were they trying to tell me with this "non-US" criterion?
The message I got from training course is that bribery is bad (I knew that), bribery is illegal (I knew that) but it's okay if I bribe a US official (really?).
My understanding is there is an exception for bribes needed to get an otherwise typical process complete. In other words, you’re entitled to some permit, but without a bribe you’d never get it or not get it in a reasonable period of time.
Such a payment is considered a grease payment (and not a bribe), which is lawful under FCPA.
It is likewise illegal for Australian citizens, residents or corporations (with the same sort of "Facilitation Payment" carve-outs mentioned elsethread):
It’s funny - I did give that some thought - and then concluded (VERY INCORRECTLY I ADD), well he worked for one of the BIG oil companies — more likely than not an American.
Upon giving it a little more thought it turns out that only 2 of the top 10 oil companies are American. So, yeah, my bad.
I wouldn't call it paying a bribe so much as paying a ransom. It does not surprise me at all that this is happening given how much authority the Sherrif's have over CCW and how few they give out.
Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.
I know a guy who works on oil tankers and he was doing a gig in Africa. As he told it, basically every port there has a deal where you have to smuggle oil or stuff for them and tricks to get through standard inspections etc., etc.
So a new captain comes on board and first port they get in he refuses to do this - they refuse to let them in the port - they were out at sea without resupply 20 days and running out of food... the company had to fly in a different captain to relieve this guy and he told me by day 2 weeks in they were already joking around how the captain could have an accident ...
> but, in some countries, you report your bribes on taxes, they're so common.
Can you give any examples of those countries? Countries with high amount of bribing tend to also be countries with large off-the-record economies, therefore I am skeptical of that proposition.
FYI in the US, you can claim tax deductibility on bribes paid in foreign countries iff they are not legally classified as bribes in the respective local laws.
>> but, in some countries, you report your bribes on taxes
> Can you give any examples of those countries?
Germany used to be like this, but it they changed the law many years ago. I don't know if there are any such countries remaining. The article below is from 1995, when bribes were still tax-deductible.
I know of examples from El Salvador, but couldn't find good info on their tax laws in Spanish. This report mentions that extortion rackets are so pervasive that larger companies hire full time negotiators to manage their bribes, and have it built into their business models. No matter how you codify it, or whether or not you really call them officially "tax deductible", they are in fact a real operating cost that an American business doesn't ever have to consider but a third world one does, and it drives up cost for the end consumer.
Extortion is mainly demanded from businesses, but local
residents may also have to pay “taxes” or renta to access
their homes. No business sector is spared, and goods
and professional services may be demanded instead of,
or in addition to money. Large businesses and transport
operators have dedicated employees to negotiate extortion fees, which are built into >their financial models.
Implicit risk starts as soon as someone is targeted to
pay, and it rises if they are unable to pay or the renta
charged increases. Those who refuse to pay are killed.
I remember reading in the calguns forums a few years back that sheriffs had de-facto outlawed concealed carry in CA with this extortionate program.
By the way Apples head of security isn’t the only one. Nanci Pelosi has had a CCW for a long time while simultaneously fighting to suppress gun ownership in her own city and state.
That's nothing new. Senator Dianne Feinstein got a permit to carry a concealed handgun in San Francisco. There has always been one set of rules for the powerful and another set for the rest of us.
She had one because the anarcho hippie terrorist groups of SF targeted her and shot up her home several times. When the group was arrested/disbanded, she let her permit lapse.
While I agree it sucks that some rich and powerful people seem to live by a different set of rules, it's not like she had a permit just for kicks.
My childhood home was burgled several times and death threats written on it. I was assaulted several times.
But I’m not rich and powerful, so.
I recall Sherif telling my dad if he shot someone, to make sure the body was in the house pointing toward the inside. That way he wouldn’t be arrested.
So we were under constant assault, and if we tried to defend ourselves we had to make sure everything was “perfect” so as not to get arrested.
But that’s the whole point of a CCW permit. If you’re at risk you should be allowed to have one, and yet she works to make that impossible for all but the powerful and connected. It’s fine that she has one but it’s not fine that she doesn’t let regular Californians go through the same application process without money or connections.
My point was to show that she had a legitimate need, then let the permit lapse when she no longer had a need. She didn't have one for an abuse of power.
I wasn't debating the merits of the CA shall issue policy.
In other words, don't pick a fight where there isn't one.
However, a person living in a dangerous neighborhood has just as much right to protection as an elected official. And the 2nd Amendment doesn’t have a qualifier “if you can prove you need it.”
What gets me as a Brit is when wealthy Hollywood celebrities campaigning for gun control point to our country's gun laws as an example and then insist that of course their security guards should be allowed to carry guns. (Private sector armed security is basically illegal here.) Of course, what really really gets me is when they talk about our total ban on guns while insisting that their security guards don't count because they have handguns and not big scary rifles, because the total UK ban they're likely thinking of is on handgun ownership specifically.
Er, no. Different laws at different times. If CC were made illegal, it would be illegal for her too. Or is she actually advocating for different laws for different people?
What do you do when you want it to be legal for some people and illegal for other people? Make an opaque approval process and don’t approve very many people. My understanding based on some details I heard a few years ago (so I am no expert) is that this is exactly what happened.
Yes but you shouldn’t need a permit to get one, in the spirit of the 2nd amendment. Having permits just makes 2 classes of people, those with connections to the sheriff and regular Joes.
IDK why you're getting downvoted.. I looked into this when I moved to SF and was astonished that it was basically impossible to get a CCW. Coming from the Detroit area this was a MAJOR shock to me.
A CEO from Japan came over to America to give a speech at his new factory. His English wasn’t great, so he spoke, and the translator spoke to everyone.
Well at one point he went on about thanking local government officials, and that he would be sure to give them gifts for approving the project.
The translator wisely left that part out.
Confused, the CEO later asked why, then was shocked to learn that bribery is a bad thing in America.
Google Fu is weak, so haven’t been able to find the original source. (May have been a Japanese language book)
I've gone through various "International Training" sessions at my company and one of the things they teach is that if a foreign official says something like, "hmmm... your papers are invalid, but I can help you out for $100" or similar, you should pay and immediately report (and expense) it on return. I know one coworker who went through this traveling through a small country.
That is illegal according to US law. At my company, we are explicitly taught the opposite: paying "facilitation fees" is prohibited and illegal and that the employer will fire you and throw you under the bus if they find out you did so. They explicitly mention that this is not allowed even if it is the norm in the country in which you are doing business.
I have never heard of a major company that didn't advise its employees to pay bribes abroad.
Whether it's legal or illegal is almost aside the point, someone can choose between either breaking some arcane, unenforced US law, or potentially spending months/years in some hellhole of a third-world jail or prison while the Embassy slowly negotiates a release. And in some places, that's assuming someone doesn't just "disappear" or get robbed and shot on the spot.
It'd often be better to get fired and federally charged than to risk what your company advocates. In a worst case scenario, at least you know what you're getting, at least you'll have competent legal defense, and at least there will be a high -- virtually unprovable -- standard of evidence required for a federal jury to indict.
> I have never heard of a major company that didn't advise its employees to pay bribes abroad.
That would be conspiracy. No, absolutely this does not happen. Now, at the micro level it does happen that individual executives rope their employees in to fraud at their direction. But absoutely no "company" anywhere "advises" its employees to pay bribes as a matter of policy.
I think most companies would prefer their employees not go missing in some African hellhole or get incarcerated on bullshit charges wherever.
There's little difference between bribes and highway banditry in some places, and not playing along will very likely not end well for you.
Recourse in cases of abuses of power is already hit-and-miss in so-called "civilized" countries. I wouldn't count on it in countries that can't even agree on who's in charge somewhere.
People are actually downvoting my post (and the one where someone confirmed that this happened at three Fortune 100 companies).
It's one thing to be a boy scout, but it's another entirely to get accused of severe, frivolous charges while abroad, or to drive up to an armed cartel/militant roadblock, and then say "I'm sorry, bribes are against corporate policy and illegal in my country" when asked for $50.
Shame on any company for creating a clause like that and risking their employees lives instead of just remaining silent on the matter. Make no mistake, bribery isn't optional in many parts of the world, it's a robbery by a uniformed official.
I think people in the overall thread are getting confused about different kinds of bribes.
A bribe needed to get a lucrative contract for your company: not ok.
Paying off a local cop so he won't throw you in jail for no reason: totally ok.
The US is concerned with preventing the former, not the latter. I would be surprised if any US company is advocating people pay the first kind of bribe, at least publicly, as that's quite illegal in the US (I'm sure it happens, but as quietly as possible). But I would not be surprised if US companies tell employees to pay the second kind of bribe, as well they should.
You are entirely incorrect. One of the largest mining, minerals and petroleum companies in Australia has it right there in the employee handbook sitting on your desk on Day One.
Yes, this happens frequently. They are termed "facilitation payments" rather than bribes, they are budgeted and accounted for as expenses, and the official direction of briefing materials at at least three Fortune 100 companies (that I know of) directs people to pay them.
I am not sure why you were being downvoted, exactly. While there is a difference between the two terms, it seems like an area that firms could easily fudge, until someone actually investigated the specific case.
> What is the Difference Between Bribery and Facilitation Payments?
> Facilitation payments are different from bribes in that they’re offered or solicited in return for a service a person or a company is entitled to receive. In contrast, bribes are offered in return for undue and illegal advantage.
[0]
Do we know if these executives were deserving of the CCP? It would appear they were, from the post’s link:
> Sung—second in rank only to Sheriff Laurie Smith in the sheriff’s office—is accused of deliberately holding back four concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits for Apple’s security team until the Cupertino-based corporation agreed to donate 200 iPads worth about $75,000 to the Sheriff’s Office, Rosen said. Sung and Jensen allegedly worked together to solicit the exchange of CCW permits for the tech donation from Apple.
The much larger corruption seems to be on the LEO side to me. Which of the two actors swore an oath to uphold the law?
If it wasn’t for clickbait, the headline would focus on the LEO.
There's a difference between a bribe to win a contract or similar vs. the case where you feel in danger - e.g. you come across a roadblock in rural Mexico and an armed official wants a "clear up your paperwork" payoff to let you pass. That's the scenario the training covers.
Exactly, and it's clearly permitted to pay in that case because being able to travel involves routine govt action. I have no idea where this legal advice is coming from.
Except most of these guys either paid the bribe or had it ready to go until they heard sirens. These guys could have easily reported the solicitation but instead they participated in it. This isn't the case where a cop is threatening to throw you in jail or plant drugs on you unless you pay up right now, this is a state permit process. No one had their life or freedom directly threatened over not having more CCW permits for their security team.
The sheriff deputies fucked up. The CCW applicants fucked up. Everyone got caught and everyone is going to suffer the consequences.
Reporting it would have meant no chance of getting the permits. I am not going to fault anyone who plays along with a facilitation payment even when it's the US government demanding it.
To be fair, the Wikipedia pages on law that I've read are quite good (IANAL, just interested), probably because they rarely touch on politics.
Or, perhaps it's that those editors who distort other areas of the wiki to fit their political biases aren't interested in law. It could be either or both (or neither, but I'm biased towards myself;)
I have seen both in training, but in different contexts.
jbuzbee is referring to international travel training you go through if you apply to travel to/through a "red"/"restricted" country. They are not referring to the generic "don't take a bribe for a contract" training.
IANAL, but I think a general rule of thumb is: will this bribe get me out being detained against my will (or worse) for doing nothing wrong? If yes, then it's ok. But: if I don't pay this bribe, the only consequence will be that my company doesn't win this contract -- that's not an ok bribe to pay.
> The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 is a United States federal law that prohibits U.S. citizens and entities from bribing foreign government officials to benefit their business interests.
> Regarding payments to foreign officials, the act draws a distinction between bribery and facilitation or "grease payments", which may be permissible under the FCPA, but may still violate local laws. The primary distinction is that grease payments or facilitation payments are made to an official to expedite his performance of the routine duties he is already bound to perform
one of the things they teach is that if a foreign official says something like, "hmmm... your papers are invalid, but I can help you out for $100" or similar, you should pay and immediately report (and expense) it on return
I used to work for a company with a similar policy and training. "Airport tax" was how it was expensed, even if you weren't flying.
Sounds like there's a distinction under the FCPA between actual bribery (illegal) and grease payments (legal), where an official requests a bribe to do their job.
There is an exception under the foreign corrupt practices act (FCPA) that if you do as parent poster described (pay and report as such) then it is legal. Otherwise you are correct, it is highly illegal.
In many countries everyone has to pay a facilitation fee (aka bribe) for routine govt actions.
These are for things like:
obtaining permits, licenses, or other official
documents to qualify a person to do business in a foreign country;
processing governmental papers, such as visas
and work orders; providing police protection, mail pickup and
delivery, or scheduling inspections associated
with contract performance or inspections
related to transit of goods across country;
providing phone service, power and water
supply, loading and unloading cargo, or
protecting perishable products or commodities
from deterioration; etc
How in the WORLD to folks giving legal advice here not have even this basic understanding of the law?
But also, it seems like it's a bit of a grey area:
"As a general principle of the Foreign Corrupt Practises Act (FCPA), in the United States, firms and businesses in the US are prohibited from making any payments to foreign officials for routine governmental action. However, any payment that does not effect the decision of the foreign official is not considered a bribe. For example, a businessman in the States may make a payment to a government official to expedite a deal or transaction. Such a payment is considered a grease payment (and not a bribe), which is lawful under FCPA.
In this regard, it becomes necessary to understand when an amount paid turns from a grease payment to a bribe, which is illegal under law. This is a grey area under the law which is still to be clarified. There are numerous factors that could play a role in demarcation between the two, which include: the amount of payment, the frequency of the payment, the status/level of the foreign official to whom the payment has been made, the outcome of the case regarding which the payment was made, etc."[1]
The training at my company is pretty strict about never making any "grease payments", so certainly there's some doubt.
My company training also states that in situations where you are in possible danger, you should pay the bribe and then document and report it (with the company). For instance, you and a co-worker is in a car accident, you are fine, but your co-worker has a broken leg, you go with your co-worker to the hospital, upon arriving at the hospital you are told the doctor has gone home for the day, but for the right price, someone might be able to get him/her back. There is a "Safe Harbor" exception in these cases, however you must document and report.
Yep, they did and do. And we are a US company with lots of lawyers. My coworker was at a tiny island airport in the middle of the Pacific. If he didn't pay, he wasn't going anywhere.
I had corporate training, annually, that said to do the exact opposite. We were not even allowed to give or accept innocuous gifts like tickets to a game without getting it approved by our legal department.
That's an entirely different class of bribe. There is no personal threat to you there. In some parts of the world, your livelihood, if not life, may be threatened.
"Call Legal if the police officer in Nicaragua is threatening to throw you in jail without arrest until you give him cash" is a reasonably sure way to put yourself at further risk/in grave peril.
If the gift is to secure business this is likely true especially if the business relates to some govt or official of another country. Very strict there - you can't pay a bribe to get business or as part of business development.
However, if you need to pay a "facilitation fee" to exit the country (called routine govt action) that is not about securing business or getting a competitive advantage such as a customs waiver, then paying the fee may be permitted (for a number of reasons).
What I think US folks don't realize is some dept's overseas basically pay their staff through these unofficial fees, they set some rates for service, but nothing goes through treasury and no enabling legislation exists. But they also don't get money from their treasury to operate (or its stolen by folks above them) so that's how they keep operating.
People forget that facilitation fees were the norm not long ago: in Britain in 18th century you'd have to pay the judge for judging you and the prison for keeping you. You can imagine that the size of your payment greatly influenced how you were treated.
In Russia prior to USSR, facilitation fees is how all officials earned money, that was the official policy. That's only 100 years ago that is was not even considered corruption / bribery. Obviously that disease is still festering in Russia and the country as a whole is paying a grave toll for it.
Lastly, do keep in mind that as a local you can probably tell is a payment can be declined withoit repercussions, but as a foreigner you don't really know.
That makes sense, and you’re right. I’ve never worked or lived anywhere that bribes or “facilitation fees” were the norm. The closest I’ve come is a public bus in Vietnam where the driver and fare collector guy made up their own rates contrary to the posted fares.
It isn't going to be taught unless you are going to be doing business in a country where it is the unavoidable norm with the people who are known fordoing it. Otherwise you will be trained to not pay bribes.
I have it on good authority that all apple employees are trained to not pay any kind of bribes. Didn't realize that training would need to be applied in the states tho
That's bad training. If they are stuck in a country because they won't pay the $20 exit fee because authorizing legislation was not properly adopted, then apple are idiots.
It will take one person dying because of this policy for apple to be sued to hell and back.
That's why organisations use proxy security and travel agents to pay those bribes. It's built into the price.
American Express GBT, BCD Travel, CWT, FCM Travel, they all offer it. It's usually expensed as "Consulting" or "Advisory", however never separated in invoiced line-items.
Every single large tech organisation has made lip-service commitments publicly to not accept bribes, but also operate in countries where it's the absolute norm. How is that handled? Through an intermediary.
> That's bad training. If they are stuck in a country because they won't pay the $20 exit fee because authorizing legislation was not properly adopted, then apple are idiots.
Oh so they are stuck somewhere during a business trip? In that case, they would contact their company for assistance.
Alternatively, it's just a job. The penalties tend to go as far as firing the employee. If it's a life and death situation that's an ok outcome. I mean, if we insist in discussing these convoluted scenarios...
I guess it depends on whether the Apple guy had a reasonable fear for his life. If the Sheriff said, "Hey it would be cool if you guys gave me some iPads maybe I could grease the wheels on your gun permit," then I don't buy it. A reasonable person should not be afraid of the sheriff at that point. There's some risk in reporting the situation, but it's not that serious. Maybe you don't feel comfortable reporting him, so perhaps you decide you don't need that CCW after all. Giving the bribe is far from the only option, and the presence of any element of risk is not carte blanche for illegal activities.
If the sheriff said gimme the iPads or I'll blow your brains out, that's another story. But I guess that's not what happened here.
I think this is the particularly pathetic thing. Low level LE does this all the time, but in this case, Apple (and the security guy) should have reached out to their (likely) myriad contacts within the FBI/DOJ/CA State. It’s one thing if the little guy caves to government extortion. It’s another thing altogether if the big guy is willing to tolerate it where it could do something about it.
Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make. GP is appalled at commenters breaking for Apple, and I'm just pointing out that their response is best understood as a projection of themselves into Apple's shoes. And in that case the response is reasonable. But of course the unreasonable thing those commenters need to realize is that Apple is insanely powerful and insanely powerful institutions putting up with corruption is Not OK.
Depends on how disposed you are to like the company I guess? When a high level director at Google does something bad, we say on here that Google did something bad. Same at Facebook. I don't know why it should be different for Apple.
But the issue in question at the moment isn't about whether we get to rub things in the face of apple-loving posters. The question is about whether this individual wields the supposed power Apple has in this situation.
It’s the head of apple security. That is Apple. Apple would do well to swiftly terminate their relationship and get in front with PR statements of their own and further acts to minimize blowback. Then, when the head of security has his day in court, Apple will be vindicated. Then, and only then, is it the head of security. Until that point it’s entirely Apple (and why companies make such a big deal about anti-bribery training)
FWIW, it would be just as bad of a look if instead the head of security’s wife was engaged in this scheme at her own workplace. And Apple would be 100% correct to still terminate their relationship for fear of bad press
As there's no indication in the article that Moyer or his team were threatened with violence, I'm reading and responding to your post as a theory ("People's ethics are often overridden under the weight of authority.") vs advice for the future ("When a person with a gun says do something, you should do it"). Let me know if I'm mistaken.
Your question is difficult to answer, but I ask in return: Is a general propensity to engage in an act sufficient to excuse it?
I will concede that "every person has their price". At some point we cross the line from "asking for a bribe" to "engaging in extortion" to "direct threats of violence".
Moyer ran the ethics and business conduct programs. Is there an expectation that someone in that position does have a durable set of principles, and a price higher than a CCW permit?
The appropriate consequences for the involved parties are, of course, along completely different ethical lines.
There was zero threat to get the payment. There are certain counties and sheriff's where campaign contributions are one of the main routes towards obtaining a permit. No one is getting pressured by threat of force to do this. This is not a new game in CA. Other's have been called out for it.
It's normal in CA because that is what elites do, often. They pay bribes to obtain general privileges of the public that are being withheld. Similar to the college admissions scandal. For CCW permits this has been an open secret in some jurisdictions for decades. Pay to play is elitist, classist, and hopefully they will be convicted for doing it.
The mistake they made was bribing individuals instead of making a sizable donation to the department and then casually chatting up the brass at a heavily sponsored fundraising event, over a few glasses of wine, about how frustrating the delays have become for everyone.
This sort of thing won't ever stop because of a few convictions, same deal with the college admissions scandal. It just raises the price.
Unfortunately, not only is it explicable, its common practice. Just a few years ago in NYC some of the highest ranking police officers in the city along with members of the prosecutors office were involved in a very similar scheme where they were selling gun permits (which are very difficult to get in NYC) to Orthodox Jews. To make things worse, the political connections of those involved in this massive crime allowed their names to be mostly excised from the reporting of this story in a variety of news outlets despite the case being covered for more than a year.
I had to pay two bribes (200 USD, then another 300 USD) to Cancun police to get a friend out of jail so he could make his flight home. They asked when his flight was (~3 days later), then said they'd hold him until the day after the flight unless I paid up. Definitely felt more like a ransom than a bribe in that I didn't really have a choice not to pay.
I can definitely see how some people get suckered into bribes sometimes (especially with armed, intimidating police), but it doesn't seem like that is the case here.
I used to work in emergency assistance (think travel insurance claims) and any job that took you to a number of countries in SEA meant you took $500 to $1000 USD for bribing officials for the sole purpose of retrieving passports.
> A high-level exec at one of the world's most powerful companies paying off a local LEO for a permit instead of, IDK, contacting the State or the Feds, is beyond inexplicable.
The State or the Feds don't issue CCWs in California. Chief local law enforcement officers only, which means sheriffs and police chiefs.
>> A high-level exec at one of the world's most powerful companies paying off a local LEO for a permit instead of, IDK, contacting the State or the Feds, is beyond inexplicable.
> The State or the Feds don't issue CCWs in California. Chief local law enforcement officers only, which means sheriffs and police chiefs.
No, but they do investigate other LEO agencies for corruption. See: the article.
Right, and how long is that investigation going to take.
Meanwhile Apple is short dozens of security guards to have a full detail necessary to protect the lives and wellbeing of the highest ranking executives in the country.
The head of security at Apple is charged with protecting the lives and wellbeing of the top execs.
He performed exactly as the incentive structure recommends.
Was going to upvote you, but I think even a private citizen of limited means failing to inform the Feds is an unforgivable offense against our society as well.
Knowing about public corruption, and not reporting it, is tantamount to racketeering. No matter how much power you have.
There are plenty of extenuating circumstances. For example, if you were a spouse of a corrupt law enforcement officer who's already facing domestic violence, would it be racketeering if you did not report your spouse's conduct? I am willing to bet it wouldn't (you have a credible fear of being assaulted, or worse yet, losing your life if you did so).
This is why things like anonymous tip lines and whistleblower laws exist. You are encouraged, in general, to report misconduct. But there are very specific situations where it's illegal to not report misconduct.
Spousal privilege would cover this specific example, I think? But the example could be shifted to adult dependent child, maybe, to create the same situation.
There was a time when reporting malfeasance to the federal authorities was the obvious right thing to do.
Now it is clear that reporting criminal acts to eg. the FBI is very risky; if the officer is politically aligned to the politically and societaly dominant party, and you are not, you're toast.
Local police can be extremely petty and extremely violent [1]. If a police officer told me he'd let me off for a bribe, I would probably pay it
That isn’t a bribe, it’s extortion.
As an aside it’s hilarious that Apple wants concealed carry permits for its staff while replacing the gun emoji with a water pistol. Just goes to show a corporation’s marketing is nothing to do with what it really believes.
I disagree. I dislike Apple's practices as much as anyone, but when the #2 person at the sheriff's office is the one soliciting the bribe, you have a problem with the police department that even Apple cannot be expected to fix.
You can argue that they should have gone straight to the DA, and you might even be right, but the only way for this problem to get fixed is by cleaning house at the police department, not by scolding Apple for trying to work with corrupt officials.
Keep in mind that it's incredibly rare for any DA to go against the police, so this case is already unusual. We'll have to wait and see if they actually have the evidence / wherewithal to see this one through rather than just settling out of court for a slap on the wrist.
Edit:
I actually agree with the comments suggesting that Apple and similar companies will learn from this experience and will use it as an example when trying to ensure that it doesn't happen again, and in that sense, it's important that they be punished too.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that, on a moral level, the police department comes off looking way worse than Apple here, and their punishment should be higher.
Police are given a special position in society where we essentially trust them to conduct themselves professionally and uphold the law fairly. When that trust is misplaced, the checks are slow and unreliable, and corrupt cops can cause a whole lot of mayhem while we're waiting. So if you're going to go after police corruption, you'd better hit hard. It's really, really bad for society to have police who are so comfortable asking for bribes this openly.
It's also bad for companies like Apple to feel like they can just pay the bribes to grease the wheels, but it's a different kind of bad. It's a "We should punish Apple to discourage a tragedy of the commons" kind of bad, while police openly asking for bribes is a "betraying the public trust" kind of bad.
Apple can absolutely be expected to fix it! They'll have someone trained to deal with this exact scenario, and employees will have been exposed to similar scenarios in mandatory anti-bribery training, and instructed exactly how to respond. In fact, I can guarantee this is gonna become a textbook example that all other companies are gonna be using in their training going forward. Bribery is a big deal for companies on this level, especially those teetering in the world of luxury like Apple is.
NO - these aren't workplace permits, they are personal licenses for the employees. They can already carry guns on their building grounds without a permit. The company is stepping in on behalf of their employees for to get these permits issued to them as individuals, so Apple's willingness to participate in the bribery is on the company. I do agree that the police have done the far greater crime in the abuse of their authority. No one really cared when the only permit issued by the city of Oakland was to Jerry Brown's personal assistant Jacques.
The articles frame it as the Head of Apple security acting on the behalf of 4 potential Apple security team licensees - so at least 3 of those Apple employees aren't him. He's acting on behalf of his employees, I'd say that is Apple stepping in.
Why do Apple guards need to carry guns in the first place? Those guards should just be monitoring and alerting real law enforcement if a break-in happens. If someone goes postal, then I guess there should be several normal folks at Apple already carrying and able to protect the general public.
> If someone goes postal, then I guess there should be several normal folks at Apple already carrying and able to protect the general public.
So your solution is other, probably lesser-trained, individual Apple employees should be concealed-carrying so they can respond to a workplace shooting? Let's ignore that Apple probably doesn't allow this in the first place but even if they did I would not want to work in an environment where my coworkers were walking around with guns all the time. I have no problem with guns or CCW but in the workplace is a different story for me.
Then help me understand. You have a shooting on the Apple campus, your ideal response is...? From your previous comment it sounds like you expected Apple employees who have their CCW and are carrying to handle it, was I mistaken?
In theory that could be a scalable approach. Citizens taking command and you will eventually have more armed people on Apple campus. But I tend to agree with your argument now. People just aren't trained for it.
> Sheriff Laurie Smith, who has the authority to issue CCW permits, has not been charged with a crime.
Either i. the sheriff knew about/was in on this scheme and must be put in prison or ii. the sheriff didn't know about how her number two was soliciting bribes using her authority to grant/deny licenses and must resign because that is just gross negligence.
In another incident, Sung “extracted” a promise from Chadha for $6,000 worth of luxury box suites at a San Jose Sharks game on Valentine’s Day, 2019, before issuing Chadha a CCW permit, Rosen said.
“Sheriff Laurie Smith’s family members and some of her biggest supporters held a celebration of her reelection as sheriff in Chadha’s suite,” Rosen said.
She's definitely not painted in a good light, that's for sure.
The sheriff's have been very crafty to not generate any evidence of wrongdoing. Unless one of her direct reports decides to turn against her and testify there will be no evidence that she ever directly communicated the monetary requirements to get a permit. Prior to this it has largely been indirect evidence used to probe CCW issuance, looking at the correlation of donations to permits being issued and non-donors getting denied permits. Sheriffs have even quashed that in that many won't readily give out or accept the paperwork to apply for a permit so there is never a record of a denial that is subject to sunshine laws. If you keep it verbal, there is no evidence if no one will testify.
Punishing Apple is absolutely part of the fix. It gives all future, um, victims more incentive to not play along and increases the chances that future extortion will be exposed.
California is a may issue state, the sheriff's office can decline to issue a permit for any reason. Soliciting the bribe is illegal for other reasons, but failing to issue the permit is not a rights violation under California law.
Actually, denying the permit via an illegal action (requesting a bribe) is not a lawful denial and would result in the violation of your equal protection rights.
If they solicit a bribe, one would reasonably assume that a failure to pay would result in a denial. If you have a recording of that, then you could provide probable cause that it was illegal.
If you weren't propositioned with a bribe, then true, it wouldn't be apparent why you were denied.
California is a two-party consent state. It's safe to assume a LEO soliciting a bribe would not also consent to having that solicitation recorded. So the only way you are getting that recording is illegally. Depending on how you record them, you could be facing several charges yourself and there's no guarantee that anything will come of it for a variety of reasons. You might even be caught doing it, which could be disastrous. In short, it's a pretty big gamble.
Two party consent doesn't matter here. The federal courts have consistently upheld that it is one's first ammendment right to record public officials in the performance of their duties. As a member of the public, you are permitted to record your interactions with police.
Now, could it still end badly? Sure. If they are willing to break the law for a bribe, then why not take it further if they find out you are recording.
Local police have been noticeably resistant to rules allowing recording. A large fraction of the civil rights violations documented by Amnesty International against BLM protestors were exactly against people who were only recording what was going on.
Therefore no matter how much you might be within the right, I would personally not be willing to record the police unless it was under the direction of another police force that was ready to barge in.
Secret recording protip: get the target to identify themselves in a unique manner. Such as affirmative responses when called by their name and nickname. A certain action others can corroborate such as a triple high pitched sneeze. Or sounds that are unique to them such as a cell phone text message chime. Combine the above for maximum impact.
Present this to a lawyer and watch them work their magic.
I currently have a case where a trooper lied to a judge to conceal exculpatory evidence and it is documented. I emailed a few firms for a free consultation. So far I have not found a civil lawyer willing to take it. Decided to email the ACLU too, so we'll see if we hear back from them.
You should listen to the reason why all of those civil lawyers are not willing to take it. Listen very carefully. I would advise you to believe the word of several people telling you why it’s not possible...
No one has told me it's not possible. I have a trooper and a lawyer from a other area of law telling me it sounds like a good case. The lawyers that I have contacted only a few days ago simply haven't responded yet.
And do you think it's likely they'll be 'on duty' when this discussion occurs?
You're really trying very hard to downplay the risk of gathering this evidence. If you are discovered and you gathered evidence, you might have that evidence confiscated or you might just be dead. If you are discovered but didn't manage to get the evidence, you might be charged with wiretapping. (Or they might just kill you anyway.) Even if all works out in the end, you're looking at a legal battle. (Most people don't want to be the one fighting a case that sets precedence even if federal courts largely seem to rule in their favor.) And all that struggle is for evidence that might not even convince anyone to start an investigation and/or may not be admitted to court.
Keep in mind that it's incredibly rare for any DA to go against the police, so this case is already unusual. We'll have to wait and see if they actually have the evidence / wherewithal to see this one through rather than just settling out of court for a slap on the wrist.
Which raises the question, why did it happen this time?
My best guess is that the Santa Clara DA did the math, said, "I'm in a liberal part of a liberal state where people overwhelmingly support BLM and distrust the police. How can I best generate some positive publicity for myself?"
The concealed permits mess has been well-known for ages. So it wasn't a question of the DA having just learned about it and becoming shocked. And going to the Feds wouldn't have helped much since they don't care too much (else they would have acted ages ago). The question is why the DA decided to make an issue of it.
Honestly, I think it is because of the high level of the payments it could no longer be ignored, and the sheriff pissed off someone more powerful than them. Usually this stuff would entail a couple of thousand per individual, the whole process was based on insider networking/understanding, no explicit quid pro quo, and the money was slated to an organization that was set up to receive funds for other legitimate purposes so there is some level of transparency. Based on the article, Santa Clara had taken this to a whole new level with what was being demanded and the demands were explicit.
Baloney. The whole reason that laws exist to punish the person paying the bribe, even if the bribe was originally solicited by an official, is to force that person to bring it to higher authorities, i.e. the FBI.
This type of corruption is even more endemic in other countries and I'm sure many companies would find it easier to just pay the bribe than comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but that's why the act was written in the first place.
Agree. Also Apple security are in a long term beneficiary position with any given law enforcement entity, especially one which effectively controls the limits of Apple's personal security measures wrt firearms.
To me this seems it would make the "or else" really difficult to think past. What can they do? If they detonate the leadership structure of some department by going on the offense, what is the likelihood they hurt their own ability to work with LEO types in the future? That would be a really hard position. But maybe there are details we just don't have here.
I don't see any Apple apologists here in the comments. Who are you referring to?
All I see is the fact that the Apple employee didn't initiate the bribe, the sheriff's office demanded it (extorted it) and the employee was put in the unfortunate immediate situation of either not getting their lawfully permitted license, or paying the bribe.
At the end of the day it's bribery so of course the employee deserves to be charged (and Apple if it approved it in any way), but the sheriff's office officials deserve much harsher punishment quite clearly.
>Why give police the power to decide these permits?
So that they can make an end run around the 14th amendment, deny all the blacks, deny all the mexicans, deny all the chinese while the state looks the other way, or at least that's what the tacit understanding was ~70yr ago when people were voting for politicians who supported these policies.
Exactly—this is the same reason cops have discretion over who they fine for traffic violations vs. who they let off with a warning: so that the "right" people don't end up having to pay fines.
Having been recently subjected to an invalid traffic violation, it seems discretion means they go after the easy target that will most likely pay (someone caught dead to rights, or looks like they don’t have time or money to fight the case). I watched who the cop pulled over after me and every person was someone who had the means and likelihood to pay the fine rather than fight what was a bogus trap (based on the perceived value of their cars; recent model year, none less than 40k)
I simply went to court and the officer never showed up, but I didn’t see any of the other people pulled over that day in court either (while reasons could explain this away I find it hard to believe of the 7 people I observed none of them paid the fine or took a driving course from the comfort of their own home to be done with it)
Usual think of the children stuff. Basically, someone who shouldn't have a permit could hypothetically get one and then go on a killing spree, so we need to give police and sheriffs full powers to deny them. If I remember rightly, one of the main things the American gun control movement has been campaigning for is the removal of shall-issue policies which require police and sheriffs to issue permits like these unless they have a specific legally-defined reason not to, and replacing them with the kind of may-issue policies that allow arbitrary denials and this sort of corruption - and they're quite happy to point at dead kids and accuse anyone who gets in their way of supporting child murder to achieve this.
Contrary to the wishes of gun control organizations, the resulting trend has actually been towards shall-issue and constitutional carry over the past few decades.
Agreed, this makes 0 sense to me. There should be an explicit list of reasons for which police should be able to deny these permits, and the police should have to show their evidence as to why they believe one of these reasons apply.
The problem with this is pretty obvious. When some scumbag like a pimp or similar without a conviction goes for a permit, you end up in a situation where the police are enabling certain types of undesirable behavior.
IMO, discretion for this sort of thing should be with a judge, not a cop.
How are they enabling undesirable behavior? Wouldn't the behavior occur anyways? Most people would be stupid to create a paper trail for themselves if they plan to use a weapon in a crime. Hence the reason close to 50% of guns recovered from a crime were stolen.
How would a judge or a cop have any impact on a situation without a conviction? They wouldn't know any better without additional data.
Deniability. i.e. the sheriff can say the permit wasn’t issued because its at their discretion, not because someone didn’t pay a bribe. That said, even with a "shall" situation there are hoops to jump thru that can be used to set this same kinda situation up.
however the official in a shall issue state is then lying on documents, by jumping through hoops to deny applications if they are not paying the bribe.
I've seen a few people on here state this. I really wish people knew their rights better.
Federal judges have consistently ruled that recording public officials in the performance of their duties is a right under the first amendment. As a member of the public, you can record your interactions with police without their consent.
Yes, you can record them secretly. That's according to the federal courts that hold that it is your first amendment right. Don't be surprised if they try ro charge you under the state's laws. You would then have to file a federal lawsuit claiming your rights are being violates. It all depends on exactly how stupid or corrupt the specific officer is.
> > public officials in the performance of their duties
> conversation with a senior officer in a police station
Are you seriously suggesting that conversing with a public official at their place of work about official business doesn't qualify as part of their official duties?
(Aside, two party consent is a genuinely broken system for a wide variety of reasons. I consider violating it to be a laudable act of civil disobedience.)
I’m suggesting that an attorney could definitely argue that a particular conversation was not part of a persons official duties, depending on the content.
Attorneys argue things like this all the time. And Judges rule on their arguments.
What I’m asking about is whether any existing ruling makes this point clear.
Some states have exceptions to the 2 party rule in general, such as if you think a crime may be committed, or a crime from a specific list. This can apply to everyone, not just police.
I think it would be hard to argue that a conversation with a CCW applicant in which you ask for stuff in exchange for issung a CCW isn't acting in an official capacity. The only person who can issue it is the person holding that office. Not to mention, the calendar/schedule/sign-in book should have a memo a out the purpose of the visit (the pretext he was called down to the station).
No they couldn't. That would be equivalent to saying committing a crime creates a right to privacy that didn't exist previously. And if it wasn't part of their official duties, why would the department/police union be defending the officer?
You do sometimes see cases where a police union defends an officer accused of some crime, but that's usually because they're putting up some BS story about how they actually were doing their duty, eg an officer busted in possession of drugs who tries to argue it was actually an undercover investigation of the drug scene.
Please explain how this same scenario would work under a shall-issue scheme?
Edit: Since you wouldn't respond... denying a permit under a shall-issue scheme would require proof that they didn't meet the statutory requirements instead of providing the issuer with the ability to hide their reason behind an arbitrary excuse.
The only legal option I can see is "move out of CA", which probably means get another job. Which, you know, people sometimes do if they feel strongly about the right to carry, but likely wasn't in his set of considered options.
> He was the chief security officer of the biggest company in the world.
Oh, you're suggesting he use Apple to, uh, "lean on" the sheriff? That seems much worse. One might even hope that was not one of his possible options, even as CSO...
> The only legal option I can see is "move out of CA", which probably means get another job. Which, you know, people sometimes do if they feel strongly about the right to carry, but likely wasn't in his set of considered options.
You didn't consider "report it to the DA, state police, or FBI" as an option?
> Oh, you're suggesting he use Apple to, uh, "lean on" the sheriff? That seems much worse. One might even hope that was not one of his possible options, even as CSO...
I absolutely did not read this in the GP's post. Whether it is what he meant or not, it's an ungenerous take. A more generous take is that with the resources available to him, reporting a bribe solicitation to the appropriate authorities is much less risky than it would be for (say) a random citizen of San Jose.
> reporting a bribe solicitation to the appropriate authorities is much less risky than it would be for (say) a random citizen of San Jose.
To say the least! He has the entire weight of the Apple legal department behind him, and that isn't something any sheriff's department would take on lightly.
> I absolutely did not read this in the GP's post. Whether it is what he meant or not, it's an ungenerous take.
I can confirm I didn't mean this! That's a stupid idea.
I don't really understand how randallsquared got that from what I said.
I think both of your responses can be cleared up by noting that @nl was responding to, and quoted:
> the employee was put in the unfortunate immediate situation of either not getting their lawfully permitted license, or paying the bribe
In this context, "options" mean "options to fulfill the CCW licensing goal".
Reporting it to the DA, state police, the FBI, or anyone else wouldn't further the CCW licensing goal (though it might fulfill others, and I'm certainly not arguing against it!).
Similarly, saying he had other options (for "getting their lawfully permitted license") because he was the CSO of the biggest company in the world may well have other meanings I didn't catch, but reporting bribe solicitations is not one, unless the dialogue had already veered from it's previous aim.
> I think that is artificially closing the options.
Ah. I took the quote to be the prompt for your reply, as mentioned above.
> Secondly, he could sue, and ask the court order the licenses be granted immediately if there was a time-critical need. There's probably other options available for relief too, and I'm pretty sure the Apple legal department could think of them!
In spite of Moyer being CSO for Apple, I hadn't realized that Apple Corporation was paying the bribe!
You are right that with the company directly involved, there are more options, and it was my misreading/skimming of the article which led me to the wrong conclusions, there.
> The only legal option I can see is "move out of CA", which probably means get another job.
How could that possibly be the only option?
Sue the sheriff's department is an obvious one, as is contact the FBI.
> Oh, you're suggesting he use Apple to, uh, "lean on" the sheriff? That seems much worse. One might even hope that was not one of his possible options, even as CSO
What?
No of course not.
Off the top of my head:
* Get Apple's lawyers advice (which would not be "pay an illegal bribe")
As mentioned in another subthread, I mis-skimmed the article and thought it was about his own personal CCW licensing, rather than being something Apple was actively involved in.
After going through the process of building a house in CA, I believe we should decriminalize offering of bribes, but not solicitation of bribes.
$100K’s of dollars (>> 10% of the total project cost) have been extracted from us by various bureaucratic processes that are outside what is explicitly specified by the law.
I am confident that this would not have happened if we were well politically connected, and had friends that worked at PG&E.
I honestly don’t know if we were “just supposed to know” that we needed to make some specific charitable or political donation or something like that, because no one has explicitly solicited a bribe from us.
If it were legal to offer bribes, I could go online, and search for information on who to pay off, and to what ends.
Even better, California could fix the law to eliminate these gray areas. In the Apple case, they could move from “may issue” to “shall issue”.
In my case, there could be bounds on permit review durations, and also the cost / benefit of “environmental” regulations: if some ask is too expensive homeowners could “buy credits” by doing something else that would be more effective for the same amount of money.
To be clear, the money they extracted from us for “the environment” will substantially increase our carbon footprint, impact on local wildlife and on the watershed — we planned to voluntarily spend that money to mitigate those impacts because we’re extremely concerned about the environment. Now, we’ve been forced to waste it in low impact ways. I’m not upset that we were forced to spend the money. I’m upset it was wasted.
I live in a developing country with a ton of bribery that is way, way down the Transparency International rankings.
Your ideas come across as pretty naive and out of touch with how bribery works in the real world. Which is okay, not everyone is an expert on everything. But your comment would come across a lot better if you had used some tentative language instead of definitive language on a topic it is clear you don't know much about in the real world.
Bribes are rarely solicited in the real world, so that's the first place you theory falls down. I've only rarely had someone say something that could even vaguely be construed as soliciting a bribe. They aren't dumb, after all. Instead what usually happens is you get a run-around for unspecified reasons until you offer the bribe. You submit the paperwork and they tell you it is filled in incorrectly but don't tell you what part is wrong or how to fill it in correctly. The nurse only checks on you once a day until you give her an envelope of cash. The accountants auditing your books ask for receipts of every single everything until take them to dinner and offer them a present for all the hard work they've done so far. The fire department finds all kinds of ways to not certify your new office for occupancy until you give them some "coffee money".
The second problem with you theory of bribery is the offering bribes changes the structure of compensation dramatically. The expectation of receiving bribes becomes part of the expected total compensation for a position. But this gray money -- the delta between official compensation and bribes -- becomes a revenue stream that everyone above you on the hierarchy can and will tap into.
In practice this means you have to pay a huge bribe to get any job. Where I live, to get a job as a police officer, or a nurse, or a flight attendant, you have to pay a bribe to whoever is hiring. Not a small bribe. Like a year of salary. Which means either you come from a family rich enough to have that kind of money laying around or borrow money from a money-lender.
How do you get the money to pay back the money-lender? By taking bribes, of course.
Your boss knows approximately how much you're making in bribes each month and will expect you to pass it along every month. After all, he borrowed a ton of money to pay a bribe to get his promotion and needs to pay off that debt.
And if you're complaining about >10% of the total project cost going to bureaucratic processes, your idea would result in 30% or more of the total project cost going to bribery. Since that's exactly what happens here.
I second this description. Bribery and corruption in Vietnam is endemic. A new employee gets a job by paying their first year’s salary. That means they have to collect bribes to survive. After their first year collecting bribes, they habit is engrained.
Edit: I just noticed you are also in Vietnam. So sad for such an otherwise lovely place.
If people paying had no legal incentive to keep their bribe private after the fact, then accepting a bribe would be much riskier than it currently is in the US.
Once it became common knowledge that some officials were extracting bribes, it would be simple to jail them.
After all, if I paid a bribe, and it was legal to pay it, but illegal to receive it, I’d certainly document the payment as well as I could.
After the house was built, you can bet I’d try to recoup my funds, and also figuratively burn the county office to the ground by pursuing every option I could in the press and in court.
I don’t think I’m naive as you think. The officials in this area behave exactly as you describe. The difference in my situation is that, if there was concrete evidence of bribery at the planning office, it would be prosecuted and it would make headlines (just as the bribery case in the article did.)
Local governments that withhold building permits and corruption at PG&E have become so politically contentious that the state government has had to repeatedly intervene.
Can you be more specific? The experience I had with house construction permitting in a big California city was completely above-the-table and reasonable.
It looks like the iPads were for the department, not the guy's personal use. It's a little bit dubious given that it's the same agency asking for and receiving the benefit, but money is fungible. Suppose the Sheriff had insisted on iPads for some other department, like the schools.
Governments do stuff like this all the time. In fact constituents get mad when they don't. The Planning Commission is considered derelict in its duty if it just gives away a building permit without getting something good from the developer in return (park, street cleaning program, extra BMR units, promise to use union labor).
SFMTA considers corporate philanthropy, coverage of unprofitable neighborhoods, and low-income discount programs when deciding who gets the permit to run scooters in San Francisco.
If it is bribery when a government agency asks a permit applicant to spend a bit on the agency's mission, then there's a lot more to prosecute all over the Bay Area.
It's almost like the system of permits for concessions is actually a corrupting force in cities! In my city many development projects went ahead because of various promises (low income housing, cultural venues, etc) and the developer didn't follow through in any meaningful way - i.e. a theater was built, no shows ever took place there. Or low income housing was transitioned to market rate housing within 5 years.
But at least these things happened in public, through a semi-transparent process of development permits with public consultations. The process is semi-fixed, the incentives are off, but it's not a straight up bribe behind closed doors.
When it's the commissioners driving the negotiation, the sunlight angle is true. Often, though, it's the activist group which rallies speakers against the project and then negotiates with the developer privately. The developer makes a donation to the activist group, and then members appear at the next meeting to withdrawn their objection. I've seen the tail end of one of these in 3 or 4 of the ~25 planning meetings I've watched.
Issuing CCW permits isn't a negotiation of city land or development. It is literally a Driver's License for carrying a firearm in public. Should the DMV counter person get to haggle with every person trying to get a driver's license in the name of the public good?
Not against individuals, but against companies? Absolutely. There was a big push to do more "value capture" from the Big Tech commuter shuttle buses in exchange for permission to run on San Francisco streets. It was largely stymied by state law, which SF activists didn't quite have the momentum to change, but it was a big thing in local politics for a while.
The problem with San Francisco’s “value capture” ideas as seen on 48hills.org is that they often want to capture the value of the choice that has positive externalities (e.g. riding a bus down highway 101, or building housing) while not capturing the value of the choice that has negative externaltities (e.g. driving a private vehicle, or underutilizing land during a housing shortage). This blind spot often undermines their self-proclaimed label of “Progressive”.
Ironically, the article also compares buses to a “$250,000 fee San Francisco charges taxi operators for a medallion”. That’s a payout to the previous owner with an initial 5% transfer tax, not a fee, and it was actually a big mistake for the city to have made it a payout rather than “value captured” rent to the city (which could be adjusted), since the city is being sued and is about to go to trial for it (https://webapps.sftc.org/ci/CaseInfo.dll?CaseNum=CGC18565325).
Agree, and targeting a very small subset of companies would be a pretty hard bar to pass when they should be crafting laws that treat all commercial traffic fairly. I remember it all well, I follow bicycle and transportation stuff.
You’re making up stuff about things you don’t know about. Accepting gifts is always an issue in government, and often a serious crime for the employee, regardless of who benefits. Accepting or demanding compensation for official action is corruption, regardless of the beneficiary.
Negotiating public contracts, seeking public benefit, or enforcing requirements related to permitting is not bribery or corruption. You may not like poor people, public access to urban space, or union labor, but community standards based on law are not corruption.
Officials administrating the permitting process have discretion to act. The appointing authority ultimately controls them, and the people ultimately hold them accountable.
Go back to the original city council meeting where Jobs announces the new Apple headquarters. The council asks if they’ll be getting free Wi-Fi with the campus or anything. Not a straight up pay to play, but things like the above commenter described DO happen.
"Officials administrating the permitting process have discretion to act."
City councils are political bodies, and within their jurisdictions are the ultimate authority on what should and should not be allowed.
LEOs are employees of the state, and are meant to follow the dictates of the legislature or other political body that governs them.
If you want to negotiate a legitimate trade of public donation in exchange for a CCW, that needs to be done publicly through democratic and legal processes.
Better/cheaper municipal IT is the same kind of public benefit as more urban space or services for poor people. The sheriff's discretion over CCW is the same as the planning commission's discretion over construction.
I think both are slimy but neither are corruption, per se, both institutions are serving the public interest.
Quid pro quo for CCW permits is definitely bribery. Yes, there is a lot of negotiation and back scratching in govt, and a lot of it is unethical and illegal as well.
> Can't believe all the Apple apologists here. Bribing public officials is a crime, period.
Apple or no Apple, no one in America should be deprived of their Constitutional rights. I'm more concerned that authoritarian states like California can get away with depriving the people of our explicit rights under American law than I am with people paying bribes just to exercise those rights.
Apple leaders have spoken publicly in favor of such deprivations. It would be interesting to check whether the company itself has made contributions to that cause under the guise of charity.
Fair enough. It is their right. The nature of rights being what they are, the Apple execs can publicly call for eradication of others' rights and the would-be gun owners can get their guns without each other's approval, unless very exacting political-legal hurdles were overcome.
Was there any indication that one of these security personnel failed a background check? Used a straw purchaser or gun show loophole? Had friends and family worried about what he planned to do? Had an active domestic violence case?
Unless your state is open carry you do in fact need a permit to carry in public. In fact, some open carry states (ex Texas) still require a permit to do so.
I'm always frustrated but amused at how uninformed many of my fellow Americans are about the gun laws here (frequently it's the ones pushing for additional laws).
Gun activists have been waiting for a Supreme Court majority that actually does its job. I would expect people’s 2nd amendment rights to be restored in CA soon.
The key language from the courts is "reasonable regulation" on the use of firearms. That's a bit vague, but "we've created a process to let you concealed carry, but we won't actually issue a permit to anyone" pretty obviously fails the "reasonableness" test. If the restriction was that concealed carry is flat out illegal, that might actually be more legally tenable than this discretionary nonsense in places like the Bay Area. Of course, CCW regulations that are clearly limited to safety and competence with firearms and limit the discretion of issuing officials are almost certainly compatible with the Constitution.
Just for the sake of comparison, the rule that was struck down in DC v. Heller (which firmly established that the Constitution protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for defense, subject to reasonable regulation by the state) required gun owners to keep their weapons "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" at all times.
Bay Area Sheriffs withhold a constitutional right in the issuance of permits, which results in something of value being created that they can hold for political or financial favor.
Even if you disagree with concealed carry, 2/3 of the counties in CA will issue you a permit no problem that allows you to carry statewide. There is no reasonable argument for not issuing permits here.
I totally agree with you, but I think the clear implication of baryphonic's comment is that the State of CA was being "authoritarian" here by denying the permit, as opposed to the sheriffs dept. Which, I'd point out, doesn't make much sense given that it is in fact the State of California which is bringing the charges against these people in the sheriffs dept for demanding bribes in exchange for a constitutionally protected government service.
> I totally agree with you, but I think the clear implication of baryphonic's comment is that the State of CA was being "authoritarian" here by denying the permit, as opposed to the sheriffs dept.
I'd argue that the state is slightly authoritarian by allowing local officials such discretion, but that's more a matter of taste. However, if I was arrogant enough to think the Bay Area, LA and San Diego were representative of the entire state in terms of their approach to gun permits and this is actually not the case, then I apologize.
> Which, I'd point out, doesn't make much sense given that it is in fact the State of California which is bringing the charges against these people in the sheriffs dept for demanding bribes in exchange for a constitutionally protected government service.
Interesting framing. But the people who should have been entitled to these services and were coerced into paying bribes are also facing charges. The state's foremost goal appears be defending its own authority zealously, and worrying about things like legal rights after the dust settles.
California has the most stringent gun laws but also the a lowest gun violence death rate per capita.
More people were allowed to pursue the "life" option in the Declaration of Independence. The first item of unalienable rights our forefathers stated all people had.
What do you do when two rights directly infringe upon eachother?
26th in homicide according to wikipedia [0] but what is your point?
The 'typical' murder involves people that know each other and has a motive. Loose firearm regulations enable mass shootings [1][2] which are more indiscriminate.
Everyone has the right to bear arms but what do we do when that infringes on other peoples right to life? I think it's a cogent question.
> Everyone has the right to bear arms but what do we do when that infringes on other peoples right to life? I think it's a cogent question.
Clearly the state has laws against murder. And California even has laws that "enhance" sentencing criteria for anyone guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a felony.[1] Also, "mass shootings" are also illegal and are incredibly rare.
Also, I have a right to "property"/"pursuit of happiness" (per Fifth Amendment and the Declaration of Independence). In the Bay Area, if I leave my laptop in my trunk, it'll be stolen. If you leave CA (or at least the Bay Area) and visit a state with slightly looser restrictions, laptops can peacefully spend a dinner in the trunk without being stolen. I have to imagine that criminals who know they have very little to fear from armed ordinary citizens are emboldened by the restrictions on firearm ownership. By the logic above, the correlation (note: I have no data other than the ubiquitous "BRING YOUR LAPTOP INSIDE!!!" signs all over the place in the Bay Area) must mean that the state is neglecting a right to property, therefore the fun restrictions should be relaxed. Or maybe using aggregate statistics and correlations isn't the best approach to analyzing legal-political issues in the absence of a very strong signal.
I wonder, why is the auto-contents-theft thing so bad in the bay area? I’ve stopped even renting a car when I visit after two friends had separate break-ins on prior trips. Maybe I just got unlucky and these are anecdotes, but geish.
When California Proposition 47 passed in 2014 it reclassified many auto burglaries from felonies to misdemeanors. So DAs in many counties stopped prosecuting those.
Based on what is on the laptop possibly Texas, if the laptop had open access to your life savings or was your work laptop and one would lose a substantial sum given the loss of business from losing the laptop, or it held trade secrets then it may qualify as highly defensible property, in which case in Texas it would possibly not be prosecutable, but even those are long odds:
>the 'typical' murder involves people that know each other and has a motive. Loose firearm regulations enable mass shootings [1][2] which are more indiscriminate.
Mass shootings are a rounding errors and should not be used to motivate public policy. Catering to asinine edge cases like that is why we all have to take off our shoes when we fly.
If you want people to murder each other less then you need to reduce the size of the illegal economy (mostly drug trafficking) so that those industries can settle their disputes with contracts and court orders instead of violence. Basically everything else pales in comparison to that type of violence.
Don't worry. The government will be coming to restrict and backdoor your general purpose computer as well. Any device that could be hijacked by a botnet is a threat the utilities systems and to people's right to life.
I found those age adjusted rates some time after I posted. It strikes me as odd. I'm sure if we adjust by enough rates we can come to whatever conclusion we want. What if we adjusted for gang prevalence and suicide rate as well?
I would agree if California was a shall-issue state for CCW, but it's a may-issue state. Essentially it's arbitrarily up to the sheriffs department if you can get a CCW.
Personally, I chose to live in shall-issue states.
The sheriff's department wasn't allowed to refuse the permit for this reason, as evidenced by the fact that the officials involved are also being criminally charged for the bribery scheme.
They're being charged because it looks like they accepted a bribe, not because they refused a permit. If they hadn't paid there'd be nothing to charge them with.
If may-issue schemes are applied in a way that evaluates the individual case on neutral and non-discriminatory criteria, even if a subjective element of judgment exists, it certainly can comply with equal protection rights.
If they're applied in an unequal way, of course that's different.
Courts are very familiar with adjudicating such ambiguity and have been throughout history. They simply have to avoid discriminating in ways that violate the law, but other forms of subjectivity.
As a stupid but illustrative hypothetical example, if the official decides each morning whether he will approve all CCW applications he sees that day or none of them based on a die roll before leaving home, and then unilaterally changes it a month later to go based on whether the last digit of the local CBS affiliate's high temperature forecast from the 7am newscast is odd or even, these stupid rules and rule changes would be completely compliant with the equal protection clause.
It's probably illegal, agreed, but because it wouldn't pass even the rational basis test for a Second Amendment infringement. It definitely wouldn't violate the equal protection rights.
I don't believe the legislature has to specify the criteria used, if they explicitly give the local officials discretion, but their criteria do have to have some rational objective.
It's just like employment discrimination. In an at-will-employment jurisdiction, my boss is free to arbitrarily fire me, but cannot specifically fire me for e.g. my race.
(How do you tell the difference? Well, as in this case, usually people leave some sort of evidence, and the legal system has a process for demanding evidence and evaluating it. It's not perfect, but it's certainly not unenforceable.)
You’ve got it backwards. Instances where they do leave evidence are the exception, not the norm. Which is why the anti discrimination laws are somewhat toothless and the government tries to look for statistical evidence of discrimination.
Sort of. I kind of hate that reckless driving law since it is somewhat subjective. Each state should have case law about it and allow you your due process rights to challenge it too. But yeah, I can see in the context of the test that it could be a problem. If you record the test, then you should be able to challenge it (sad it sometimes comes to that).
I'm in a similar situation, actually. I had a trooper lie in court and even admit to it in the complaint investigation, but the investigator (another trooper) said it must be a misunderstanding. I'm curious how intentionally lying to cover up your mistake (exculpatory evidence) is a misunderstanding as a civil rights violation under Brady v MD, but I also don't want to get 'suicided'.
It would be extremely difficult to define all driving rules objectively even if you had extremely high resolution data of the car and its surroundings. Approximately as difficult as programming a fully autonomous car, I reckon.
That’s not the case. There are tons of driving laws that are based essentially on a subjective idea of what is safe or reasonable. Laws about cargo being secured safely. Laws about the driver’s view not being unreasonably obstructed. Laws about the driver being distracted. Laws about exercising appropriate caution in response to traffic, weather and road conditions, the presence of pedestrians and other dangers and obstacles, etc. There are tons.
> Can't believe all the Apple apologists here. Bribing public officials is a crime, period.
This is absolutely true. Soliciting a bribe, as a public official, however, is a much (much!) worse crime. And that seems to be what happened here.
Absent more detail, I think I'm willing to buy that Moyer was just a normal corporate executive faced with trying to work around a corrupt bureaucracy. But yeah, more detail could change that.
In some countries, seeking bribes is a crime, but giving in to a demand for bribe is not. That seems fairer. When you became a public official you agreed to perform your job dutifully. If a public official refuses to perform his job unless a citizen provides him with a bribe, then it seems like the citizen was forced into bribery by the public official. How is it then fair to hold the hapless citizen responsible for the crime?
We are talking about a high-ranking Apple executive who needed concealed carry permits. This guy literally runs a private global army. Let's not pretend he was scared for his life. He just chose to do what was easy for himself and the company (pay some pocket change) rather than take any possible legal route.
He was in charge of the executive protection team. They are armed because leaders of well known companies face constant threats and are kidnapping targets (Apple would obviously pay countless sums to get Tim Cook back safely for example).
The Bay Area and New York are notorious for withholding permits because it creates artificial scarcity, and off-duty cops are the only ones able to fill the demand.
That's exactly what's happening. Just because Apple/the head of security doesn't want to pay off duty/retired police who have CCW permits because of their LEO jobs, it doesn't mean that isn't completely relevant to the CCW issuance situation.
Hmm. From the article this wasn't a payment of cash to an official. It was a donation in kind to the police dept. I don't know any more than is reported in the article but I will say that some years ago I was subject to a similar "offer". Much smaller in scope, and the official wasn't in law enforcement, but similar enough in essence. At the time I thought it a little weird but also assumed "that must be how things work here". I passed because the cost wasn't worth the benefit to me. I certainly did not think that I should go inform the police that this official had solicited a bribe.
As a huge fan (with ink on my skin since 2000) and as a former employee, I’m deeply disappointed. I’m sad for the company’s employees who have to live with guilt by association. I know that the people there believe in what they do and their work has been tainted. For shame.
Slightly offhand, I wonder how this will alter Apple’s security approach down the line. Not whether they believe in security, but the right road to get there if there’s a shakeup.
Indeed. When Apple become extortionist you go to another handset maker, when the government becomes extortionist you either pay or go to jail. There is a scale of Evil.
The fact that a bribe is necessary is the problem. The second amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms and the “may issue” vs “shall issue” permitting process is a direct affront to that right. Anyone that meets the legal requirements for a permit should be entitled to one. It shouldn’t be up to the discretion of a public official to anoint chosen ones based on their own personal feelings. Either requirements are met or not. But a public official shouldn’t be evaluating “need.” That’s not the Jon of the public official. That would be like a public official deciding one media outlet should be allowed to publish and another one denied. Equal protection is violated. Two people with identically clean backgrounds should not have one person awarded a permit and another denied. To get a drivers license, you don’t have to prove a need to drive: you pass the test and pay the fee and you are good. And unlike driving, keeping and bearing a firearm is constitutionally protected.
Well, it does make a legal difference as entrapment would invalidate the legal case against him. (I have no evidence this is what happened here--just pointing out a poor choice of words!)
If California had reasonable laws around guns then they could do this stuff completely legally. You don't need apologism to protest the ridiculousness of this.
Whether or not you initiated a bribe does not defend your participation in it. True
But ignoring the balance of power for, what appears to be, a reason to hate on Apple is just daft. Shockingly so.
A police offer demanding a bribe is not the same as a police officer accepting one. Just ignores the entire social dynamic of humans. Power dynamics are the central theme of human relationships. This is just a weird form of victim blaming, though not for a moment am I suggesting anyone is innocent here.
The Undersheriff should be crucified as a means of deterrence. You can't have positions of power occupied by those seeking to corrupt them. Which, I think, is not far off your argument, you just want to seem to needlessly drag Apple into this.
They weren't involved, beyond their employee basically stealing their stock. Is that somehow their fault? Should we charge them with criminal negligence for trusting someone? That's not going to have long term consequences for whistleblowers at all
It’s a reminder that most people think that as soon as the system isn’t fair or someone does something bad to you, it is now ethical for you to use any means to get what you think you deserve.
It's actually a reminder that most people think that when the state violates their fundamental rights they have a right to get their rights back by any means possible.
Indeed. I think this wasn’t a matter of Apple or the employee paying a bribe, but of the employee receiving one in exchange for stealing hardware from Apple.
I read the story as:
- Head of security team contacts police to get concealed carrying permits for his employees
- Police officer says “if Apple gives us 200 iPads, that can be arranged. On top of that, you’ll get $X”.
- Head of security team agrees, signs of for the Apple hardware, and receives a bribe.
If so, Apple was the only one paying, but the company probably wouldn’t have known about that (possibly, multiple employees would)
If this were the police asking for iPads in exchange for permits, I would call it extortion, not bribery.
> If so, Apple was the only one paying, but the company probably wouldn’t have known about that (possibly, multiple employees would)
If an Apple executive was the one running the entire thing, how is the argument that the company wasn't aware of it? What even is "the company" at this point?
That’s a gray area, but in this case (200 iPads worth about $75,000 versus a company that has a net income of over a hundred million a day, thousands of employees (even disregarding those working in their stores) and top-level execs that, probably, make over $75,000 net every week), I think it’s a safe bet it didn’t go really high up the chain.
Of course, that can change if it turns out Tim Cook knew about this. That would surprise me a lot, though.
The individual was arranging a donation to be provided by the company, which only didn't happen because of the investigation itself. That is, the bribe would have been paid by Apple.
Either of these standards would probably apply to a head of security who commits the crime as part of seeking concealed carry permits for an Apple security team.
Maybe the news article was being informal, or maybe they specifically wanted to carry concealed and not open. It still seems like whatever was being requested was on behalf of the security team he was overseeing as his primary job duty at Apple.
It's possible the journalist was wrong, but I believe the BSIS issues the professional license, not the sherriff. Open or concealed doesn't matter when it's for armed employment - the license from BSIS is what's needed. So it seems this was for personal CCW.
Edit: Never mind. CA is super stupid and requires a state license to carry a firearm for employment but would then also require a license from the sheriff to conceal it.
And head security guard is very different from head of security. The laws attributing liability to the company don't only apply to actions of chief executive - Apple head of security would definitely qualify.
It absolutely benefits them. Nearly all executive protection teams are concealing. There is no public concealed carry of firearms in CA outside your property without a CCW. There is no parallel professional license that will allow you to do so in public. This is part of what lead to this weird situation for Apple.
No one is debating that, and the BSIS standards are absurdly low and they are available to everyone. There is no taint in the process for BSIS issuance that has been raised.
And this article isn't about bribing for BSIS licenses, it's about bribing for CCWs. So if the BSIS license is the one needed for professional carry, the CCW is moot from the company's perspective.
Because you don't just randomly cough up a couple hundred anything from a company like Apple without it appearing on the books somewhere.
If it didn't appear on the books anywhere, then it sounds like Apple gave this department a quite significant "petty cash" fund and used this guy and department to do unsavory things so that the higher-ups can have plausible deniability.
A legitimate "charity/donation" request will get transferred to the "charity/donation" department with appropriate paperwork.
A bribe like this will get buried into somebody's "untracked cash" account.
The problem is that this is "Standard Operating Procedure" for "Security" departments as they're generally ex-police themselves. That's why they didn't think anything of it.
If this went to the proper channels it would IMMEDIATELY get flagged for conflict-of-interest.
All these big company "security chiefs" run in the same circle. It simply became known that the easiest way to get your CCW was bribery.
They already got folks at Facebook. Now Apple. They're going to get more.
And I love the quote that this is about the rivalry between "Rosen and Sheriff Smith." As we have repeatedly seen, even when the DA and Sheriff hate each other, the DA doesn't go after the police. If the DA is making a move, the Feds are already involved behind the scenes forcing the DA to move.
I suspect this fell out of some Federal security contract or a Federal security clearance background check for somebody.
I don't know if it's just a bribe either--who knows what they did to those iPads, I'm sure information from the police could be used for political gain.
Is it still a bribe when the public official initiates it? I hope they all get into trouble but I do wonder, when faced with a corrupt public official who is withholding government-provided services, at some point does that not simply become the necessary payment as opposed to a "bribe"?
It's always a bribe. In places without a fully-functional rule of law, it may also be the necessary payment (i.e., the payment of bribes may be expected to conduct business or get through a checkpoint or whatever), but it's still a bribe.
Really? HN has been a den of Apple, Microsoft, etc worship for a while now. In another thread on the frontpage, people are encouraging people to buy Apple TV. It's partly the social media PR teams these companies hire, it's the advertising and it's also the type of people HN attracts. It's sickening but what can you do.
No "computer enthusiast" is enthusiastic about apple. People who used apple products are generally laughed at by computer enthusiasts. Apple products are for non computer enthusiasts. Apple products are for sheep. Computer enthusiastics either build their own computer or buy cheap PCs and throw linux, bsd, etc on there.
> yes; a forum for computer enthusiasts filled with people enthusiastic about computers.... what has this place come to indeed
Oh sure, there's 0 difference between proprietary black box software and free/libre open source... give me a break.
Tech's Great-Man theory has society idolizing Silicon Valley monopolizers:
"In the movie Steve Jobs, a character asks, “So how come 10 times in a day I read ‘Steve Jobs is a genius?’” The great man reputation that envelops Jobs is just part of a larger mythology of the role that Silicon Valley, and indeed the entire U.S. private sector, has played in technology innovation. We idolize tech entrepreneurs like Jobs, and credit them for most of the growth in our economy. But University of Sussex economist Mariana Mazzucato, who has just published a new U.S. edition of her book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, makes a timely argument that it is the government, not venture capitalists and tech visionaries, that have been heroic.
“Every major technological change in recent years traces most of its funding back to the state,” says Mazzucato. Even “early stage” private-sector VCs come in much later, after the big breakthroughs have been made. For example, she notes, “The National Institutes of Health have spent almost a trillion dollars since their founding on the research that created both the pharmaceutical and the biotech sectors–with venture capitalists only entering biotech once the red carpet was laid down in the 1980s. We pretend that the government was at best just in the background creating the basic conditions (skills, infrastructure, basic science). But the truth is that the involvement required massive risk taking along the entire innovation chain: basic research, applied research and early stage financing of companies themselves.” The Silicon Valley VC model, which has typically dictated that financiers exit within 5 years or so, simply isn’t patient enough to create game changing innovation." [1]
What’s funny is he still accepted it, but he gave it to you. Seems like he was either not up on his ethics, or he just wanted to appear ethical.
He could have refused the gift. But not sure what California’s rule is, but I expect that accepting nominal gifts under a low dollar threshold is allowed.
Holy cow, the limit for local officials in California is $500 per year from a single source. [0]
That seems really high to me and seems that it’s completely legal for this official to get $500 from each applicant, given that it’s done in a deniable manner.
I've lived in the Bay Area most of my life. It's well known the only way to get CCW permits in the Bay Area is to "donate" to the local county sheriff. I'm surprised someone was actually caught. I moved to Washington and got my concealed carry in a few months after filling out paperwork. No "donations" required.
I'd assume individuals who want a permit vs campus with concentrated amounts of high-net-worth individuals is a different problem. I can't fathom why anyone would want to live in a place where they themselves need a CCW permit to feel safe.
It seems likely that different folks may have different needs or wishes or different circumstances and that "feeling safe" isn't the only reason one may want such a permit.
I have an amateur radio license for no particular reason. I haven't really used it in a decade but that doesn't stop me from renewing. I could imagine folks holding a CCW mostly just because they can.
Personally. I don’t want to live in a place where people are expecting fire.
A CCW isn’t about “feeling” safe. It’s about recognizing that the police/government might not be able to protect you (and has no duty to) if you need it.
It is your civil right to keep and bear arms. I’m not sure you would buy the your own argument if it was on any other right besides guns.
2. Stopping is the goal, it’s just that sometimes that means killing... but...
3. Is killing is always wrong? Almost every society and religion has a concept of justified homicide. Sometimes people can act in a way that forfeits their right to walk among us. I don’t accept “guns can kill” is an argument against guns. It’s basically the feature that makes them so desirable for defense. When you have a life or death problem, you are going to call a cop because they will bring a gun. Some of us are skipping that middleman for efficiency.
I’ve made good in my soul that I can take a life if it meant defense of self, family, or other. If you can’t do that, then by all means don’t own a firearm, no one will force you to. We just ask you don’t try and make that decision for us.
They can probably use a very limited type of weapon, none of the crazy weapons you can buy nowadays are necessary
> Some people are head of security for large corporations that run into all manner of physical threats, potential kidnappings or literal geopolitical adversaries
I'd assume that in these special cases you'd have highly trained individuals who would hold very expensive licenses instead of... anyone being able to take such a job.
> Some people are former police or some other kind of sheepdog
You know, this situation is what we're talking about here. As for "special training" -you do realize that the special training police receive in firearms is more or less "how to kill people more efficiently," right? Exactly the same training given to civilian holders of concealed carry licenses in the US in states that require them. Seems kind of messed up that a guy with a genuine need can only get what he needs by bribing sherrifs. Looking at his background I don't think he needs much more training.
FWIIW you don't need any training in my state to carry a pistol. In fact you don't even need a license (you will be issued one if you're a non-felon for use in other states). It causes zero problems, my state has the third lowest crime rate in the country. The two lower crime states in the country, we share borders and gun laws with.
Concealed carry permits in California are the literal definition of privilege, "private law". If you're famous, rich, or the sheriff's friend, you can get one. Otherwise, you can pay a couple hundred bucks to apply and get told no. Rules for thee but not for me.
I live in New Mexico where I could get a CCW permit essentially guaranteed if I spent $100 on a weekend course. I don't have one, because I don't really feel a need for one--but I could get one if I wanted, just like anyone else in the state. I find it abhorrent that in California, you can only get a permit if you're well-connected: see Dianne Feinstein being the only CCW-holder in San Francisco for years while simultaneously pushing for stronger gun control.
Feinstein claims that she no longer has a CCW permit, but that she once did. So while Feinstein once probably had most or all of the CCW permits issued in SF county, that is no longer true.
yeah, WI has some pretty insanely lax gun laws. It took me <30 min to buy my first handgun. I don't have a CCW yet, but it's $150~ and half a days worth of online courses and some paperwork.
The most bizarre thing to me is that background checks aren't required for private firearm sales.
I feel like there should be a waiting period for your first gun, to reduce the risk of someone in crisis buying one. But once you own a gun, the risk of your second gun seems negligible to me.
But yeah, no background checks on private gun sales is insane. No idea why that's legal anywhere.
IMO there should be a mandatory waiting period of 24-48 hours for any firearm, but you should be able to start the process over the phone/online etc.
Alternatively, require training + passing an exam similar to getting a drivers license for owning anything except a manual long-barrel rifle or shotgun. Semi-auto firearms especially should require licensing/training IMO. Restrictions on magazine size or appearance ("assault rifle" lol) are generally dumb and fail to address real problems. I think it's reasonable to know who probably has a gun (ie. through a license program), but I'm generally against mandatory gun registration (though voluntary registration is fine).
Typically speaking waiting periods are about reducing the risk of someone in a crisis purchasing a firearm and immediately using it for harm, usually either suicide or domestic violence. From a public health perspective there is very little increase in danger for someone buying a second gun, especially of the same type. All of the risk is for their first firearm.
IIRC licensing programs for handguns typically have shown promising results in reducing firearm suicide in particular, but they're also unpopular for predictable political reasons. If you're pro-firearm, there is very little difference between "you have to register your gun" and "you have to register to buy a gun".
> Typically speaking waiting periods are about reducing the risk of someone in a crisis purchasing a firearm and immediately using it for harm, usually either suicide or domestic violence. From a public health perspective there is very little increase in danger for someone buying a second gun, especially of the same type. All of the risk is for their first firearm.
This assumes that people don't get rid of firearms or have changes in mental health. There doesn't seem to be much of a justifiable reason to get a gun on short notice, so why not just apply it universally?
> If you're pro-firearm, there is very little difference between "you have to register your gun" and "you have to register to buy a gun".
I'm pro firearm. I'm also vehemently pro education. If you need a license to prove you can safely operate a motor vehicle, you should need a license to purchase a semi-automatic weapon IMO.
I disagree, there is a functional difference between licensing gun owners vs registering guns. One tracks that an owner has gone through training and is authorized to purchase certain types of weapons. It doesn't concretely determine whether they own, or have ever owned a firearm, just like a driver's license does not determine that I own, or have ever owned a motor vehicle (just that I was able to borrow one for the duration of my practical exam). Further, mandatory registration of firearms would include things such as purchase date, serial number, model, location of purchase, etc., which is actually new information that could be potentially used to track and confiscate firearms under certain circumstances. I'd also like to point out that a background check gives more info about the purchase of firearms than a license would. It tells: the date of purchase, the rough type of firearm (handgun vs anything else, at least in WI), and the location of purchase.
You know, I wanted to prove you wrong about the car licensing vs gun licensing thing by comparing deaths and honestly I proved myself wrong basically. For as little as you deal with a firearm on a day to day basis as opposed to a vehicle, their death tolls per year are very similar. The simple fact that we drive 2 ton + vehicles everyday and not kill eachother constantly is a testament to either A. constant use and exposure aids in safety B. gun safety just isn't a thing C. guns are mostly used for suicides and crime
Generally people who are going to make rash decisions and plan them out acquire firearms in any way their allowed. If it means waiting a day, they will do it. Just because some arbitrary law exists doesn't mean it'll delay or prevent the inevitable. With suicidal and depressive types as well. They aren't like homer simpson purchasing a firearm thinking "aww, I'm suicidal now!" They're pretty much at the breaking point if that happens and literally nothing short of imprisonment can stop them.
That’s actually not true. One of the things we understand about suicide is that it’s often an impulse decision, and access to immediate and reliable means of suicide has a huge impact on overall suicide rates. Even moderate barriers to suicide can actually permanently reduce the rate of suicide in a population. It’s been repeatedly shown that when one method of suicide is made harder, the decrease in that method are not completely offset by other methods.
So when we do seemingly minor things like eliminating CO in domestic gas (“head in oven” was a common suicide method due to CO), increasing the height of railings on a bridge, or even making someone purchasing their first firearm wait a few days, this can often have a significant impact on whether someone actually ends up killing themselves. Suicide isn’t at all inevitable like you say.
What you and professionals consider an "impulsive decision," many depressive types have been considering or have considered but never told anybody for a long time. It only seems impulsive to you because it appears to be random. If anybody has any understanding of human psyche when they're depressed, they would know it's something you plan but play pretend to others so they don't suspect you need to be "locked up for your own good," as what tends to happen to people who try to seek help.
Mental health problems don't persist simply because people can easily buy guns and kill themselves. They continue because people are afraid their going to have their liberties taken away simply because they want help.
While I understand what you're getting it, typically your first gun isn't when the crisis occurs. Especially here unfortunately. Plus a lot of gun culture is tied to hunting culture.
I actually gave a gun to the police once cause I didn't want a rifle anymore (it was just a cheap mosin) and I could tell the cop was holding back a grin of disbelief the entire time. $5 bucks says it's in his gun locker right now at home.
How? I truly do not go to states where open carry is a thing, for example. Guns are a controversial topic and I'm not the only one who would rather see them banned than legally purchasable.
That's a reasonable policy position to take. "You shouldn't live anywhere where you think CCW is a good idea" is not a policy position; you're just attacking someone else for either where they live or how they feel about their personal safety. Neither of those are terribly polite, and both are counterproductive towards your stated policy preferences. Nobody likes being looked down on.
It's not okay to accept corruption for a license you personally don't want. The license should either be not available, or shall issue. Anything else is saying "it's fine if public officials get to extort those citizens, because it's not over something I want".
A few years back, we had a snowstorm that knocked out power for 7 days. Knocking out power for 7 days meant our electric well pump didn't work. Our electric well pump not working meant that we didn't have water. We were snowed in with about 6 feet of snow, so roads weren't passable, so I couldn't go and get water, or food, or charcoal to cook the food with.
My neighbor had supplies and was generous enough to share them with me. While we wouldn't obviously wouldn't have died without access to the rest of the world for 3 or four days, it would have been very uncomfortable to endure without any food or water, and that's relative to the discomfort we already had without heat, wherein we literally spent large swaths of the day under every blanket we had, huddled together for heat we also didn't have without electricity.
The next house I bought had a fireplace. We stock wood to be prepared for the unlikely catastrophe of having to endure prolonged absence of electricity.
We put fire-specific extinguishers in our kitchen, our garage, and our basement to protect against the unlikely catastrophe of fire.
We keep 10 gallons of water in the basement to protect against the unlikely catastrophe of losing electricity, and the usage of our well pump.
We keep first aid kits with bandages and neosporin in the bathrooms of our house to protect against knife cuts, or puncture wounds, or glass breaks that draw blood.
We keep a few days worth of canned goods to protect against food shortage.
We keep charcoal to protect against the inability to use our stove, and I have fire-making equipment (ferro rods, a high carbon knife, flints, emergency matches, birthday candles, charcloth) for use while camping or backpacking, but I always maintain an abundance -- just in case.
Many people do much of the above: Almost everyone has a fire extinguisher, or a first aid kit, some canned goods. The government recommends these things, in fact, and there's a run on things like these (and generators, and foodstuffs) before every natural emergency. Many people also maintain gardens for sustainability.
Whether or not those things make people "feel safe" is not even in the same category, but I'd argue that it makes many people feel safe to know that they have their own food and water and heat should the system demand it. You're arbitrarily drawing a line at guns and shaming people for wanting to protect against unlikely catastrophes it may defend against.
The wide availability of guns seems to be one of the major underlying reasons for the evil police. Taking them away wouldn't magically fix things, but it would help keep things from regressing after fixing the more direct problems
>The wide availability of guns seems to be one of the major underlying reasons for the evil police.
What?
Wrongful police shootings may dominate the headlines but they are a rounding error compared to asset forfeiture abuse, discriminatory enforcement, lesser forms of police violence and good ol' influence peddling. For everyone that's shot for no good reason there's hundreds of people who are unnecessarily roughed up, tazed or just have their money taken under color of law (I consider a fishing stop that ends in a BS ticket instead of a warning to be in the latter category).
My favorite is how cops in CA are allowed to buy off-roster guns[0]. Apparently a Glock 19 Gen 5 is just too dangerous for citizens (but a Gen 3 is fine), however cops are allowed to own them personally because ... reasons.
0 - CA has a roster of handguns legal for private purchase and ownership. The list includes every gun that was for sale when the roster was created, plus any gun that meets CA's microstamping law. The second list is exactly 0 guns long; both because it's not clear if it's technically possible, and because gun companies have no interest in playing along. The result is that there are all kinds of arbitrary restrictions on guns based on the date, not anything even vaguely related to public safety. Oh, and guns eventually fall off the roster after a certain grace period, so eventually there will be no handguns legally for sale in CA barring a change to the law or a court case.
Unbelievable capricious enforcement of a may issue permitting regime, asking for and receiving bribes! For those who don't know, in many other States a carry permit must be issued by the issuing authority unless the applicant is disqualified for reasons stated in the law.
The irony is these Apple employees previously could have sought and obtained certain out of state licenses by passing the tests and qualifications. Those licenses would have been recognized in much of the country outside of California. However, now once convicted they will be ineligible under Federal and State laws to even possess a firearm for the rest of their lives.
It’s insane that shall-issue is not the defacto standard. If you meet the requirements (not a felon etc) for exercising what is unarguably a constitutional right your participation in said right should not be at the gov’s leisure.
There is an argument to be made that licensing in general is a poll tax. There is an equal protection argument against not recognizing permits issued to out of State residents who meet the same standards except for residency. Sadly, I am not holding my breath to see either come to the test.
Can you please make the argument that licensing in general is a poll tax? This statement seems very outlandish to me and I cannot find any papers or articles to support it.
The equal protection argument also seems incorrect to me. If this were the case, states would be under scrutiny for basically any discrepancy between their laws. Why should voters in Texas be required to show IDs when those in California aren't? Why should drivers in Wisconsin keep getting their license back after their 5th DUI when people in another state lose it after 2?
Here is a simple argument to support that stance. Under the 2nd amendment I have the constitutional right to bear arms. If I want to purchase a suppressor to limit hearing damage while firing my weapons I have to pay a $200 tax, send my fingerprints to the FBI and wait 6 months to a year and sometimes longer before I can take possession of my suppressor. There are no similar restrictions on the right to vote or speak freely. The same rules apply if I wanted to add a stock to my AR 'pistol' which currently has a pistol brace or if I wanted to add a small piece of metal to make it fully automatic.
I still do not see how any of these things are a poll tax. A poll tax is something that inhibits your right to vote by charging you money. For example, requiring a government-issued ID may be construed as a poll tax.
Are you arguing that regulations and taxes on guns and accessories are LIKE a poll tax because they inhibit exercising your interpretation of the 2nd amendment? If that is the case, I would argue that it is different as the 24th amendment specifically outlaws poll taxes and there is no similar law or amendment around firearm accessories.
Yes, I was arguing that they are like a poll tax. The 24th is a very good point. Is the right to vote even explicitly stated in the constitution? Is that why the 24th was required to prevent poll taxes?
And if Apple Security wasn't qualified in the eyes of this Sheriff's office then what chance does a person of regular means or small business owner have!? None, nothing!
You are putting everyone else in danger when you start carrying weapons, as an ex-resident of the bay I'm really happy that the rules are against weapons in general
How exactly? IMHO, sf would be a lot safer if the criminals would have at least the concept that someone could respond to their violence with equal violence.
Today, aside from the slim chance of being caught by an unengaged police force, the cost is zero.
But hey, if you live in an ivory tower, why let the common folk have a right to bear arms? Doesn't that sound elitist to you?
A certain someone by the name of Ronald Reagan (yeah... that guy... the one worshiped by conservatives) signed the Mulford Act into law to keep Black Panthers from open carrying guns. California's history on gun control seems oddly classist and racist when you think about it.
Wait, what chaos are you referring to? I'm simply stating that the right to bear arms is enshrined in the US Constitution and it's wrong that the Sheriff is acting as some kind of gatekeeper on who should be allowed to exercise their rights, beyond what is codified in law. That's all I'm really pointing out here, in line with the article posted here.
Frankly, we could definitely go into comparing other countries and how they handle this compared to the US, but this is an entirely different can of worms I can't really do justice here in an HN comments section.
I may suggest checking out /r/gunpolitics on reddit, or if you're aligned with liberal or leftist ideology, I strongly recommend /r/liberalgunowners and /r/SocialistRA for more information. I frequent those spaces often.
Finally, for all the news does to point out violent crimes committed with firearms, there are numerous defensive uses of guns that occur nearly every single day that slip under the radar. /r/dgu on reddit can show you some examples there.
I was referring to your 'well-armed society is a polite society'.
All this energy put into trying to say that "increasing gun ownership will somehow decrease crime" is frustrating because it clearly is missing the forest for the trees. None of the explanations seem to apply when looking at other countries in the world.
And.... like.... nobody's wallet is worth another person's life.
As a quick note, I appreciate the candor of your responses. And, I understand the sentiment you point out about a wallet not being worth another person's life. But sadly, not everyone necessarily will take your cash and dash. I'm really mostly focused on someone who is determined to leave you dead for one reason or another.
And of course, use of a gun, even defensively, should only be a last resort. I'm not advocating that everyone become Rambo and shoot their way through problems. Every action has a consequence, and whether you were justified in your shooting or not, the jury will decide that in their deliberation of the evidence.
I can't agree more. Simply put, even if you do manage to get a thumb up from the Sheriff in California for a permit, the fees really are a tax on the poor as well.
That depends on what you define as a "mass shooting". Some of the statistics turn out to be playing a game of sleight of hand, defining events that really shouldn't be classified as a mass shooting as a mass shooting. Most of that talk is to get the peanut gallery up in a tizzy about a problem that is far less dire than suggested.
Here's a link to some data being combed from 2019.
Frankly, I think we could stand to increase education around the issue of guns, mental health, and personal responsibility, rather than trying to reflexively legislate away access to firearms, which primarily affects law abiding citizens and not criminals.
I asked my grandfather about that. He came back with a story how one time he and his dad went into town and found out that the Pharmacist shot the Postman and killed him. said there was blood in the street. That was outside of Memphis in 1910.
So yeah all nice in thoery, in practice men kill each other over stupid things.
>So yeah all nice in thoery, in practice men kill each other over stupid things.
And your point? Murder is illegal and punishable if it's not considered "justified homicide" under a court of law. But murder being illegal never stopped some folks from committing the act anyway.
Personally, I'd rather have an insurance policy on hand if needed in case a nut decides to want to attempt to cause me undue harm. When seconds count, the police are minutes away.
Guns are easy to get for criminals, in SF they are hard to get for law abiding citizens.
So yes, if people who follow the law can equalize force with criminals, the criminals would consider more careful applying their force indiscriminately.
This story reads straight out like the kind of scenario we have in our yearly mandatory ethics and anti-corruption training:
"You're conducting some business with [public institution] and the person you're talking with would like your company to donate something to the local charity. What do you do?"
Interesting to see that those hypothetical scenarios aren't so hypothetical.
But, this is common practice where there are ‘may issue’ CCW permits. Either have shall issue, or no issue. Having the sheriff decide just creates a valuable commodity.
What's even more galling is that if I were personally caught in such a situation as an IC, I would have been fired instantly. That he is the head of ethics compliance at Apple makes it even more galling, especially given that the company forces everyone through this kind of training when really only management & leadership violations of these ethics trainings can possibly get the company into serious trouble.
> He has overall responsibility for Apple’s ethics and compliance program including Apple’s Business Conduct Policy, governing the ethical and legal obligations of Apple’s Board, executives and over 130,000 employees around the world,
A delivery of 200 iPads as a bribe to get CCW permits makes me think it's more involved. Although this may be with his discretionary power, it's shocking to me that the donation was aborted as soon as warrants went out. I'd like to better understand what happened at Apple.
Beyond the problem of "may issue" permits you raise, I'd love to remove this kind of discretion for discovery. For example, when bringing charges like this the DA must be obligated to initiate discovery of the company documents to investigate how far reaching the problem may be (settlements can't begin to be negotiated until the DA completes discovery).
On the other hand, I think he’s in difficult position given that this kind of shakedown is common practice.
What’s especially absurd is that there are many people who carry concealed guns into the Bay Area legally every day, who just happen to live in counties where CCW’s are easily approved.
> who just happen to live in counties where CCW’s are easily approved.
I wonder what the legal implications of "moving for CCW" would look like. In Florida, you just have to notify the state that you moved... do a little scoot to the right county, get the CCW, move back.
This could be a hot fangled startup, "GunCCW"... "move to where you get your rights". Wonder what the legal penalty for letting someone change their address to your house for a bit would look like.
Quite so, along with this clause of the 14th Amendment: "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
I'm not alone in thinking that California's oppressive may-issue CCW laws deny citizens the equal protection of the law guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, and would welcome Federal intervention in this specific instance.
States still have their own laws regarding legal procedure and speech rights, and they do vary by state. Those overarching rights are still a patchwork between states. Many states give protections that go beyond the requirements in the US Constitution -- this is completely legal and not uncommon. The Bill of Rights mainly defines which laws are illegal -- it does not prescribe what is legal.
This is currently what is the case with shall-issue vs may-issue, at least until SCOTUS clarifies otherwise.
SCOTUS has not ruled on this issue, so it is technically undetermined. SCOTUS has ruled in other cases that there are some situations where people can be denied those rights legally, so determining the outcome is not as simple as reading the text. SCOTUS generally evaluates the law in a broader context than just the written text.
How Grand Juries work is up to the states. They vary a lot. Even how regular juries work is up to the states eg: Oregon doesn't require unanimous verdict. I am sure you can dig into 1st amendment and find differences across the states. I am sure states have laws on how and where you can petition.
1. It sort of is. The prevailing founding arguments for federalism was as a check against the national government.
Even today, 35 states contradict the federal government's regulation that states marijuana has "no currently accepted medical use"
2. Only SCOTUS can definitively say whether or not may-issue contradicts the 2nd.
But shall-issue permits are only common in the first place because states were allowed to independently try it out. Up until the mid-90s, almost all states were either may-issue or no-issue.
Of course, concealed carry restrictions aren't the only gun laws in the country, but I have to admit I'm just not very informed on any others. I do know California's handgun registry has gotten stricter.
Her Majesty Laurie only bestows a few CCWs to a handful of business people and her buddies. People can apply for CCWs all they want, but she'll never issue them willingly. She's a bureaucrat and a crook keeping the populace defenseless and maintaining LE job security.
Imagining getting indicted for having to bribe a local official to exercise an essential right, specifically listed in the Bill of Rights, and held up repeatedly in the courts (Hello DC v. Heller).
It's a situation where there are two classes, the haves and have nots. If you aren't politically connected in NJ, NY, CA, etc - good luck. If you exercise these rights, you will end up in a prison cell.
Even places like PA - a very gun friendly state - this is working its way through the courts for other reasons. For example, in Philadelphia they have closed the permitting office repeatedly for COVID, bystepping the law which requires them to issue a permit in 45 days, by simply not accepting applications.
That's America.
I can only hope the SCOTUS will take up new cases on this.
> For example, in Philadelphia they have closed the permitting office repeatedly for COVID, bystepping the law which requires them to issue a permit in 45 days, by simply not accepting applications.
This was a HUGE deal in the PA gun community, and I simply cannot understand why.
1. PA extended the expiration date on existing permits that expired after February until Dec 31. It was only new permits requests where the delay actually effected anyone.
2. The delays weren't specific to guns. Government offices closed and then opened at reduced capacity. This also happened for DLs.
3. The remedy provided by the state was also not specific to guns. Again, e.g., expiring driver's licenses were extended.
4. The state's choice not to prioritize streamlining this paperwork was reasonable. It had huge budget shortfalls and more important things to worry about (acquiring/distributing PPE, acquiring/distributing respirators, high unemployment, evictions, running elections, finding overflow space for hospitals, moving schools to remote, figuring out how to safely open up service businesses/schools, and the list goes on...)
5. To the extent that streamlining paper work should have been a larger priority, given the severe stress on logistics networks, I'd imagine CDLs would be the place to spend those limited resources rather than CCW applications.
So, an unavoidable delay happened in LOTS of government processes -- only one of which was CCW issuance -- and the government provided uniform remediation to help partially mitigate the impact of delays in all of those processes.
No one was coming for anyone's guns.
TBH the foaming-at-the-mouth response to unavoidable reasonable delays in processing concealed carry permits during a public health emergency is the sort of thing that makes me (a gun owner) feel completely antagonistic toward the PA 2A advocacy community.
> I simply cannot understand why anyone gives a damn about this.
Because I currently cannot get a LCTF from the city. That's why I give a damn. It is currently effecting me. I had no need for that before corona virus, I do need one now.
Bucks county is issuing it in 15 minutes. Philly does a whole interview process which goes beyond a basic NICS check and they have chosen to be poorly staffed for a very long time.
Again, they set up a complicated process for applications, then shut it down, all of which is of their own (the cities) volition.
It's not reasonable delays. There are people who don't have their appointment until December, 2021. more than a year out.
Anyway, it's all really arguing something that should be moot - A persons right should not depend on the government service choosing to open its office.
> Because I currently cannot get a LCTF from the city... I had no need for that before corona virus, I do need one now.
I'm not questioning that you really do need a LTCF, but with COVID and the protests and the election suddenly everyone "needs" a gun.
So there's reduced capacity + HUGE surge in demand + severe budget shortfalls. It's not a conspiracy. It's just queuing theory.
> Bucks county is issuing it in 15 minutes. Philly does a whole interview process which goes beyond a basic NICS check and they have chosen to be poorly staffed for a very long time.
Allegheny is far less onerous than Philly but also has long wait times.
Also, these super long wait times are a relatively recent development. I expect Sheriff's offices will do what they can to address the problem in the new FY.
> Anyway, it's all really arguing something that should be moot - A persons right should not depend on the government service choosing to open its office.
Again, priorities. Tell that to the people waiting in jail for far longer than constitutionally permissible for hearings because of delays in the courts. Should we reallocate cash from judicial processes to CCW processes and have those folks wait in jail an extra few months so that folks who got all jittery a few months before the election can forget to show up to their CCW appointments?
It's interesting, because with a financial incentive, stores have no problem running NICS checks in a few short minutes.
I am uninterested in the government itself creating onerous requirements to execute basic rights and then complaining when they can't manage it in a reasonable time.
And of course, the courts have ruled there is a reasonable amount of time, that's 45 days. It's been litigated.
I guess it doesn't need saying, but government offices have no such incentive. In fact, we don't want government offices to have such an incentive, and we even make it illegal to construct such an incentive in certain ways. See: the article.
> the courts have ruled there is a reasonable amount of time, that's 45 days. It's been litigated.
Courts don't control purse strings, and the remedy you're asking for here is pretty extreme given the circumstances.
The office was closed back in March when pretty much everything was closed. AFAIK it's been open for months, but there's an enormous backlog because the backlog + reduced capacity (need to do everything by appointment for social distancing and keep appointment slots large enough to ensure physical queues don't form) + increased demand.
People are queuing for hours to get COVID tests, hospitals are reaching capacity, and people are rotting in prison because they can't get an appointment in front of a judge. In normal times I would be more sympathetic. There are greater injustices than waiting a few months for your LTCF, and more important forms of justice (habeas corpus) being delayed.
I'll throw out a few things , even though I don't know much about PA. In some places if your permit expires you are now a criminal and breaking the law, which may put your ability to own any firerms at risk, so staying in compliance is a huge deal. Also, lapses in permits may submit you to a whole new round of scrutiny when you reapply. Often, the fees we pay for these permits are meant to fund the work to issue them. It isn't uncommon for those fees to get diverted elsewhere, so now we paid for services we aren't receiving. These things have happened to firearms owners so we are hypersensitized to these issues.
I don’t think the fact that something is an “essential right” implies that’s it’s okay to commit bribery or other crimes during the procedural steps to exercise that right. Presumably it ought to be illegal to bribe a government official to move your court date up, even though the right to a speedy trial is also protected by the bill of rights.
Given that major strides against Gun Control were originally performed by Ronald Reagan in California ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act ), I have trouble imagining a Conservative Supreme Court will take a textualist perspective on gun control laws, despite their political leaning and assumptions here.
Yep, this is one of the best examples of the racism that underlies a large amount of gun control. For other examples, see the laws targeting Saturday-night specials, or even the army/navy laws in the Jim Crow south. Today we're seeing much of this repeated with increased paperwork requirements, taxes, and price increases. Regulatory requirements and ATF overreach decreases supply and helps move affordable firearms out of reach for many working-class or poor Americans. Many people are concerned by increased voting requirements preventing people from voting, but fail to understand that these regulations do the same for gun rights. Or maybe they do, and it's intentional.
Reagan did a whole lot worse than this. He signed the Hughes Amendment, which cut off the supply of new, civilian-transferrable machine guns. I just can't understand how anyone likes the guy in spite of the awful things he did to gun rights. The Republican party is only somewhat less awful for gun rights than the Democrats.
Similar tactics when it comes to voter's rights/vote suppression. This is where the brain breaking schism happens. Same tools used to restrict vitally important freedoms, but the political divide will rabidly endorse one but fight the other. They are all attacks on freedom and democracy.
Less "whataboutism" and more "the ship for undoing (arguably) unconstitutional gun control laws has long, long sailed and we're never getting those rights back."
I suppose we _might_ get changes to the CCW laws; but, anything more complicated than that is never returning in the United States.
DC v. Heller specifically in the Decision text does not support or go against CCW laws or prohibitions, rather leaving those to the existing state and federal laws. It was a finding against a ban on private holding and keeping of firearms, and of keeping firearms in the home in a state easily fired.
Ha! I’d bet the security head did not do this of their own accord, there was almost certainly a higher-up approving it. And what would apple do, replace their head of security (who is willing and able to navigate sociopolitical constructs in order to do their job to the fullest extent possible) with some random fellow who would turn around at the first “no” from some beurocrat and report back to senior leadership that the only people who will be allowed to have guns on Apple campus are the criminals? Highly highly doubtful.
If they do get fired, it will be as a scapegoat, probably with a large severance, and any company in the world would hire them up immediately.
A related historical anecdote. The Mulford Act was the first law on the path towards California's strict CCW regime. Whatever your policy preference, it is history worth knowing.
Named after a Republican assemblyman, supported by the NRA, passed by a 2/3 vote in a Democratic assembly & senate, and signed in by Ronald Reagan, all due to a group of Black Panthers protesting inside the capitol building while armed. Who knew all you needed was a racial incentive in order to make the stripping of rights a bipartisan effort.
Not anymore. The firearms community is more inclusive than it has ever been. We - and I obviously count myself among them - see the racial disparity in access to arms as a key component of our legal strategy to get those laws overturned.
Pretty much all gun control in the US is racist in its origins and usually in its modern implementation. "May issue" is a shining example of this.
When you say "Not anymore", that must have changed dramatically in the past 2 1/2 years. The NRA's silence in the Philando Castile case in 2017 was deafening.
The NRA does not represent the entire gun community by any means. The Second Amendment Foundation has a better reputation among 2A absolutists, for example.
Not even close... thanks to YouTube personalities like Colion Noir, white gun owners and black gun owners are on very very good terms.
There's a lot of black shooters at the ranges here in North Texas, and I'm happy to see them. Black people aren't my enemy - the ever encroaching desire of the state to strip us of what few freedoms we have left is.
More gun control is actually shockingly well supported. 83% of gun owners support universal background checks. Even 72% of NRA members support universal background checks.
It’s mostly just the NRA itself that doesn’t, and they control a lot of lobbying dollars. So universal background checks stay dead, despite massive bipartisan support.
The trick is that laws like this tend to contain certain types of other things that have nothing to do with the matter at hand.
A reasonable universal background check bill is not going to pass if it also comes bundled with things like red-flag laws or registries attached to them, which then leads to "but they won't compromise" from both sides of the aisle, so nothing gets done.
Or you get one side ramming something through which ends up defining "transfer" such that it actually criminalizes things like letting your kid shoot your gun even under supervision, which is very difficult not to see as an intentional act to degrade the culture of gun ownership merely because it is done by the people who constantly complain about the culture of gun ownership.
It's also a privacy concern if the system isn't set up properly; while countries like Switzerland have successfully mitigated those issues in the way they run their background checks, the difference between the average Swiss and the average American when it comes to gun politics (mandatory military service helps as does being a small nation) makes it more likely both sides of the issue aren't just going to try to screw each other over at the first opportunity.
Of course, the background check law is not one that is seldom if ever pursued (until it becomes politically expedient to do so), so maybe they should just enforce the law they do have instead of declaring the situation unworkable from the start?
> 83% of gun owners support universal background checks.
It's kind of like how everyone supports "better infrastructure" or "fixing healthcare" but people greatly differ on the implementation details.
We already have background checks for commercial sales. What people support is extending that to private sales but with the caveat that it preserve the privacy of private sales. When you start talking about requirements like recording serial numbers and keeping records (both of which are required for commercial sales) support drops massively.
We could have universal background checks. It's not the NRA that's standing in the way. It's the legislators that propose background checks in ways that ensure they are a backhanded means of creating a registry that ensure those bills are stillborn.
I’ve known (without proof) about this occurring in Santa Clara for at least fifteen years thanks to one of my doctors complaining about the corrupt permitting process, so I’m just happy to see that the DA finally doing something about it (with proof). I assume the DA has some political reason that it finally matters to end this, or else they would have ended it ages ago.
If you’re curious to learn more about this kind of corruption, California has another bribe at the state level: the “11-99 Foundation” offers a license plate frame for a $2500 donation that, when placed on your car, mysteriously reduces your chances of receiving speeding and carpool tickets to near-zero — even from CHP. This is apparently legal, since traffic stops are discretionary, and no protections exist to detect or prevent discretionary bias prior to the stop. (Non-caucasians, 11-99 is not rumored to protect against racism, and may well inspire it under the guise of “heard a report of a stolen car”.)
I think it’s incredibly evil that this is tolerated and I don’t give them anything.
Wow. That is outrageous. And it's public knowledge yet nobody has done anything about it? There clearly should be an outside organization which sole purpose should be to investigate police crimes and somehow establish moral code that is adhered to.
The last time people felt that way, the police responded by creating police unions that used contract law to protect police from outside investigations into their abuses.
At the local level? It is commonplace. Look into how many local police agencies have vehicles or other equipment donated by local citizens. Look at where an elected sherrif gets his campaign funding. There is very little oversight at the local level.
>In 2014, $4.5B of property was legally seized via civil asset forfeiture, and $3.9B of property was burgled.
But that's a weaker claim than the original, which argued 'Police are responsible for more theft in the United States (through "asset forfeiture") than "real" criminals', which I interpret to mean all thefts, rather than just burglary (a subset of '"real" criminals'). The former seems to be around 12B a year, according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/252440/property-stolen-a....
And calling asset forfeiture "theft" is quite an extreme interpretation when it's mostly legitimate seizures from criminal enterprises (especially the drug trade).
Were it not theft, the property would only be confiscated at the end of legal proceedings, IF it turned out it was related to the crime in question, IF the person was convicted. If those conditions did not hold, the assets should be returned.
In actuality, no crime is required for the property to be confiscated. It can be as simple as carrying a "substantial" amount of money in your person during a road trip, and getting pulled over. Where substantial is subjective. Let's say 1k.
Then your 1000 dollars get prosecuted, in a case titled "United States VS 1000 dollars in 10 dollar bills" and your money has to defend itself. I am not joking.
This mechanism was created – supposedly – to empty the coffers of suspected drug dealers in cases police couldn't actually prove their guilt. It was designed to be used on people that haven't been convicted.
That's not limited to money. It could be a house. It doesn't matter.
All it requires is a 'preponderance of evidence' that the property is related to a crime, which is a low bar. And even if it turns out that the charges are valid, it's still not ok. Because it's related to a property, not a person, you get cases like this:
Hard disagree on principle. We have two types of court - criminal for locking people up, and civil for dealing with money. For locking people up, we require beyond a reasonable doubt. Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted and all that. For taking somebody's money, we require it to more likely than not (preponderance of evidence) be the correct result. You call this a "low bar" but it's the same bar for a dispute between individuals. We say - it's only money - we should choose the result we believe to be the most correct, not err on the side of protecting the innocent even if it means letting many more guilty people go free. Why should the state be barred from using both courts?
The parents in that news story knew that kid was selling drugs. They smelled it; they saw the money and the clothes and the car; they got helped out on the bills. 9 times out of 10, they are guilty as hell. But it's not 10 times out of 10, so we only take the house the drugs were sold out of, not lock them up.
The different burdens specified in civil vs. criminal proceedings do make sense. No argument here.
It's a stretch to then convert criminal penalties into civil ones via the forfeiture process. Read this passage and tell me if this sounds like anything resembling due process:
> A month-and-a-half later police came back—this time to seize their house, forcing the Sourvelises and their children out on the street that day. Authorities came with the electric company in tow to turn off the power and even began locking the doors with screws, the Sourvelises say. Authorities won't comment on the exact circumstances because of pending litigation regarding the case.
> Police and prosecutors came armed with a lawsuit against the house itself.
So a few things. One, there was no civil court judgement authorizing this. The police decided on their own to take the house. Two, the value of the judgement is literally "how ever much this house is worth." Three, the government sued the house itself. That doesn't even make sense. A house is an inanimate object.
People should be sued, not stuff.
If the government believes they have a legitimate civil complaint, they're welcome to file it in court. The defendants and the government can then argue their cases, and a judge will use the appropriate legal standards to render a decision.
In these cases, the "judgement" is enforced first, and the targets (now without financial resources) must show beyond a preponderance of evidence that they're innocent.
A man breaks into my house and steals my television. A few days later, the police find someone sort of matching the description I give with a few hundred dollars cash in his wallet. He has an alibi, though not very solid proof, and a few details don't line up. The jury doesn't convict him. Am I entitled to the money out of his wallet on a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard? It's only money.
Yes. You can sue somebody for stealing from you in civil xourt even if they are found not guilty (or more commonly, not proesecuted) for theft in criminal court and win. It happens all the time.
Wait, I don't want the bother of bringing a lawsuit. Can I just take the money now? If the alleged thief is innocent, they can sue me for the money to be returned.
Also, I didn't just take the cash out of his pocket, I also took his car, as I suspect he used it to drive to my house to commit the crime.
It's only "legitimate" because there's a law saying they can do it. It's the removal of property without due process. I'm not on team "taxation is theft," but if this isn't theft, private property doesn't exist.
(I'd be totally okay with seizing property from convicted criminal enterprises with due process. Excusing this because it happens to mostly affect people who turn out to have been criminals seems about as defensible in my mind as excusing vigilantes who happen to be mostly accurate.)
At most, “asset forfeiture” should be “asset frozen, for the duration of a civil trial against the owner”:
- Anything movable (automobiles, jewelry, etc) can be seized by police and entered as evidence, but reasonable accommodations must be made (eg: if taking the defendant’s luxury car, a working car must be provided in its stead, so the defendant can still go to work, attend court, etc). If the defendant is found not guilty, the items must be returned without delay and without cost to the defendant, and the police are to be held responsible for any damage or wear during the period of the trial.
- For immovable objects (real estate), the court may block any sale or transfer of ownership of the property. The court should evaluate the condition of the property and its contents at the start of legal proceedings, and the defendant would be responsible for any damage or loss (within their control) that occurs after that date. If the defendant loses, the police may take ownership of the home.
- Cash must be placed into an escrow account. If the defendant is found not guilty, the funds must be released back to the defendant without delay, and the police should be held responsible for any money missing from the account.
Calling it theft is a very far stretch. I know there are stories of police abusing this & taking cash of people in random traffic stops: That's theft. But a huge portion of asset seizures are forfeits from drug crimes. The DEA along takes about $500 million a year in this way, and state, country & municipal departments take even more.
Let's take one example. If the TSA finds more than $10k on you while you are traveling, unless you have proper paperwork, it is ASSUMED to be drug money and gets seized. Most people have no idea that they need this paperwork, and finding out how to fill it out is non-trivial.
From 2000, to 2016, about $2 billion was seized in this way. In an independent audit, in over half of cases the action started and ended with the seizure. In less than 1/3 was anyone arrested. Arrests drop to less than 1/10 if you eliminate arrests for the crime of failing to fill out the paperwork for the money seized. (I am willing to bet that most of those arrests are because people react badly to seeing their life savings taken from them. Cause a scene, get arrested.)
If you go to how many actually were charged with a crime, the figure drops to 0.3%. In other words in 99.7% of cases where the TSA took someone's money, nobody ever found evidence that they money was linked to a crime. (It was still not returned though.)
Now the police will tell you that they are seizing drug money. However anecdotally, they mostly are not. And the fact that they are not even trying to charge people indicates to me that they really KNOW that they are not.
But guess where the money goes? That's right, directly to the agency that seized it! (This varies for local police by state.)
If your budget is filled with money confiscated from people who you have no evidence were involved with a crime, that's theft and you should know it. But their lawyers say that they can do it, so they continue to take people's life savings on little pretext.
1. For smaller amounts, the cost to fight civil asset forfeiture often exceeds the value of the assets taken. Why spend $1k to maybe get back you $500 in cash the cops took? Best to just write it off.
2. All claims about the money being taken "from drug dealers" come from the police, which as you've mentioned have a ton of incentive here to lie. Given that police can't reliably tell us how many people they've killed, it's not clear that we should trust their statistics on civil asset forfeiture.
No, it isn't. You are misinformed about the tawdry reality of asset seizure in the United States.
If the police take assets from you, you might think you get them back unless you're convicted of a crime. Far from it: you must prove the innocence of your seized assets to get them back, and good luck with that.
That this exists at all is a scandal and a moral hazard. Seizure should be strictly temporary until a conviction is obtained, and the burden of proof that assets are illegally obtained should be on the state, rather than the opposite, and the value of all seized goods should go into a Federal general fund, rather than retained by the local jurisdiction.
Until this is the case, and good luck with that reform, it is simply state-sanctioned theft. Nothing else.
> you must prove the innocence of your seized assets to get them back
This isn't true. The burden of evidence in civil asset forfeiture is still on the state. The standard is preponderance of doubt, as per the norm in civil court, not the higher standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, but a civil forfeiture case still requires a judge or jury to convict your assets.
From Wikipedia:
> The government simply files a civil action in rem against the property itself, and then generally must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the property is forfeitable under the applicable forfeiture statute. Civil forfeiture is independent of any criminal case, and because of this, the forfeiture action may be filed before indictment, after indictment, or even if there is no indictment. Likewise, civil forfeiture may be sought in cases in which the owner is criminally acquitted of the underlying crimes ...
> — Craig Gaumer, Assistant United States Attorney, 2007
The problem here isn't the the standard of evidence, it's the unequal access to resources. Lawyers are not cheap, and for many citizens the cost of hiring a lawyer might be greater than the value of the resource in question. And that's even assuming that they win, or that they have faith in the justice system to vindicate them.
A flaw in the legal process to easy & rapidly return assets to those found innocent does not make all seizures theft. Neither does the moral hazard of having assets retained by local jurisdictions. An abuse of a law simply does not make all uses of that law abuse.
> A flaw in the legal process to easy & rapidly return assets to those found innocent does not make all seizures theft.
How does it not? This is not just "a flaw", it's the way it's designed. If you're traveling with $5k in cash, a trooper somewhere on I-35 can seize it with the rationale that (1) I-35 is a notorious drug trafficking corridor, (2) your car is from out of state, (3) there's no legitimate reason to cross state lines with that amount of cash, other than illicit activity, and (4) "you appeared nervous"
They seize the cash, let you continue on your way, and never file any charges at all.
When you ask for it back, they say, "Nah, you have to prove your innocence first". Oh, and that would be a civil case, so you have to pony up for a lawyer and sue for it. No guarantee that you'll recover attorney's fees, so even if you win, you lose.
If they do charge you with a crime, you can be acquitted of the crime and still they keep the property. (It's "civil" forfeiture, your acquittal isn't enough to get your money back)
Okay, so no, it doesn't make all seizures theft, but it also has no reason to exist as a policy if you can seize assets of charged individuals anyway.
There should, 100%, never be an asset seizure without a related criminal charge. I'm usually not one for absolutes, but I am in this regard.
Of course not every instances of civil asset forfeiture is illegitmate. Problem is it is often abused, and how it works is basically guilty till proven innocent which is abhorrent. A lot of times you cant prove a negative.
I'm surprised that you're surprised. You ask this as if the US is immune to corruption. Maybe the US isn't as blatant as Russia, but you're dealing with humans. Call my cynical, but this is going to happen.
Yep. It’s a racket. Imagine if you had to get your sheriff’s permission to open a radio station — given that you only broadcast party friendly programming.
Seems a bit odd that Apple's Thomas Moyer is getting charged or at least that the headline suggests he instigated the whole thing. Unless Moyer was trying to bypass some process or law to obtain the permits, it sounds like the county police are more at fault for demanding the bribe and Moyer just made the bad call of agreeing to pay it.
The article notes that the county/police had been doing this racket for years so it seems likely Apple/Moyer would rather pay the bribe rather than get mixed PR of being a whistle blower (e.g large news outlet runs a piece on how many CW permits Apple requests).
Those who pay bribes for non-essential special treatment are as much criminals as those who ask for bribes. This guy has serious resources at his disposal and is allegedly willing to pay bribes. One must wonder if he has paid any others. I have little sympathy.
Hidden carry is never essential for security teams. It is about looks. They dont want the guns appearing in potential photos of Apple events. The guards can carry guns openly just like every single street cop.
The requirements to get your "guard card" in CA with the endorsement to carry a firearm a very low bar to pass. You see plenty of people making barely over minimum wage doing this. It is the "concealed" portion that requires the permit that can not be readily obtained by security guards without jumping through the same process as Joe Public which is regulated by the local City and County law enforcement in CA.
Thanks, it looks like this is the correct answer. Seems like that option should have been open and what they should have done instead of agreeing to the bribe.
Then keep them unloaded. It takes less than a second for a pro to load a handgun. This isnt hollywood. Close protection details for large US corps virtually never fire a shot in anger. It is a once-per-decade event.
California forbids carrying a concealed firearm even if it is unloaded.[1]
Also California's legal definition of a loaded gun is not what everyone thinks it means. For example, PC 25400 has extra penalties if the firearm is loaded or if, "...the unexpended ammunition capable of being discharged from it are in the immediate possession of the person or readily accessible to that person." That makes your suggestion just as illegal as carrying a loaded handgun.
> Close protection details for large US corps virtually never fire a shot in anger. It is a once-per-decade event.
The point of a concealed handgun is to react as quickly as possible to what is usually a once-in-a-lifetime event. Even if it only takes an extra second to load a magazine into a firearm, that second can mean the difference between preventing a murder or not. It doesn't matter how rare the event is. It matters what the consequences are.
A determined attacker could seriously injure or kill someone in the time it takes to load your weapon and chamber a round.
Your kind of ignorance almost makes me physically ill... you sound just like those women who take a self-defense course and think they can take down a 6'4" 295 lb. guy who looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger's bigger cousin.
I'd love to see the look in your eyes when someone rushes you at 10 feet and stabs you with the blue plastic prop knife 99 times out of 100. Its the same look those women get when they realize, "Oh shit... it turns out someone who's got 150 lbs. of muscle over me can fight off my puny attacks."
If guns were truly the ultimate force multiplier, military and police would never train for close quarters hand-to-hand combat. They aren't, so we do.
If a 295 lb guy charges you it doesn't really matter what you do, they will flatten you unless the weight is somewhat similar. At some point physics takes over.
No you dont. It would be silly if you needed a license to open or concealed carry on your own property. That would make it impossible for most Californians to perform gun maintenance at home or defend themselves from an intruder.
If you wanna go straight to the source, section 26035 of the CA Penal Code is a good start:
"Nothing in Section 25850 shall prevent any person engaged in any lawful business... or any officer, employee, or agent authorized by that person for lawful purposes connected with that business, from having a loaded firearm within the person’s place of business"
25525 PC is also relevant as it reiterates the home & business exemption to concealed carry laws
The problem is you're looking at one statute in isolation and not how courts have interpreted it in concert with other statutes.
Yes, sometimes you can lawfully open or concealed carry on your own property without needing a permit. But if it's open to the public, you need a permit.
I was speaking specifically about California. Guards don't need CCWs to carry loaded and exposed. They just need a guard card and a firearms qualifications card issued by the BSIS.
The challenge is that it was (I'm pretty sure) within the sheriff's discretion to deny these permits in the first place. So while the sheriff's office was surely wrong to demand a bribe, there was no reason Moyer had to agree to pay it either.
> it seems likely Apple/Moyer would rather pay the bribe.
It sounds like we agree on the facts. Apple, and specifically Moyer, decided to pay a bribe to a government official. Bribery is a crime. Why do you find it odd that he's being charged?
Kudos to the Santa Clara DA for being willing to prosecute crooked cops in his own county. All too often DAs are afraid to proceed against local LEOs and justice is left undone even when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing.
This article seems to be less about CCW permits themselves and more that a state agency is soliciting bribes for various permits when they realize the wealth of the organizations seeking them.
> Requested $75k of Apple tech to issue a CCW permit to the head of security, etc.
This sort of pay-for-play CCW permitting isnt unusual: it's very common in the May-issue counties that have the lowest acceptance rates (Bay Area and LA). Normally the bribes are just campaign contributions to the sheriff's reelection, so this is notable in that it was a much bigger bribe.
One of my econ profs proposed legalizing the payment of solicited bribes in India [1].
So if an official solicits a bribe, you pay it, then can immediately report them with no legal repercussions. This removes the incentive to hide corruption and let it fester.
This also strongly discourages people from asking for bribes in the first place.
At first this didn’t make much sense to me as the incentive to protect the official is still there — you’re getting something you want, so why ruin it? But reading the abstract it’s referring to a specific kind of a bribe — where you have to pay to get something you’re entitled to anyway (under a threat of unnecessary delays for example). I doubt it would have much of an effect on another kind of bribe where there’s discretion and you’re getting something you might not otherwise get at all (as is the case in the article).
This is why gun permits should be "shall-issue" rather than "may-issue." In other words, there should be a clear set of objective requirements; if an applicant meets these objective requirements, the government official should be required to issue the permit. This would be similar to driver's licenses.
"May-issue" jurisdictions, such as California, give too much discretion to local officials, leading to arbitrary decisions and cases of bribery. Most states are "shall-issue" jurisdictions and do not have this type of problem.
Even shall-issue has become a problem now in some places thanks to Covid. If offices are closed or under-staffed, that "shall-issue" doesn't mean a whole lot.
1) The sheriff's office initiated/required the bribe, it's not like Apple's head of security was trying to bribe, they were being extorted
2) It's Apple's head of physical security, not software security (since it's not clear at first)
I'm curious -- if a county sheriff's office demands bribes, what is the correct legal course of action in the US? Do you bring it to county court? To the governor's office? To state police? To state court?
And how would you prove that it happened? Who would you work with to legally record audio of the solicited bribe?
> I'm curious -- if a county sheriff's office demands bribes, what is the correct legal course of action in the US? Do you bring it to county court? To the governor's office? To state police? To state court?
I imagine anything other than "pay the bribe" would suffice.
Yes, and if Apple were a regular private citizen, I'd feel very sympathetic towards them here, but in this case Apple is basically the most powerful possible other party in a blackmail attempt imaginable. They're a $2 trillion company whose employees make up a significant section of the population of that area, including something like 500 full time lawyers.
The ACLU probably would be involved already, but they don't care about the 2nd amendment for some reason. It's a "lesser" constitutional right it seems...
The article says that the iPads never changed hands because the Attorney General's office started investigating during all this. It is likely that what happened is another applicant was also asked for a bribe at around the same time and reported it to the Attorney General of California. You can report a myriad of crimes directly to the AG's office: https://oag.ca.gov/contact
It takes two to tango and those giving bribes are not exempt from anti-bribery laws (as you can tell since the giver also got indicted). I’ll also note that things like this are explicitly called out in the anti-corruption training every single employee of a large US corporation undergoes (or at least the US-based employees).
Sure but there's still a world of difference depending on who initiates the corruption. Apple's not trying to actively corrupt the police department, the police department is acting corruptly.
It's a serious offense on both sides, but far more serious on the part of the sheriff's department.
If the local police try to do something like this you call the FBI. Or if you have enough money to pay a high paid lawyer who knows DAs or Feds. I doubt you would want to go to the county.
In my state and county the local Sheriffs office handles CCW permits. A lot of times they are elected officials and play political games, even denying CCW permits. Glad these guys were held accountable.
It worries me that the local sheriff thought he could extort bribes from a multinational company and get away with it. And Apple is very much top of the list.
Of course the cops are corrupt, but this degree of corruption is something you'd have thought would happen only in Brazil. It's either more common than we know or this individual is unusually stupid.
Bribery for gun permits is also very common in NYC. It's well known that you either have to employ ex-NYPD in some capacity to get a gun permit, or pay cash. Maybe it's slowed down since some high profile arrests in 2017.
This is exactly why governments love red tape and "oversight". When you have to come to GOVERNMENT to ask for permission, they can make it worth it for them.
No surprise this is so prevalent in NYC and Santa Clara. They can deceive people that the strong requirements is under the guise of gun control or some such.
I thought this was common place in California since they are a may issue instead of a shall issue state. Remember like 3 years back coming across a YouTube video on this, someone wanted a list of permit holders and how much they donated. But the sheriff office wasn't cooperating with his freedom of information request and tried to say it was illegal to film them without permission. Don't remember what county or the video. Sounds they doesn't respect your first or second amendments in California.
I used to dream about moving there for tech, but with the high taxes and bureaucracy glad I didn't... Still want to move somewhere with more tech than where I am now though, been flipping back and forth between Austin and Salt Lake City (which looks like I might have a opportunity lined up for early next year!). Seems like Utah is growing for tech, 2 hour flight from SV so investors like that since they could fly early in the morning, do some business deals and fly back for dinner.
The facts of the article seem to imply that the sheriff's office was blackmailing Apple. I am not sure I'd call this bribery, unless there was some reason the CCW permits should not have been issued (criminal conviction or some other risk). The Apple employee should have known better to agree to the quid pro quo, but I am not sure he should go to prison.
Agreed. What an awful situation to find yourself in. With the law enforcement demanding an exchange. You have to gamble one way or the other. Either you report the bribery attempt to the DA's office, and suffer the retaliation that ensues from snitching on the DA's friends; or you go along with the bribe and suffer the prosecution from the DA.
How do you know which one to choose? Are you sure the DA will side with you if you blow the whistle? Will you or your employer suffer retaliation from the county law enforcement you just outed? Maybe you're blacklisted from future security gigs by being known as someone who rats on cops.
Whenever government officials solicit bribes from private citizens, the enormous power asymmetry there should lead us to prosecuting just the government official(s).
Of course it's not always this simple. Sometimes the private citizen wields more power than the civil servant they're bribing. In other words, the Mafia or other organized crime. But I'm not ready to put Apple in that column yet.
In Apple's case, you could refer back to Apple's business conduct training program, a self directed online class which ALL of us are REQUIRED to pass ANNUALLY, and which states in no uncertain terms that NOTHING of value may be paid to a government official without prior approval from higher up, and describes precisely such "facilitation fees".
And if the article is to be believed, the Apple officer in question was in charge of CREATING that class. I'm sorry; I don't think I've ever met them, but I don't see how this could possibly be excused, unless Apple Legal signed off on that bribe (stranger things have happened — Apple's then General Counsel once created a backdated paper trail for a fictitious meeting of the executive team — but still find that exceedingly unlikely).
Yeah. The training I've taken has been in the context of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act but it's made clear that even if certain practices are considered business as usual in some places, they're absolutely off-limits. Even if this was ostensibly in the context of what they believed was needed to do their job, Apple (properly) does not have their back--and hopefully did not encourage this in any way.
> the Apple officer in question was in charge of CREATING that class
You're kidding me? You actually believe the upper management follows this shit? It's a checkbox to make sure you have a "good working environment.
You know how I know that it's some BS? Two of the Chief X Officers at a previous job both met their current partners at a job... they were pregnant at their weddings.
I actually met Heinen on my first day at work — back then, Apple was small enough that it was customary for a member of the executive team to drop in to new employee orientation each Monday.
"Either you report the bribery attempt to the DA's office, and suffer the retaliation that ensues from snitching on the DA's friends; or you go along with the bribe and suffer the prosecution from the DA."
> unless there was some reason the CCW permits should not have been issued (criminal conviction or some other risk)
California has counties which are "may-issue" (getting your permit is decided on a case-by-case "need" basis by the local sheriff) vs. "shall-issue" (must be issued to the applicant if they have done paperwork correctly and pass background checks). Shall-issue has a very obvious flaw, which is on full display in this case.
In counties like this, this is the case. Well-meaning citizens say "Well, we trust the police so if we just let them use their discretion everything will be all right". That has the predictable effect it has everywhere in the world which is that the police then choose to monetize that discretion.
Similar things happen in the planning department and public works department in San Francisco. Supervisors will receive half-price homes laundered through their parents, that sort of thing. Pretty transparent for the Third World (where sophisticated criminal agents will extract some of the value if they know you have some ill-gotten gains) but certainly sufficient for present-day US (where rule of law is generally available).
> The Planning Department, Department of Public Health, and the City Administrator's Office have all been hit with subpoenas stemming from the sprawling federal investigation into corruption in San Francisco government.
> ...
> The City Attorney's Office's simultaneous investigation has already revealed a relationship between former Public Works director Mohammed Nuru and local entrepreneur Nick Bovis, in which Bovis appears to have taken donations from his charity (Lefty O'Doul's Foundation for Kids), given by city contractors, and funneled them to cover DPW holiday parties. Now it looks like the feds are following up on this pattern and trying to see if there are more examples of city vendors possibly disguising bribes that benefited city employees as charitable gifts.
Depends entirely on the county you live in. In many blue counties, this is true. In red counties, we have sheriffs that hand them out to almost all applicants, and encourage people to apply for permits.
It also changes as new sheriffs are elected. Where I live, the previous sheriff was known to reject applications, but the current one is known for the opposite stance.
A key element is whether the permit is "shall-issue" (must be issued if you do the paperwork correctly and pass background checks) vs. "may-issue" (up to the discretion of the local sheriff, who inevitably can be compromised by fame or bribes, which is obviously the case here).
Not all of California, Orange county gives them out slowly but more fairly, they are underfunded for that department so it takes quite some time due to demand.
Unfortunately the Apple employee is likely to get the book thrown at them regardless. Permits and regulations are like candy to corrupt local officials. Often it's small businesses which get caught up. If they don't play along up then they'll be crushed. So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. But the law doesn't care.
On one hand the CCW permit is for the personal benefit of the person receiving it. If the company needed armed staff, they could simply hire full-time armed guards. There is no reason head of security at Apple needs to be armed using a concealed weapon. They are not going undercover to bust smugglers or whatever.
On the other hand, the payment was to the Sherriff's office, not the sheriff himself. That makes it a lot less like bribery to me because it still benefits the government.
What makes it especially tricky is that it seems as though the Sherriff asked for the payment. If they did and provided official written documentation to Apple, that feels like a professional and real agreement to provide hardware to the government.
At the end of the day, what will make this bad for Apple's head of security is that he was personally benefiting from the Sherriff's actions by receiving favorable treatment for a CCW he didn't need, and used company hardware to get that favorable treatment.
He shouldn’t have to apply for a permit in the first place. 2nd amendment should cover his needs. Having a permit process just opens up the system for corruption.
That really isn’t the point of my comment or this case. If someone wants to challenge the constitutionality of the ccw permit, that is a different topic
Right but this whole thing could have been avoided, impropriety and all, if the incentive were eliminated, which also has the tidy side effect of aligning with the spirit of the 2nd amendment.
> There is no reason head of security at Apple needs to be armed
That’s up to them, they can decide what kind of arms are carried.
> A grand jury has issued a pair of indictments accusing Apple’s head of global security, two high-ranking officials from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office and a local business owner of exchanging bribes for concealed gun permits.
Hah! There actually isn't any other way to get a CCW permit in most of Northern California, let alone Santa Clara County. It's basically a racket under the guise of gun control. See this article from last year[1] and this youtuber[2] who tried to chronicle the process.
> The Santa Clara County sheriff’s system for granting concealed weapons permits is so inconsistent — and the record-keeping so fragmented — that it is difficult to discern any public-safety rationale behind a process the District Attorney’s Office is investigating over allegations of political favoritism.
To apply for a CCW you need to show your life is in immediate and credible danger, and then wait... months for a permit approval that will probably never come. This state loves to make law-breakers out of good citizens. I'm really glad they're cracking down on the process, but it's the STATE and COUNTY LAW THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE! Not sending a few scabs to jail for playing the game they created.
This goes to a general theory I've always had; you are most likely to be abused by a local power than a federal one. Generally the most corrupt and abusive people you will meet are going to be someone mediocre who has been handed just a bit too much power. Think HOA's and local bureaucrats, not the state or federal government.
Also, CA should go to shall issue. I'm not a really big gun-guy myself, but I don't see the public benefit to being a may issue state. Especially if it creates little places like this for petty powers to solicit for bribes.
"Sung—second in rank only to Sheriff Laurie Smith in the sheriff’s office—is accused of deliberately holding back four concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits for Apple’s security team until the Cupertino-based corporation agreed to donate 200 iPads worth about $75,000 to the Sheriff’s Office, Rosen said.
Sung and Jensen allegedly worked together to solicit the exchange of CCW permits for the tech donation from Apple."
California's sheriffs are completely corrupt wrt this the CCW process. It is impossible to get one with our being a political friend or giving massive donations.
The issue here at the end of the day is that getting a CCW is up to the whim of the local police. Either the federal government or the state government should present a well documented procedure for this that is not susceptible to the whims of a local official.
Exactly, this is a problem with the "may-issue" system that California and a minority of other states use. Most states have "shall-issue": there is a specific list of objective requirements set forth by law; if an applicant meets the requirements, then the official must issue the license.
California's may-issue policies give local officials too much discretion, leading to arbitrary decisions and bribery (apparently).
California is in the minority of states that have a "may issue" law for concealed carry as opposed to "must issue" where the license must be issued if they applicant has met all of the prerequisites. Given the politics of the State it's unlikely that the California Assembly will change their CCW law to "must issue" but it would have made this case of requesting and paying a bribe impossible.
> “Call this quid pro quo, call it pay to play, call it give to get—it is illegal,” Rosen said. “It is illegal and it deeply erodes public confidence in the criminal justice system..."
To be completely fair, events in the course of this year have shown that the criminal justice system wasn't that trustworthy to begin with. I don't think there's a lot of confidence left to lose at this point.
I know you're joking, but this is one of the many reasons I'm glad to be going out the door here in California. This state loves to criminalize normal people and decriminalize actual criminal behavior.
They won't cite you for public defecation but they will cite you for jaywalking, because jaywalkers can be squeezed.
I thought everyone knew that the best way to bribe the police for a ccw is to buy a poor rural town a new squad car in exchange for them letting you become a police officer (with no actual hours).
Once you are a cop, federal law allows concealed carry in all 50 states, regardless of state law.
A cute trick I saw when working in a gun store was getting deputized in some two-horse town so you could buy post-sample machineguns[0].
I looked up one customer's "agency" and the town didn't exist. It was like 4 abandoned houses and it looked (from Google Maps) like no one had been through there in years.
[0] A machinegun manufactured after the passage of the 1986 Hughes Amendment is non-transferrable and can only be possessed by law enforcement agencies or dealers (SOT) with a "demo letter". Dudes effectively were LEOs in a non-existent town and bought machineguns that otherwise couldn't be owned by individuals.
There's a good book called _Police Union Power, Politics, and Confrontation in the 21st Century: New Challenges, New Issues_, [0] and it feels highly relevant to understanding how all of this is playing out.
I propose that persons who read that book will be less surprised by how these events will proceed than someone who has not read the book.
Help me understand how this bribery works. If someone "donates" iPads to "the Sheriff's Office", does this mean that they can be taken by people who work there (for example, Sung could sell them on and pocket the cash)? What is the mechanism here? The cut-and-dry case would be asking for a cash bribe and pocketing it, so is this a way of making the bribe look like something else?
Whether the recipients of the iPads had direct personal benefits or they were just donated for the department usage doesn't really matter with respect of bribery. Basically, you cannot make gifts of any larger value to anyone, who is somehow in a relationship to your business. Sometimes it is really annoying, if an honest gift was intended, but these szenarios are exactly the reason, why today you cannot make gifts which exceed a few free stickers or such.
I believe this sort of thing is explicitly outlined in the FCPA, which deals with corruption by US Corporations abroad. FCPA is pretty stringent, and this is what is covered in the in-house mandatory training you end up doing at any sizeable company. However, this is within the United States and this person appears to have been acting on Apple's behalf, so
how does this fall afoul of the law (what law in particular)?
I am not in the US, but working at an American company. From my trainings I got the impression that the anti-corrupion rules are to be obeyed globally.
That's correct. They are to be obeyed globally by the
(US) corporation, which is why they make you go through the training. When you are acting on behalf of the corporation you are expected to help the corporation comply with applicable law.
Yes. It's a crime for an American to bribe US government officials, and it's also a crime for an American to bribe foreign government agents as well (that's the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act).
The US Code is for bribing Federal officials. This one would presumably be the California felony bribery law, CA Penal Code § 67: "Every person who gives or offers any bribe to any executive officer (any public employee who is authorized to use his or her own discretion to carry out his or her lawful duties) in this state, with intent to influence him in respect to any act, decision, vote, opinion, or other proceeding as such officer, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three or four years, and is disqualified from holding any office in this state."
Something tells me this was never going to be an official, on-the-books donation. So yes, the iPads would likely never have made their way to the department itself.
I've taken the stock anti bribery web "training" multiple times now at multiple FAANG companies; the first time was at Apple. And every time I wonder "who is this for? Who thinks a little bribery is going to end well for them and their company!?"
Well, I guess I have an answer now. I wonder if this is actually much more common than I've realized.
Look at it differently. In some countries, say Russia, the system and laws are designed in such a way that bribes are needed to do business. Simple as that. Don't pay bribes and 100 cops and forensic accountants will show at your headquarters, closing it down and jailing you.
Now, Apple HAS to protect its headquarters and people. For that you need licenses which apparently weren't given. So, close Apple headquarters down or...? 99.99% of the fault here lies with the laws /state. The problem can be solved by donating before you ask the for "favors," so no quid-pro-quo. I'd think that Apple generates quite a bit of business for the county /state so they should favor them a bit. Or at least don't try to stop them.
I assume these are high-level security personnel at Apple HQ. It doesn't seem unreasonable to have armed security at a place like that.
> A grand jury alleges that Thomas Moyer promised to donate 200 iPads worth $70,000 to the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Office in exchange for four concealed firearm licenses for Apple employees.
I think he came around once for a talk, but I didn't notice anything. I forget his name actually. Generally they kept the higher ups away from us in a different location.
In California, you cannot carry concealed except on your own property or on the property of a business you own.[1] Employees cannot carry concealed even if they have permission from the employer.
What? Bay Area banks and retail stores routinely have conspicuous security guards open carrying. Not to mention police, which also exist and are commonly seen in the Bay Area.
I imagine Apple's security team was interested in procuring CCW permits for use beyond Apple's property. Probably for executive security and things along those lines.
You're right that carry permits are not required on private property.
True. I guess I don't know why they'd need a license at all to do that, since I think Apple can allow people to carry within its own buildings however they'd like.
> Santa Clara County alleges that Mr Sung held back issuing concealed weapons permits to Apple's security team, until Mr Moyer agreed to donate $70,000 worth of iPads to the sheriff's office.
Armed security is common at datacenters, for example.
I think the contractors who do that already have ccw permits (they're typically specialist contractors not employed by the company itself, like Gavin de Becker and Associates)
So... There's no need to issue ccw permits for people to perform their job because people who need ccw permits for their job already have them? That is brilliant reasoning; you must work for the government.
I don't see anything that indicates his desire to carry a weapon has anything to do with the fact he is an Apple employee. Some people like to carry concealed weapons for protection.
You know, except the part where it is clearly stated in the article:
> Santa Clara County alleges that Mr Sung held back issuing concealed weapons permits to Apple's security team, until Mr Moyer agreed to donate $70,000 worth of iPads to the sheriff's office.
> Santa Clara County alleges that Mr Sung held back issuing concealed weapons permits to Apple's security team, until Mr Moyer agreed to donate $70,000 worth of iPads to the sheriff's office.
Apple openly bribed the City of Waukee to abate $170m in State property tax. "... the company is contributing up to $100 million to a newly created Public Improvement Fund dedicated to community development and infrastructure around Waukee." [1]
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all cut a $1000 check to the city to evade $1700 in State/County property tax on our homes?
Would've been better if the first word wasn't Apple! He's a private citizen that did something on his own accord. That headline makes it sound as if Apple, the company, was somehow involved.
I'm curious about the ethics involved in publicly decrying/defending someone who has been indicted but not convicted. I want to be an informed and involved and vigilant citizen but I don't want to be part of a howling mob. It seems like a lot of people in this thread speak as if an indictment equals a conviction. I guess it's not realistic or practical in a forum with so many participants, but I think in these cases we should hold our collective tongues. I donno.
> Sung—second in rank only to Sheriff Laurie Smith in the sheriff’s office—is accused of deliberately holding back four concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits for Apple’s security team until the Cupertino-based corporation agreed to donate 200 iPads worth about $75,000 to the Sheriff’s Office,
This is wrong on so many levels... why does Apple need CCW security personal ? how could Apple agree to pay bribery ? who is stupid enough to ask for bribery ?
Yikes... I guessed they skipped the mandatory corporate ethics training videos or they just didn't care.
This is the reason large employers have mandatory yearly training videos on ethics, sexual harrassment, insider trading and a plethora of other topics. I used to feel severely inconvenienced every year, "wasting productive hours", until I was aware of the world out there and how frequent are problems in these areas.
What is the reasoning behind CCW vs open carry in a holster? Is it to give some kind of tactical advantage to the weapon carrier? Is it about some kind of general fear people have seeing a gun (and if so, why not police?)?
Is CCW considered to be protected by the second amendment? It says "keep and bear" which seems more related to a visible weapon to me, but I'm not sure of the history.
California: what a weird state: in the majority of states virtually anyone can easily get a CCW unless they have felony conviction or something similar.
This is the perfect example for why the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act needs to apply within the country's borders as well. Apple would be in an absolute world of pain right now (from both the DOJ and SEC) had they been caught bribing a random sheriff in Canada or Italy or anywhere else, but large companies getting into such relationships with local governments across the US is sadly too common.
I've lived in a couple of countries where bribes are a way of life. I'm happy it's not the case in CA.
Still, does anyone here know of a country, where artificially limiting resources do not encourage to bribes? Better yet, if somebody names a country, where bureaucrats are by law forbidden to limit the resources artificially, I'll strongly consider immigrating.
It should not be so difficult for the head of security of the largest company on the planet to get a CCW permit. That is the problem. The system is so flawed, you have no choice but to play the game (bribe). You can't just not have a CCW in the position he holds.
If the system is flawed, you shouldn't support it. Especially as the largest company on the planet. If such a large company doesn't use all its powers within the law to get a fair treatment, who else do you expenct to stand up against such behavior? Have Tim talk to the governor, the president.
He means to get that job the number of background checks he would have to go through far exceed even that of a CCW by a large margin. So if he can't get one even being so vetted that they are intentionally not giving them to anyone but people who the sheriff favors. That's the problem, the unfairness of deciding who gets the permit being decided by a single person with no need to justify the decision to anyone else.
He meant that having a CCW is necessary for the position of head of security for such an organization. The part you quoted makes no assertion that they should be expected to break the law.
Strange for Facebook and Apple be dealing with such a small character and still ... did they do more bribe than these. Is that in their culture as well?
This really throws water on any claims that corporations are the entities we need to worry about. It's clearly over reliance on governments that is the problem. Restricting the 2nd amendment is bad enough but then extracting value from others to exercise the 2nd amendment is laughable. Anyone that holds California up as a model for the rest of the country really needs to start paying attention.
I guess I'd look at the crime rate of the area to assess the necessity of corporatist CCW permits.
The intersection of capitalism and freedom is certainly a rotten terrain though perhaps not in the way you'd hope me to think. Perhaps one can choose none of the above and be ethically absolved.
how one makes the head of security of such a huge transnational corp as Apple without being able to handle a simple situation of a midlevel bureaucrat soliciting a bribe?
Neat trick: Agents of the state demand quid pro quo for the performance of basic and necessary state functions, then the state prosecutes citizens for complying with these demands. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Step 1: "I'll have an answer for your shortly."
Step 2: Apple calls FBI. FBI will take the call. Set up a sting operation.
Step 3: Call the LEO back, reconfirm the bribe "just to confirm, this is 100 ipads for XX CC permits?", this time with the blessing of the FBI.
Step 4: Arrest LEO, Apple claims PR success in rooting out local corruption.
Every other response, that argues the Apple employee had no power but to agree to this bribe, is wrong. So if China offers Apple free slave labor from Uighur camps and they accept, will people be explaining how they had no choice?
What ever happened to the home of the brave and the land of the free. Well shit, appearntly it went down the drain about 200 years ago. Can't own a weapon of your choice without bribing people anymore. Shit can't even own a suppressed weapon without registering with the FEDs and dishing out 5 years and 10k later. Go to a 3rd world country where its ok to knock on the door and see someone owning an AK47 without it being registered or bribed. Your ass would be shot. This country has seriously went to shit. Home of the mother fucking pussies and slaved to your own fucking land.
There's a phrase "where there is rot, there is more"
You bet Apple has arranged bribes across the world and companies. Not saying any specific FAANG is better, but there seems to be a crowd of people who repeat commercials about privacy and security despite both being disproved on a weekly basis.
I feel like the headline is misleading. The more straightforward headline would be that the sheriffs of Santa Clara county withheld concealed firearms licenses to multiple applicants unless they were offered bribes.
It sounds like this has been going on for years. Apple's security chief was one of those applicants who paid the bribe to get the permit. But putting "Apple" in the title is more clickbaitey.
How is it misleading when that is exactly what happened? Of course "world's largest company involved in bribery scandal" is more relevant to people than "random town's sheriff department is accepting bribes".
> Santa Clara County alleges that Mr Sung held back issuing concealed weapons permits to Apple's security team, until Mr Moyer agreed to donate $70,000 worth of iPads to the sheriff's office.
It's like if immigration officers don't let you in the country unless you give them a case of liquor. You give them the liquor, and are caught. The story should be that the immigration officers are corrupt and demanding bribes, rather than you, an employee of Hacker News or whatever, being caught bribing immigration officers.
Certainly, the overriding societal impact is the fact that law enforcement is corrupt, not that people pay bribes to corrupt law enforcement. No question.
Version of the story I read made it sound like Moyer was trying to get CCW licenses for his own use. So that was misleading if he was directed by Apple to pay bribes to get CCW licenses. Which is what the line you highlight seems to imply.
In what way is equating the actions of some police officers with all police officers different than equating the actions of some specific ethnic or religious group with all the people of that group?
If it isn't okay to stereotype based on race or religious affiliation maybe we shouldn't stereotype based on profession either. Just because some group has become the whipping boy of the moment (for good reason), doesn't mean we should assume the worst of everyone in it.
I'll explain how, even though I suspect you didn't take the time to think about it. It's because police groups are a command and control hierarchical organization. They aren't some loose group of people that share an attribute. When police officers commit crimes, their commanding officers share the responsibility.
The implication of the original comment is that the negative influence of this small group of police officers really doesn't matter to the reputation of the police because they are "the people that have been beating, gassing, and shooting unarmed citizens for most of the last six months", which is also applying the actions of some of that group to the group as a whole.
I understand it's cathartic to have an "other" that you can focus anger on, and it's extremely beneficial for those trying to push an agenda, and the police have largely brought this upon themselves by being so insular, dysfunctional and resistant to any change, but it is an organization full of people, and I'm hesitant to apply a group stereotype to all individuals in a group, for what should be blatantly obvious reasons.
Being a cop is a choice. You can stop whenever you want. Race and to a large extent religion(lots of religions implore the congregation to shun those who leave) are not a choice.
Yes, being a cop is a choice. But not everyone becomes one for the same reason. Assuming negatives about everyone in that group is unfair and unhelpful to the people that are within it trying to actually enact change.
In what way is disparaging anyone who is a police officer because they are a police officer any different than disparaging anyone that is a lawyer because of the numerous negative stories about lawyers? There's plenty of jokes about lawyers, but I assume most people take those for what they are, jokes playing on stereotypes that shouldn't be applied to an individual or inform your opinion of an individual prior to evidence about them.
Are you saying it's okay to immediately have an opinion about the trustworthiness or likelihood of an individual police officer just because they are a police officer? That seems to be what your comment is defending.
>In what way is disparaging anyone who is a police officer because they are a police officer any different than disparaging anyone that is a lawyer because of the numerous negative stories about lawyers?
Yes, because lawyers aren't in charge of enforcing the law, and even if they weren't, there isn't some sort of "thin blue line" where they're covering for each other.
Again, this is taking actions of a group, and some within it, and applying it to all the individuals. That your excuse for doing so is that "they are police" or "they are in charge" isn't all that convincing. Last time I checked, bigotry was bad in general, not just when applied to those without power.
> Last time I checked, bigotry was bad in general, not just when applied to those without power.
You're invoking "it's bigotry!" as a reason why we shouldn't do this. Why do you think bigotry is bad? Is it bad intrinsically (aka "bigotry is bad" is an axiom), or is it bad because of its effects? If it's the latter, does the reasoning apply when applied to organizations with voluntary membership?
Furthermore, I don't see why it's bad to hate on an organization and/or its members based on the conduct of its other members. Let's say Acme, Inc is known for sales reps with high pressure sales tactics. Is it bad then, if I ignore a cold call from an Acme sales rep on that basis?
Depending no the definition you use, either because it's part of the definition in that it's talking about negative effects, or because it's based on intolerance and unwillingness to consider other people's beliefs at all. Are you actually asking why intolerance of all other points of view is bad? Or are you asking why something defined as bad is bad, which is an odd semantic discussion to have? If this is trolling to get me to define a basic portion of my argument, it's a particularly absurd attempt, since it's literally covered by the dictionary.
> If it's the latter, does the reasoning apply when applied to organizations with voluntary membership?
> Furthermore, I don't see why it's bad to hate on an organization and/or its members based on the conduct of its other members. Let's say Acme, Inc is known for sales reps with high pressure sales tactics. Is it bad then, if I ignore a cold call from an Acme sales rep on that basis?
Because you are taking the actions of some members and applying it to the whole. Should we hate all Democrats and/or all Republicans because some of them act in horrible ways that undermine our government? There are definitely people on each side that would like it if you did.
Basically, I see this as coming down to the purpose of the organization, why people are members of the organization, and how many of them exhibit the behavior in question. If we're talking about white supremacists, people join because of that belief, that belief itself is problematic, and we can safely assume all members (except for special circumstances or those there because they have little choice) have those beliefs and exhibit and support that behavior.
Contrast that with police agencies. Whatever the behavior of the portion of officers that behave in a way you we all find abhorrent, the purpose of the organization is not to suppress or kill minorities, it's to keep public order, enforce the law, and keep people safe. I think most people join because they think it's a noble profession and want to serve their community (whether or not that goes to their head later). I don't think you can make an assumption about any specific police officer's behavior with regard to the negative behavior we've seen, because many police officers do not agree with it either.
That is a clear difference in many attributes that defines why I would be willing to make assumptions about an avowed member of a white supremacist group with regard to behavior about race, but I would not be willing to make assumptions about any single police officer with regard to behavior regarding treatment of minorities.
I think there are good arguments on both sides of Concealed Carry Permits, but how do you come to the conclusion that this is a "basic human right"? If you feel that, please outline what age you think is too young to exercise this "right", conditions where it can be infringed (e.g.: a psychopath in jail), and are there spaces where it can be infringed (e.g.: can a daycare forbid it).
The right to self-defense seems pretty fundamental to me. Denying someone the right to use the best self-defense tools available is an infringement of that right.
> too young to exercise this "right"
Lots of rights are restricted before you reach the age of majority. I'm fine with saying that when you're old enough to vote (or join the armed forces, or drive a car, or whatever) then that's when you're allowed to carry a gun.
> conditions where it can be infringed (e.g.: a psychopath in jail)
Sure, lots of rights are denied to people in jail. I'm fine with restricting this right similarly, and to people who have been judged (with due process protections) to be insane.
> are there spaces where it can be infringed (e.g.: can a daycare forbid it)
Although I think such prohibitions are generally a bad idea, I'm fine with people having the ability to enforce them on their own private property. "Your rights end at my doorstep," etc.
Wow corrupt police, what a surprise. Hopefully the two innocent people (namely those giving the bribes) are acquitted. The ones guilty here are only the police.
What are the needs for concealed carry at Apple? For some reason this reminds me of Apple’s security team attempting to recover (by force) the lost iPhone 4.
That is simply not true. There is no need for concealed carry in France nor UK, for example.
Even the Wikipedia article on the topic lists numerous scientific studies showing that the effectiveness of concealed carry varies in place and time, and that there is almost no link between concealed carry and lower crime rates : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_Unite...
Northern Ireland is part of the UK, and the government currently grants licenses to carry a concealed handgun there despite having highly restrictive laws elsewhere in the country. I highly doubt this would be the case if there wasn't a strong recognized need.
I'll offer a counter-example to your claim that CCW is needed every single place on earth: my home.
I don't have a gun. If someone comes in to my home with a gun, even if they are a "good guy", the odds of my dying by gunshot would instantly go up by a large multiple.
In comparison, the odds that I'm going to suffer a home invasion, that I would have been shot without the friendly gun owner, and that person successfully prevents it is vanishingly small.
I realize that not everybody lives where that calculation comes out that way, but to claim it CCW makes sense everywhere is unsupportable.
> another's particular distaste for self-preservation.
15155, I'm sure you are a smart person, but stop for a second and really inspect what you have done here. It is obvious to me you are not making a reasoned argument, but an emotional one, but think it is reasoned.
I spelled out clearly a situation where someone entering my home with a gun increases my chance of injury or death. Your retort is to claim I have a distaste for self-preservation. You didn't apparently think about what my claim was or counter with an argument why my logical deduction was wrong, but instead just assumed I don't want to avoid death or injury.
So let me break it down. I live in a safe neighborhood. I don't have a gun. If you, a good guy with a gun, entered my home at my invitation, did my chances of injury or death just go up or down? I'm not claiming it is a significant chance, just that it a large multiple of an already minuscule probability.
You never know... what? I'm a 2A supporter and a hunter, but I simply don't understand this kind of reasoning for why you need to concealed carry. The chance of you ever being in a position where having a firearm on you in public will make things better rather than worse is so ridiculously small that it just reeks of irrational fear. If you're that afraid of whatever situations you're imagining, how do you ever get in a car when your chance of getting injured or killed in one is astronomically higher?
That said, California's constant fight against 2A with absolutely idiotic rules needs to die.
I’ve never had a fire in my kitchen, but I still keep a fire extinguisher. I’ve never had cancer, but I still have medical insurance.
The marginal cost of carrying a gun is basically zero. If I ever do find myself in a situation where I need it, I’ll be glad to have it. And even if I don’t, the fact that random anonymous law-abiding citizens have guns is itself a crime deterrent.
No, it isn't. The stats for gun deaths in the US make this absolutely, unambiguously clear, far beyond the point where there's any realistic case for debate about it.
Widespread fire extinguisher use dramatically lowers the odds of you dying in a fire.
Widespread gun use - not just the presence of guns as an option, but the assumption that guns can be used on the street - dramatically increases the odds of you dying because of someone else's gun.
Proponents always seem to reduce this to an imaginary heroic encounter where Random Shooter is stopped by Heroic Armed Citizens.
That's almost never how it works in practice on the street. It's far more likely that Random Citizen is shot before they can even get their weapon out. And even if bystanders are armed they either won't have time to do anything to prevent a shooting, or they won't risk trying to shoot one of two people who are fairly close together at some range, or they'll simply decide it's not their problem and the most they'll do is call the police after it's over.
At this point someone usually says "But this one time..." And it's true there are exceptions.
But they don't change the statistics, which are completely clear - more gun use means more random gun deaths, partly because concealed guns really aren't particularly useful against attackers who already have their weapons out.
You have a far better chance of survival if you learn some distraction and confusion techniques and/or fast self-defence moves than by trying to shoot someone who is pointing a gun at you at close range.
There's a correlation because people who live in dangerous places tend to carry guns. But that's not causation--there's no reason to suspect that carrying a gun increases my chances of being killed by a gun.
Huh? Surely carrying a gun somewhere where there are no other guns immensely increased the chance that you’ll be killed by a gun, since the number of guns in the vicinity went from zero to one.
It does, yes. The majority of firearm deaths in the US are suicides, and the majority of suicides are committed with a firearm. The suicide rate is several times higher among men who own guns or regularly handle guns than it is among men who do not. It's clear that gun ownership has a high propensity to convert a survivable mental health crisis into a suicide. A US adult (but especially a man) who owns a gun is far more likely over their lifetime to use the gun on themself than they are to use it to defend themself.
Yes, I suppose it necessarily does, although I was referring more to the chance that in a struggle (perhaps an attempted robbery) your gun accidentally or intentionally discharges.
Kitchen fires are very common, as is cancer (not to mention the slew of other issues that require medical attention). Being in a situation where having a concealed gun in public will help anything is not. You haven't addressed any part of the argument here...
edit: also, there is no conclusive evidence at all to support your last statement [1].
I don't think the need is at Apple, but rather, for personal bodyguards to the CEO. This appears to be the reason Facebook was involved in the same scheme.
On apples campus he probably would be allowed to carry just by the business itself, similar to a bank security guard. Off campus is where the permit would be used to carry. They wanted to carry it anywhere in the state where it is permitted for CCW holders, so that's the probably reason they applied. It also allows you to buy a gun without a waiting period (I know this is the case for cops).
The only way to be exempt from a waiting period is to become a LEO or by getting certain categories of FFL (federal firearms license, which can come with a lot of stipulations).
At one point there was a court ruling saying that the waiting period was unconstitutional for people who already owned guns or had CCWs, but it was appealed
I mean, you said why not yourself. There's a lot that goes into being a bodyguard that makes it quite different from allowing random employees to carry.
I think this is a cultural thing that causes people in other places to worry too much about concealed firearms. I'm from Texas, where it's generally understood that there is a very good chance that any given person is carrying. Not just Joe Tough Guy either, there are plenty of old ladies with .25 ACPs in their handbags. People don't see it as scary or abnormal the same way other places do; it's just a tool that many people carry. I've only ever seen one incident where someone got stupid with a concealed handgun, and that guy was clearly a moron and had been drinking quite a bit. "Random people" carrying isn't really an issue. And because they're not seen as an exceptional or evil scary thing, most people are less-likely to abuse them, at least from what I've seen.
At the end of the day, Texas, however you may feel living there/being from there, has a higher per capita firearm death rate than several large states with stricter gun laws and many countries with stricter gun laws, and I personally believe those things to be related.
The data are from 2015, but DC is highest by far, even with its very strict gun laws. Note that California is higher than Texas despite horribly restrictive gun laws.
My point was more that people are less likely to abuse them as some exceptional item, at least as far as I've seen. Criminals will always use them; I was more talking about the likelihood of someone to draw a gun in a tense situation, which I can't measure. But people who view them as tools and know how to use them understand that one ought not to draw a gun unless he intends to use it.
All that aside, I don't support gun rights because rates of certain crimes are below some number. We would call it silly to support a right to privacy only insofar as terrorism does not exceed a certain threshold and to say that such a right disappears. In the same way, I don't believe crime rate should have any effect on our right to keep and bear arms.
I know there are areas with higher gun murder rates than TX. DC is a slightly unfair comparison, as you're comparing a city to a state. CA is not significantly higher than TX.
Your general point- which really seemed to be "knowing that everyone is armed in TX results in less gun violence", is easily disproven by other states with totally different laws having similar or lower gun violence rates.
To your last line- I agree with you, I don't believe crime rate should have any effect on our right to keep and bear arms. I want a complete repeal of the Second Amendment, though.
So, um...what are the statistics for Texas, which is the state being talked about?
It's all very well to mention that other states have some firearm homicides each year, but if you don't provide Texas' stats to compare to, it's not especially germane to the topic at hand...
The reason I pointed out the other states was to show that the looser gun laws of Texas is not necessarily the cause of higher firearm homicide rate. The other states have looser firearm laws than Texas (not in all respects).
I do not think it is the cause. My point is that the laws on the books and the firearm homicide rate seem fairly loosely coupled, if at all. If TX has loose laws, and CA has strict laws, and they're about the same with regards to firearm homicide rate, I think it is fair to suggest that the original poster's suggestion that "knowing every person could be armed actually reduces issues" may be faulty.
I used to work for a company that fielded body guards as one of their many services. Basically just have a pulse, don't have a criminal history, pass a fairly trivial interview that's designed to filter out people who think they're gonna be billy-badass or that it's gonna be an exiting job. There's a reason it doesn't pay well. Almost anyone can do it.
Driving a floor polisher was more lucrative and sucked less so I did that.
Why should Apple security have CCW permits? Why do they deserve them any more than a random person? They should not be able to defend Apple property with lethal force.
Why shouldn't people be able to defend themselves and their property w/ lethal force? Should we just let them die for the police to arrive 10 min late?
The need to protect executives with lethal force perhaps. I see the CA law only allows carrying unloaded firearms if you don't have CCW, which is kind of useless to protect someone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M&t=790
But I guess they all had a good laugh in the end, so it doesn't count?