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Google And Facebook Are Making a Photo Gun Registry Complete With Serial Numbers

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  • Armyvet35N

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    Washington, DC — On Wednesday, The Firearm Blog posted a story that will likely blow most gun owners away.

    Earlier in the day, Jalopnik, a website for selling cars and car parts posted an article about cars and license plate numbers.


    Not exactly breaking gun news.

    But Jalopnik’s article claimed that if you put in a license plate number into google, it would pull up any images stored of that car or it’s license plate.

    Google was essentially using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on license plates in Google Images.

    This made the license plates (and thus the cars) searchable by Google query.

    Curious, The Firearm Blog wondered if Google was also using that Optical Character Recognition on the serial numbers of guns.

    And it turns out, they are.

    That’s right. Every gun picture uploaded to Google, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter is being automatically scanned using OCR and its serial number is now stored.

    To prove that this data mining was happening, The Firearm Blog used examples of gun pictuers they had posted to their blogs—and thus of which they had the serial numbers. They typed in the serial numbers and nothing else (no gun make or model, etc) and immediately Google showed them their own blog post with that exact gun in it.

    Learn more about RevenueStripe...

    Google had read the practically microscopic serial number from off the gun in their blog post and had used that data mining to add the serial number to their database.

    Google is archiving these serial numbers and making a collection of every gun that’s ever been uploaded to the internet. Granted, not every picture of every gun will be readable by their software, but the fact remains that they likely have pictures of millions and millions of American guns stored with their serial numbers in this searchable database.

    As you can see from the results below, firearm serial numbers are in fact part of this apparent large-scale data mining operation by companies like Google and Facebook.

    Tests were also run on silencer serial numbers, and google pulled up the correct image of those, as well. If you put the serial number in quotes in your search, Google is forced to look only for that string of numbers. And it pulled the silencer image up in seconds.



    This is basically a ghost registry.

    While the image of your gun doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal, don’t forget that all pictures taken by digital devices are stored with their meta data.

    This meta data identifies what device it was taken on, the date the photo was taken, and the owner of the picture.

    The context of where the image was found can also give more information—think of whose Facebook or Google account uploaded it.

    For further illustration, if you have somebody who is angry at you, they could call the cops or your insurance company and say that they had a gun stolen and give them this Google-sourced serial number.

    It’s generally thought that the person who knows that serial number is likely to be the real owner, after all.

    This creates a paperwork headache that could take a while to untangle, to say the least. If you go to sell your gun, it could show up on a list of stolen guns, for example. Or if a cop looks up your gun at a traffic stop and it comes up as reported stolen, you’re going to have a very bad day.

    Or people making a ghost guns could grab your serial number and put it on their ghost gun.

    Essentially, there are plenty of bad uses for this database already, but the potential uses that we don’t even know yet are even more worrisome.

    If you’re the kind of person who puts fake info on a grocer store membership card, then you might want to seriously consider blacking out your serial numbers before posting pictures of your guns in any online format, or even reconsider posting them at all.

    https://www.secondamendmentdaily.co...9o3F5yJTNRbElfpQmXBH042UjTQjjOqwFWx3pj2irLJtI
     

    kendive

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    Pretty obvious this is happening... Probably been going on a very long time. It's a High Tech World we live in. Get use to it or watch what you post online. LOL
     

    Little Jack

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    Fertilizer, drone, supremacy, gun, freedom, white, nationalist, immigrant, constitution, founder, second, absolutionist..... now we've got some attention.
     

    FLT

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    Anybody that’s a member of any gun forum is on a list, of that I’m sure .
     

    SAWMAN

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    Google is so silly.
    If they would simply ask me,I would give them all my guns serno's.
    They all have been obtained legally,are legal to have,are legal to use,etc.
    I consider this extremely low on my daily list of shit that worries me. --- SAWMAN
     

    Zeroed in

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    1. Quote: "For further illustration, if you have somebody who is angry at you, they could call the cops or your insurance company and say that they had a gun stolen and give them this Google-sourced serial number."

    1a. Quote: "This meta data identifies what device it was taken on, the date the photo was taken, and the owner of the picture."

    3. Quote: "Or if a cop looks up your gun at a traffic stop and it comes up as reported stolen, you’re going to have a very bad day."


    Reality 1. If someone did this, why couldn't the ins. co or even a police agency google the number and see who "really" owns it as you describe in 1a, or the accused do it? Now charge the person for false reporting to leo.

    Reality 2. Not all firearms have unique serial numbers, meaning there are upteen different manufactured firearms with the Same serial number. As for the belief a person used your serial number on their "Ghost" gun won't hold water on a traffic stop and you with your firearm which the ghost gun was reported stolen or used in a crime. Because, not only do the serial numbers have to match up, so does the manufacturer, model and caliber. So I believe you'll be safe on that one.

    And look on the bright side, if your firearm gets stolen, if you posted your firearm online showing the serial number, and you can't locate the serial number at home, look up your subscriptions and there it will be.
     

    standles

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    Google is so silly.
    If they would simply ask me,I would give them all my guns serno's.
    They all have been obtained legally,are legal to have,are legal to use,etc.
    I consider this extremely low on my daily list of shit that worries me. --- SAWMAN

    All true SAWMAN but with candidates talking about forced confiscation and or registration this ghost database can take on a more sinister ambiance. Now as you say if all our firearms are on 4473 then they have the data already. It's the private sales that cause them to lose sleep at night. Once they take that away now there are no "ghosts". With that said all mine are legal and 4473'd . However, I did just watch an interesting video of a man casting his own lower and machining it to finished working article. Ok Im rambling now.
     

    Little Jack

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    Information is power. One piece by itself may not be significant but paired with a couple other insignificant pieces and you may have a problem.

    4473s have to be kept for 20 years. Can be destroyed after that. 4473s have been lost in floods/ fires/ natural disasters etc. There are options for electronic 4473s.
    As mentioned before, anything electronic, assume it's out there for ever. At least until the next collapse of civilization. Even with the 4473s it only indicates that serial number(s) to a specific person for that transaction. Unless you're in a ban state, the buyer can turn right around and sell/ give/ trade that SN to a non prohibited person as soon as they leave the store. If they don't care about self enforced laws, they can pass it to whomever they would like.
     

    SAWMAN

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    Think about this,and just throw out a number. - - -> How many "straw purchases" of firearms do you think occur in any given 1 year period ?? This,by the good guys . . AND . . the bad guys. --- SAWMAN
     

    wildrider666

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    I was thinking of testing this with Franks "shotgun" numbers but there's probably a thousand matches. Lol

    You folks didn't give real personal identifers when you joined, did you? They got an IP to a neighbors house too, guess that's within Hellfire frag Zone though. Lol
     

    IronBeard

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    I've never posted a gun photo that showed the serial number, to my knowledge; I blur them before posting. I'm sure this will be excused as freedom of speech by those who agree with the form of speech, and the agenda behind it.
     

    M60Gunner

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    The exiv data in the photos also records latitude and longitude of where the pic was taken...
     

    Zeroed in

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    :noidea: I tried 10 different serial numbers from 10 different guns, pistols and ar's from here and ZERO showed up on googling them. Maybe gcgf isn't high enough on their list to copy serial #'s from here. :clap2:
     

    wildrider666

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    I went to google images, picked a clear Serial Number (w/o letters) from a stainless and a blued guns. Searched with numbers in "quotation marks". One search netted four pages of results: not there. The other, I quit looking after 15 pages/more clicks. Repeated with word gun and another with firearm added behind quoted serial number. Pages of guns (glue to staple included): I quit after 10 pages.

    This is supposed to be similar fallout from license plate numbers. Google maps "Street View" photographs include vehicles and their Plate numbers. Google blurs Plates in the final public Product but the "Data" was definitely picked up directly into Google's system(s). I ran a Plate number from a vehicle captured by google Street View. Dozens of pages but again: you would need to dig Deeeeep and might find it? Definitely doesn't jump out like a coon from a trash can! Lol
     

    FNHman

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    Put your tin foil hat on but I'm a firm believer that when you use any modern photo editing software "like in your phone" there is metadata that gets sent along with your picture to "reverse or undo" the editing. So even editing out things like serial numbers, license plates, other individuals in the photo etc... the powers to be can see view the original photo.
     
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