The Lessons of Liberty Safe

Corporations and digital anything are not your friend.

Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash

So I wasn’t paying attention to this story until the other half started talking about it. His YouTube algorithm probably has him on a watch list somewhere.

Anyway, here are the broad outlines of the sordid tale, as told by the Daily Beast from their particular angle:¹

Popular gun safe manufacturer Liberty Safe has been struggling to respond to conservative backlash after it gave the FBI access to a customer’s safe as part of a probe into the customer’s participation in the Capitol riot. Late Wednesday, the company announced that customers will have the option to erase data of their safe combinations and “take control of how their information is stored and protected.” Earlier in the day, Liberty Safe had explained that the FBI had produced a search warrant to the safe owned by Nathan Hughes, a 34-year-old Arkansas man charged with felony civil disorder in connection to the Jan. 6 riot. Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that promotes conservative politics in schools and universities, denounced the company as “an enemy to gun owners” and said it should have pushed back against the warrant. Others chimed in with vows to boycott, coming on the heels of MAGA-driven boycotts of companies like Bud Light and Target that have embraced the LGBTQ+ community in advertising campaigns.

I can’t tell you how surreal it is to read about “conservative” backlash in a story about law enforcement and corporations overstepping their bounds. “Post-liberal” donkey-sympathizers have completely lost the thread if it’s only “conservatives” that are angry.

Now how exactly Liberty Safe “backtracked,” I don’t know, unless the Daily Beast wants to admit that companies keep these backdoors into their supposedly secure products just in case one of the little peons gets a wild hair to disagree with the government’s holy writ. And maybe that is what they’re suggesting. It is the Daily Beast after all.

So was Liberty Safe required by law to provide access?

Well, here’s a statement from the company:

Note that it’s “company protocol.” No claim that they had a legal obligation, because they don’t, despite the protestations of an FBI agent quoted on NewsNation:

Tracy Walder, who worked with the CIA and FBI, sided with Musk. She said Liberty Safe “absolutely did the right thing.”

“If the FBI serve you a warrant, you don’t have a choice but to comply with it. I actually have a Liberty Safe of my own. I have no plans to be getting rid of it,” Walder said during an appearance Thursday night on “The Hill on NewsNation.”

Well, of course she doesn’t. She’s part of the problem.

Apple refused to give the codes out for the phones for the San Bernadino shooters who did more than carry a flag and a water bottle into the Capitol and make Pelosi wet her Depends and nearly spit out her teeth. Nothing happened to them. So, no, Liberty Safe was in no way legally obligated to turn over the code to the safe.

If you noticed the name “Musk” above, it’s because you really should be ambivalent about lifting Elon up to hero status:

On the other hand, billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk posted, “Liberty Safe had no choice here and are not to blame.”

Of course they had a choice. It just wouldn’t have been an easy one with the government bearing down on them. But they could have stood up for their customer when it mattered. One buys a gun safe partly to protect the guns from the government, just like one puts a passcode on a phone to protect info from everybody, including law enforcement.

Now you might wonder why, in an era when conservatives have found their boycott voice, Liberty Safe would do something stupid like this, it’s because they didn’t think anyone would find out. No one would have known what Liberty Safe did if it had not been for the Hodge twins, who posted about Nathan Hughes on “X.”

Once the firestorm hit, in order to save their behinds, Liberty Safe said they would delete a safe owner’s code from their database on request so only the safe owner has the code. They set up a handy little site for customers to go to. However, if you think they’re actually going to delete the code, I have ocean front property in Laurel, Montana, to sell you. And if you think people who ask for them to delete that information won’t end up on a “list” somewhere, I have a nice chunk of dry land you might be interested in, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

But the story gets more interesting.

Liberty Safe, which describes itself as “America’s #1 heavy-duty home and gun safe manufacturer,” has come under fire after a report revealed that its parent company has donated almost half a million dollars to pro-gun control Democratic officials.

On Wednesday, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk shared FEC filings on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that show Liberty Safe’s parent company, Monomoy Capital Partners, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats.

“I pulled the FEC reports on the company and found approximately $400,000 over the last 10 cycles of max donations to Democrats,” Kirk wrote.

It’s predictable if only for this reason: Democrats are the “regulators.” Republicans are not. So if you’re on a budget, always buy blue. You can’t go wrong.

But still, a gun safe manufacturer being caught donating to people who want to confiscate all the guns (but the ones used to protect themselves of course) . . .

Now for the “lessons”:

(1) Old school is the only way to go if you’re serious. Anything that’s digital will always have a backdoor built in, or at least you need to assume that. In this case, if you’re going to get a safe, make sure it’s a dial. As far as I can tell, you can reset the combination so nobody but you (and the locksmith if you used one) has it. That way the Feds at least have to get a blowtorch out and work up a sweat.

(2) January 6th is another event in a long pattern of using “tragedies” to change expectations about individual rights. Law enforcement should have to work for their “evidence,” not just message a company and demand a number. They want you to get used to the idea that you have no real right to privacy because “democracy.”

(3) Corporations have no moral code besides money, and they can only make money if they stay in the government’s good graces. For this reason, they will always choose government over clientele, or perhaps I should say, in this case, government is the clientele, because they trick people into thinking their “secrets” are safe. Just because Liberty Safes are made in the US and marketed to gun enthusiasts means nothing. Liberty Safe will turn on their customers faster than you can say, “This Bud’s for you.”

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Ha, finally a short one! I have to thank Eric (the other half) for this story. I guess YouBoob is good for something.

Speaking of Eric, to lighten up your Monday morning, another meme from the SnoWest forum, his version of Facebook . . .

1. I love the framing. It’s that pablum for a certain group of people who don’t want to think too hard about how this could be misused against them.