After a public uproar over privacy concerns killed the SOPA and PIPA bills, Congress is back with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, or CISPA. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia goes over CISPA’s own privacy problems, and discusses the bill’s political prospects.
Ryan Young
The TSA has been making a lot of headlines lately. None of them are very flattering:
- A woman going through Madison, Wisconsin’s airport was reduced to tears and was visibly shaking during her pat-down. A fellow traveler took video, which you can see here. Many victims of sexual abuse have reported feeling similar emotions during pat-downs.
- Dina Frank is 7 years old and has cerebral palsy. She needs leg braces and crutches to walk, and has had a double hip replacement. Since she can’t walk through the metal detectors, she has to get pat-down every time she flies. The screeners were apparently aggressive as well as thorough, and upset the poor child. The screening took so long, her family ended up missing their flight. TSA defended the actions, saying proper procedures were followed.
- A now-former TSA officer is facing 20 years in prison for trafficking painkillers. Twenty people have been arrested in the case, and two TSA officers have so far pled guilty. If the FDA and DEA weren’t so intent on limiting the supply of pain relief, this black market would never have emerged. And the sentence is entirely out of line for a victimless crime. But it does show that TSA employees are corruptible.
- Two TSA employees in Los Angeles have also been charged with drug trafficking. They allegedly accepted cash bribes to let narcotics pass through LAX.
- A Congressman who co-sponsored an anti-TSA bill received a particularly vigorous pat-down, and is calling it assault.
- An elderly couple with two artificial knees and an artificial hip between them weren’t that surprised to set off a metal detector and be patted down as a result. But they were surprised to go through multiple pat-downs, and that $300 in cash was stolen.
- A frequent flyer, feeling harassed in Portland, Oregon’s airport, lost his cool and stripped naked. According to the police report, “Mr. Brennan’s actions caused two screening lanes to be closed and while some passengers covered their eyes and their children’s eyes and moved away from the screening area, others stepped out of the screening lanes to look, laugh and take photos of Mr. Brennan.”
- And as a bonus, a (non-TSA) London screener gave a surprisingly thorough screening to supermodel Bar Rafaeli, which she remarked “left no doubt about her sexual preferences.”
In a new study, Cato’s Michael Tanner finds that “Despite nearly $15 trillion in total welfare spending since Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in 1964, the poverty rate is perilously close to where we began more than 40 years ago.”
Poverty relief is one of the noblest and most important projects in any society. The only question is how to go about it. Right now, the federal government has 126 different welfare programs; Tanner is kind enough to list them all in a 5-page appendix. Their combined annual cost is $668 billion. That’s a lot of money – about $14,848 for every person in poverty.
The trouble is that the results have been disappointing. The poverty rate is currently 15.1 percent, the highest it’s been in a decade. If the chosen means aren’t achieving the end, then it’s time to choose some different means.
One solution is to make it easier to find a job. About one third of all occupations require a license. The people in charge of handing out licenses are typically members of the occupation, and have a vested interest in keeping potential competitors out. By removing licensing requirements from most occupations, more people can find jobs in fields ranging from interior decorating to hair-braiding to driving a taxi. More competition also means lower prices for consumers, so their dollars go further. That’s important for people who don’t have a lot of dollars.
In a city as big as Tokyo, there is plenty of room for niche businesses. One niche is the neko café; neko is the Japanese word for cat. Besides coffee, the main attraction at cat cafes is, well, cats. Furry friends live in the cafes, and patrons can play with them and pet them while they sip their coffee. They are especially popular with professionals who work long hours and live in apartments too small to have pets.
Animal rights activists want cat cafes to be strictly regulated. They have succeeded in passing an ordinance, set to take effect later this year, that bans animals from being publicly displayed after 8:00 PM. The main targets are pet shops, some of which can be dodgy. But cat cafes are not, and their very existence is threatened; their peak hours are in the evening.
Shinji Yoshida has strict rules for patrons in his cat cafe. If a cat is sleeping, customers shall not disturb it. They are not otherwise to be harassed. And, as animal activists concerned about caged animals have overlooked, Shinji’s feline colleagues also have the run of the place, as well as a giant cat furniture tree.
This is a wise business practice, as well as a humane one. As a cat owner, trust me. If your cats aren’t happy, you won’t be, either.
Still, that’s not enough:
Animal welfare campaigner Chizuko Yamaguchi says the sheer number of customers in cat cafes can make life difficult for the animals.
“From morning to night these cats are being stroked by people they do not know. For the animals, that is a real source of stress,” she said.
Just another week in the world of regulation:
- 84 new final rules were published last week, up from 77 the previous week. That’s the equivalent of a new regulation precisely every 2 hours — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All in all, 1,114 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year. If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,674 new rules.
- 1,675 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 24,097 pages. At this pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 78,238 pages.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 17 such rules published so far in 2012 cost at least $15.2 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and a third cost estimate does not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
- No economically significant rules were published last week. There were a total of 16 significant actions last week, as defined by Executive Order 12866. So far, 131 significant final rules have been published in 2012.
- 21 of last week’s final rules affect small business. So far this year, 216 final rules affect small businesses. 33 of them are significant rules.
Highlights from final rules published last week:
- Federal regulations require commercial drivers to undergo medical examinations to make sure they comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)’s physical qualification requirements. A new rule from the FMCSA “establishes a training, testing, and registration program that would certify medical professionals as qualified to conduct medical certification examinations of commercial drivers.”
- If you were thinking of importing pomegranates from Chile, there are some new regulations you should be aware of. From the summary, “the fruit would have to be grown in a place of production that is registered with the national plant protection organization of Chile and certified as having a low prevalence of Brevipalpus chilensis [aka the Chilean red false mite – ed.]. The fruit would have to undergo pre-harvest sampling at the registered production site. Following post-harvest processing, the fruit would have to be inspected in Chile at an approved inspection site. Each consignment of fruit would have to be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate with an additional declaration stating that the fruit had been found free of Brevipalpus chilensis based on field and packinghouse inspections.” If you don’t want to through all that, you may use pesticide.
- According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Three Forks springsnail is now an endangered species, and the San Bernadino springsnail is now a threatened species. The Three Forks springsnail is about a fifth of an inch long and is only found in part of a national forest in Apache County, Arizona. 17.2 acres of critical habitat have been designated for it. The San Bernadino springsnail is a tenth of an inch long. Its only known habitat is on a privately owned ranch in Cochise County, Arizona. It gets two acres of critical habitat; this may constitute a regulatory taking if it adversely affects the ranch owner.
For more data, updated daily, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.
There are some strange regulations out there:
- Part of the 70,000-page tax code is devoted to alpacas. There is even a website, alpacas-4-sale.com, that asks, “Why not let Uncle Sam help you buy your alpacas?” Good question. After all, under section 179 of the IRS Code, you can deduct up to $24,000 worth of alpaca purchases per year.
- “Bipartisan” usually means “twice as stupid.” For example, the bipartisan transportation bill that passed the Senate and is now under House consideration contains a provision that would give the IRS the power to confiscate your passport if you owe back taxes.
- Barking man cited for violating local noise ordinance. Very, very close to a man-bites-dog story. It also sounds like the guy could use some help.
- A 6-year-old Georgia child was handcuffed and put in a police station holding cell for throwing a temper tantrum at school. The local police chief is defending the action, claiming it was done by the book. Some book that must be.
- California agencies are required to submit a slew of annual reports to state legislators. For example, California’s Department of Fish and Game is legally required to submit an annual report on how many kangaroos are hunted in Australia each year. Governor Jerry Brown unveiled a plan this week to eliminate 718 (!) of these “unnecessary bureaucratic” reports.
- The EPA spent part of its $10 billion-plus budget to create an online video game called Greenquest.
Indiana is becoming a right to work state, which means unions will no longer be able to force workers who don’t want their representation to pay dues. Labor unions argue that this violates their right to free speech. Labor Policy Counsel Vinnie Vernuccio argues that taking away the power to collect mandatory dues is actually good for workers and unions alike. Workers will no longer be forced to pay for representation they don’t want, or political agendas they don’t support. Unions will also have to pay more attention to representing their members’ interests so workers will want to pay dues.
First, a Dallas TSA inspector is accused of stealing multiple iPads from passengers’ luggage.
Second, a drag queen’s “chicken cutlet” breast enhancers violated the TSA’s 3.4 ounce limit for liquids or gels. The accessories in question, which are stuffed into brassieres, are clearly not bombs. The man was detained for an hour until TSA figured out he wasn’t a security threat. Fortunately, he did make his flight.
And third, former TSA chief Kip Hawley writes that the TSA is “broken” and calls for reform in a ?Wall Street Journal? op-ed — three years after he left the agency. Better late than never, I guess.
Have you ever noticed that Tax Day is almost exactly antipodal with Election Day on the calendar? If that’s a coincidence, it’s a happy one for politicians. Complying with the 70,000-page tax code costs about $300 billion per year, and takes the equivalent of 3.8 million workers. By comparison, the income tax raises a little over $1.4 trillion per year. It’s an incredibly inefficient way to raise money.
In this video, our good friends over at the Cato Institute make the case for simplification. Maybe moving Tax Day and Election Day closer together would spur Congress to do something about it. Meanwhile, the U.S. is falling behind other countries that are adopting simpler systems every year, such as a flat tax or a national consumption tax.
Street musicians were recently banned from playing bagpipes in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Mayor Gregor Robertson was not happy about it. He takes great pride in his Scottish heritage, to the point of wearing a kilt to the swearing-in ceremony for his second term. So when Vancouver’s engineering department went over his head, he vowed to fight back.
Most city council members are from Robertson’s Vision Vancouver party, and they agreed to review the bagpipe ban. Just in time for the city’s Scotland Week celebration, Robertson happily announced that the ban was lifted:
“Buskers play a very important role in making Vancouver’s streets lively and dynamic, particularly in our vibrant downtown. The council won’t support an outright ban on specific instruments. The restriction on bagpipes has now been lifted. Staff will continue to gather noise level readings, monitor complaints and work with musicians and performers to see how these instruments can be permitted in a way that is acceptable to the public.”
Say what you will about bagpipe music. Banning it is bad policy. Kudos to Mayor Robertson and Vancouver’s city council for giving buskers the opportunity to make a little bit of money and add to the city’s cultural life.
RSS Updates 
RSS E-Mail Updates 
Twitter 
Facebook 
CEI.org 
WorkPlaceChoice.org 
GlobalWarming.org 
CEI On Demand Video 
Liberty Week Podcast 