Privacy

TSA’s Bad Policies Aren’t Going Away

by Ryan Young on December 13, 2010 · 1 comment

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Privacy

Public outrage at the TSA’s new policies has died down. That’s a real shame. If people stop pressing the issue, full-body scanners and pat-downs aren’t going anywhere. People are still having experiences like this:

I told her I had never undergone this process and was a bit afraid, and she laughed at me and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.

The woman grabbed my wrist and said she had to look at my plastic watch. I tried to take it off and hand it to her, and she yelled at me not to interfere with her search.

Then, with no explanation, she pulled up my shirt, exposing my stomach and the top of my underwear, and stuck the top half of her fingers inside the waistband of my pants. I yanked my shirt down and told her she was not showing the top of my underwear and my naked stomach to anyone.

She put her hand up in front of me, threatened to call security and have me arrested if I “tried to get away from her again,” and called security for a private screening.

It is well past time to abolish the TSA. The resources it squanders on security theater would be better used on security.

Wikileaks’ Assange to Australian Times: “I’m Not Sorry”

by Kathryn Ciano on December 7, 2010

in International, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Tech & Telecom, Zeitgeist

Julian Assange wrote an op-ed in the Australian Times today essentially saying, “I’m not sorry”:

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

Comparing himself to Rupert Murdoch, Assange quotes the media mogul: ”In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”

After British police arrested Assange today, the WikiLeaks mastermind hid behind huge glasses, bringing to mind another Australian popular celebrity in recent zeitgeist memory.

Life imitates life imitates art.

Image credit: Byeskille’s flickr photostream.

An Intrusive, Ineffective, Unionized TSA?

by Hans Bader on November 29, 2010

in Mobility, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Privacy

Much has been written about the backlash against the TSA’s intrusive new screening methods. Law professor Jeff Rosen has argued that they violate the Fourth Amendment, since they are more invasive than alternative screening methods, but may be no more effective. Others have argued that the screening will kill more people than it saves from terrorist attacks, even if it ever prevents a terrorist attack, since it will result in angry travelers traveling by car rather than by airplane, resulting in hundreds of additional deaths annually, since fatalities are much higher on the road than in the air. (One scientist argues that the screenings will also lead to an increase in radiation-related deaths.)

Such screening methods are only as effective as the employees who use them, and lazy or inattentive employees can render any screening method useless.  The Obama administration is now poised to unionize the TSA, which would make it harder to remove lazy or inattentive employees, and harder to reassign employees as needed in responding to any attempted terror attacks.  The Washington Examiner, and John Fund of The Wall Street Journal, earlier criticized the administration’s support for unionization, which past TSA heads recognized would undermine public safety.

As John Fund notes, “if you think TSA is dysfunctional and unpopular now, wait until it unionizes. This month, the Federal Labor Relations Authority ruled that 50,000 TSA personnel will be allowed to vote on whether or not to join a union with full collective bargaining rights. The American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union are already gearing up their campaigns to win over the screeners.”

As the Examiner notes:

[A]dapting to evolving security threats requires a level of workplace flexibility that is incompatible with rigid union workplaces. After a plot to blow up a dozen U.S.-bound airliners from Britain over the Atlantic was broken up in 2006, the TSA changed its procedures in 12 hours to deal with new concerns about liquid explosives. Unions make it notoriously difficult for managers to change job descriptions and procedures, so it’s hard to believe a unionized TSA would have sufficient flexibility to cope with constantly changing terrorist challenges.

In 2007, Congress, in legislation backed by then-Senator Obama, passed legislation enabling the TSA to unionize — a stance endorsed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who earlier claimed that “the system worked” when a terrorist nearly blew up a plan, only to be foiled by alert passengers, with no help from the TSA. (The terrorist was allowed on the plane despite being on a terror watch list, and then set fire to explosives.  To put out the fire, passengers had to violate TSA red tape like rules banning passengers from getting out of their seat during the last hour of a flight.) The Examiner says that “the TSA has yet to catch one terrorist.”

The TSA often fails to detect explosive ingredients and fake bombs in performance tests. A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security. In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles.  The Obama administration is also undermining railroad safety through pro-union favoritism.

TSA’s John Pistole Offers to Probe Senators: Shouldn’t He Buy Them Dinner First?

by Ryan Young on November 17, 2010

in Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Privacy

TSA chief John Pistole offered to give enhanced pat-downs to senators at a hearing today on TSA’s new screening policies. Over at the AmSpec blog, I break down the cause of the controversy and point out that there’s a lot more to the story than national security.

The curiously-named Rapiscan is one of two companies that makes full-body imaging machines. As former CEI Brookes Fellow Tim Carney reports, Rapiscan’s CEO is an Obama donor who accompanied the president on his recent trip to India.

Rent-seeking being a bipartisan phenomenon, the company also paid President Bush’s former Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, to promote Rapiscan’s full-body scanners.

Image credit: TalkMediaNews’ flickr photostream.

Obama Justice Department Uses Americans with Disabilities Act to Harm the Disabled, Risk Lives, and Undermine Safety

by Hans Bader on August 9, 2010 · 1 comment

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Health and Illness, International, Labor, Legal, Mobility, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Privacy, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

“Amazon.com . . . tried to sell a talking Kindle reader, but” the Justice Department “said it couldn’t because the button to make the Kindle talk didn’t have braille.  Never mind that books neither talk nor have Braille buttons telling them to talk.”   Obama’s radical appointees at the Justice Department, like Tom Perez, think that it’s better to have NO accommodation for the disabled, then an imperfect accommodation.  The Obama Justice Department also used the threat of suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act to prevent colleges from using Kindle to lighten “the textbook load on their student body by moving to e-book formats.”  Blocking Kindle harms people with chronic back problems.

The Obama Justice Department is also threatening South Carolina with a lawsuit over an anti-AIDS program that saves lives in the state’s prisons.  South Carolina tests incoming inmates for AIDS, and “half of those tested never knew they were infected.  The testing policy saves lives because treatment starts immediately, at state expense.”  The Administration ridiculously claims this is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.  But the Supreme Court has made clear that prisons have broad powers to restricts’ inmates rights to  protect health or safety, or to promote any other legitimate correctional or penological purposes.  (Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decision in Beard v. Banks says that prisons can even restrict what inmates read.  South Carolina is not trying to do anything that extreme.)

The Obama administration also claims that the policy violates the disabled-rights laws, even though it saves lives, because it provides “separate living facilities” for prisoners with AIDS.  South Carolina’s program “has worked so well since 1998 that there has only been a single transmission of HIV/AIDS to a single prisoner.”  In other prison systems, many lives have been lost due to transmission of HIV to previously uninfected inmates.  The Obama Justice Department’s demand could thus result in many deaths.

The Obama Administration’s claim is flatly inconsistent with a federal appeals court ruling that held that even a tiny risk of HIV transmission can justify sweeping anti-AIDS measures like not employing a surgeon with AIDS, given the lethal nature of AIDS.  (See Doe v. University of Maryland Medical System Corp., 50 F.3d 1261 (4th Cir. 1995).)  That ruling is binding precedent in South Carolina, and it rejected challenges under both the Americans with Disabilities Act and its sister statute, the Rehabilitation Act.

Moreover, South Carolina is not trying to go nearly as far as the federal appeals court held was permissible, in its sensible measure to save lives–it is not firing anyone, just housing them separately.  Prison officials are given more leeway to take HIV-positive status into account than employers are, given the extra deference that courts give to prison administrators. Even the most liberal federal appeals court upheld a policy of denying inmates who tested positive for HIV access to food service jobs.  (See Gates v. Rowland, 39 F.3d 1439 (9th Cir. 1994).)

The Obama administration also wants to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to regulate the Internet.  It also has signed an international treaty on disabilities-rights that could undermine American sovereignty.

Deferring to the Justice Department, the most-liberal federal appeals court recently ruled against Chipotle in a lawsuit that will lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and attorney fees–and a catch-22 against the company, which must lower its employee counter tops to make them easier for disabled patrons to view (to satisfy the ADA), but must simultaneously keep them high to comply with worker-safety rules.  (Ironically, the court’s ruling in Antoninetti v. Chipotle conflicted with one of its own past rulings, violating the rule that a panel of an appeals court cannot contradict an earlier panel.  It also rewarded nuisance litigation.)

California poker players: 1 – Free market opponents: 0

by Michelle Minton on July 1, 2010 · 2 comments

in Culture, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Tech & Telecom, Trade

As I wrote yesterday, California was on the verge of passing a bill that would have allowed residents to play poker online at one of three state-authorized sites, but that would have also have made criminals out of residents who chose to play at any other site online.
The bill was withdrawn by Sen. Wright, supposedly due to pressure from pressure on all sides:

…with the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the California card rooms that initially endorsed online poker, and three of California’s political lobbying associations for tribes pitted against the legislation — as well as anti-gambling groups and the visible absence of key players — the legislation as written was a long shot.

I'm going to get as much mileage off of this picture as I can

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) also opposed the bill due to the criminalization of playing online anywhere but the three hubs chosen by the California department of Justice, in addition to the effect it would have on competition:

“[This bill] will not attract the best qualified and most experienced hub operators… the measure imposes a variety of operational financial barriers and preferences that will discourage or bar non-traditional telecommunications, software, and out-of-state gaming companies from applying as hub operators or subcontractors…Rather than leveraging proven Internet gaming models with recognizable brands and sizable player bases, this bill sets out to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and assumes that California players will readily migrate to unfamiliar new sites.”

The PPA supports federal legislation that overturn the UIGEA and legislation that would create a new framework to license, regulate, and tax Internet gambling.

In any case, the most beneficial action to take (apart from abolishing all laws regulating gambling and involuntary taxes) would be to overturn UIGEA and have online casinos and players fall under existing tax law.

Online Gambling Could Have Brought $150 billion and 32,000 jobs to the US

by Michelle Minton on April 23, 2010 · 6 comments

in Legal, Nanny State, Odds & Ends, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Tech & Telecom

In the past five years since the de facto ban on Internet gambling (congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006) the US could have created 32,000 jobs and raised $94 billion in gross expenditures as well as an additional $57.5 billion in tax revenue from wagering activities, related job creation and growth of supporting businesses. All of this would have been the result of legalizing and taxing Internet gambling according to a new study released last week by H2 Gambling Capital.

But that didn’t happen. While most of the opposition to online gambling came from the neoconservative right, most of those legislators seemed more than happy to let the activity exist in a federal regulatory gray area with no federal law applying to non-sports wagering on the Internet, leaving it to particular states to determine if and how to regulate.

Republicans eagerly courting the tea party vote use the rhetoric of less government, less spending, no more bailouts. If they want to continue to use that logic while claiming that they can improve the US economy, not banning an industry is a good first step. As for the regulations, one might say that gambling in the US would really thrive if it were not legal or illegal. If the activity was simply regulated and taxed as any other business in the US more casinos would be interested in housing operations (and thus creating jobs) in the states. However, there are several bills in both the House and Senate that would legalize certain online gambling activities and amend the tax code in order to draw revenue from those activities.

Picture via techniumcast.com

Online gambling opponents play the Abramoff card

by Michelle Minton on April 16, 2010

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Tech & Telecom

Gambling as an activity for fun has been around since the dawn of human civilzation. When man first discovered fire, there were probably cavemen huddled at a distance, wagering on how long it would stay aflame. Yet, it seems that some in congress think combining this innate human desire for risk and reward with Internet technology could hearken the end of  life as we know it and they’ll use any possible weapon to ban Internet gambling.cave-roulette1

As more states increase regulated and taxed gambling activities, an online gambling draws closer to an explicit federal allowance,  the anti-tax set on capitol hill are scrambling for any kind of evidence to connect online gambling with illegal activities–anything to prove that it is a threat to the public good. The latest stretch-of-the-imagination by opponents of Internet gaming (led by Representative Spencer  Bauchus; R-Ala.) is a memo connecting the legalization efforts with the Abramoff scandal. If you don’t remember, back in 2006 Jack Abramoff, a prominent lobbyist in D.C. admitted to misusing funds and attempting to bribe members of congress. Sure, old Jackie boy’s firm took money from pro-gambling organizations and yes, he definitely had dubious financial dealings, but before seeing the actual memo I am still sitting here asking myself what has that got to do with the legality of online wagering? If anything, the memo simply serves as evidence that something is horribly wrong with the way our representational government has been operating if a lobbyist can buy legislators that easily.

Citing lobbying disclosure records, the GOP memo asserts that Internet gambling interests paid “Team Abramoff” nearly $5 million from 2001 to 2004, including clients such as the Interactive Gaming Council of Vancouver, which is helping to lead efforts to legalize online gambling in the United States. “While Jack himself is now imprisoned, many of his former associates continue to carry out Abramoff’s plan to legalize Internet gambling in the United States,” the GOP memo reads.

Setting aside the charges for fraud and laundering, Abramoff was just doing his job. Furthermore, lobbyists wouldn’t exist if they didn’t work–that is if representatives made principled decisions based on the defense of individual rights rather than on whim and whatever will net them them the most tax dollars. The first time a Congressman wrote up legislation to “help” one business or improve the “public good” by harming another business, leveling the playing field, or taxing one, but not the other, the lobbying industry was born. If regulators are going to pick “winners” and “losers” with their policy decisions then corporate entities have just as much right as voters to have their say in the most convincing manner possible.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) which was set to go into effect in December has effectively killed the Online gaming industry in the US, costing many millions in lost revenue, legal costs, and years in prison for people who simply offered an activity to willing consumers. Even though implementation of the regulation has been delayed until June, and legalization appears nigh, there are those in congress with who willfully disregard the fact that gambling online is a voluntary act, it does not infringe upon any individual’s rights and is a contract between the business (the online gaming platform) and the consumer (the gambler) therefore there is no need for the government to come in and deem it illegal or legal.

The arguments expressed in memos like the one connecting Internet gambling to the Abramoff scandal simply demonstrate why legislators should be restricted to protecting individual rights and nothing else. Does it protect anyone if we ban an activity that 86% of Americans have chosen to engage in? We could protect a lot of people from harming themselves if we banned chocolate–but we don’t do that because Americans have the right to make choices about their own lives (to a certain extent…for now). We have a right to our own lives, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we see it, so long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of other individuals–when our actions do impede other individuals’ ability to pursue life, liberty, and happiness that is when Spencer Bachus should start thinking about “protecting” people.

The best option now is to put Internet gambling back into the regulatory gray area by reversing UIGEA and regulating the industry just as any other business–no new legislation required.

Republicans Will Lose Many Seats in Congress Due to Right-Wing Paranoia About the Census

by Hans Bader on March 31, 2010

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Privacy, Zeitgeist

Republicans will lose many seats in Congress due to right-wing paranoia about the census and refusal to fill out Census forms, gloats the liberal web site Daily Kos. The number of congressional districts a state gets is based on how many of its citizens return completed Census forms.  Because voters in conservative states are completing and returning Census forms at lower rates than voters in liberal states, conservative states will lose many seats in the House of Representatives that they would otherwise gain due to increases in their population.

Republican-leaning “Red States” will also lose out on billions of dollars in federal funds, which are apportioned based largely on population.

Unlike many things the federal government does, the Census is expressly authorized by the explicit language of the Constitution.  (As a believer in free markets, limited government, and the Constitution, I have criticized some of the legislation backed by the Obama administration as being unconstitutional and beyond Congress’s enumerated powers.  But the Census and the questions it asks are perfectly constitutional, even though some of those questions may seem unnecessary.)

A few white Census respondents are stupidly listing their race as “human” or “some other race” rather than white.  Many commenters at the conservative website Free Republic say they will just refuse to report their race on their Census forms, viewing it as irrelevant.

This inaccurate reporting of racial information may unintentionally prolong racial set-aside programs that are obsolete and no longer necessary.  By making the white percentage of the population appear smaller than it in fact is, such responses can make it easier for the federal government to get away with racial quotas, which are based on so-called disparity studies, which measure the supposed gap between racial percentages in the population and racial percentages in awards of government contracts.  Under Supreme Court rulings like the 1987 Paradise decision, quotas are supposed to be used only as a “last resort” and for no longer than absolutely necessary.  But faulty Census data can give them a new lease on life, even when they serve no valid purpose, and enforce, rather than remedy, discrimination.

National ID Plan Insults Americans

by Alex Nowrasteh on March 19, 2010

in Legal, Privacy, Regulation

President Obama recently gave his thumbs-up to an immigration compromise plan formulated by Chucky “Why Am I So Annoying” Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that includes a national biometric ID card for all Americans.  I already outlined here some of the major objections to any national biometric ID but the government is moving forward with the plan anyway.

I expected this proposal to be terrifying, but I wasn’t prepared to be personally insulted.  As was reported here:

“The cards would include biometric information designed to prevent counterfeiting — but the senators said the information would not be stored in a government database.”

I don’t believe in conspiracies, but when the government says they are going to set up a national biometric ID card BUT not store all of our information in a database, it smells fishy.  Sure . . . (wink-wink) the national biometric ID won’t store our personal biological information in a government database . . . and our Social Security numbers will only be used to track our Social Security benefits, right?    Nothing good has ever come about from the issuance of a national ID, let alone one that includes biometric information.

But the Senator’s statements, if true, negate the entire purpose of have a national biometric ID!  If the information is not stored in a database, there is nothing to check your national biometric ID card against.  That would make it incredibly easy to counterfeit.  How is the government, or a private employer, supposed to know it’s a forgery?  All national biometric ID cards, or ID cards of any type, require a central database of personal information to have a chance at being successful.  What are Graham and Schumer thinking?

The good parts of the Senator’s plan, of which there are several, are totally overshadowed by this and the extension of an Electronic Employment Verification System (EEVS).  These provisions have turned what could be an important bill into a terrifying extension of government power that won’t even cut down on illegal immigration.  A bill like this that focuses on enforcement and amnesty only will not be successful.

Undocumented immigration is a problem but the solution is not scanning American’s biological information into a biometric national ID card that must be presented to employers and checked against a mandatory EEVS.  The solution is to allow mass legal immigration to the United States to move immigration out of an unregulated black market and into the legal market.  Americans are already punished by the government’s insistence that legal immigration be kept at artificially low levels; let’s not punish them more by submitting their most intimate information to a government database.

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