First, a TSA manager at Dulles airport has been arrested for running a prostitution ring.
Second, two Miami TSA employees were arrested for trashing a hotel room and firing a semiautomatic handgun six times out of a window.
Third, security expert Bruce Schneier has been debating former TSA head Kip Hawley over at The Economist. Schneier absolutely destroys him. Game, set match:
He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there’s a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).
Today, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held a hearing on cosmetics regulation to consider whether Congress should beef up federal law to ensure public health and safety. Ironically, many calls for federal action came from industry, mostly small firms that simply want the freedom to innovate and market products across state lines without running up against 50 different sets of rules and who want to restore consumer confidence about the safety of their products.
Unfortunately, federal action may move the debate in a different, not-so-positive direction, particularly given the viewpoints expressed by lawmakers who will craft the “reforms.”
The ultimate problem is that these lawmakers focus on hazard rather than risk and they downplay, if not largely ignore, the benefits of the products. Hazard-based standards only consider whether something has the potential for harm at some level or under some specific circumstance. A chemical may be dubbed “hazardous,” even if it poses little risk at existing exposure levels. For example, water can be considered hazardous because excessive consumption can produce fatal “water intoxication.”
Risk involves the probability that something will happen. For example, the risk of water intoxication is low from taking a few sips of water, but the risk level increases an individual continues to consume the water at higher and higher levels. But the hazard posed by the water remains the same in all instances. Likewise, we have many “hazardous” chemicals in our homes — everything from cleaning supplies to bug spray to olive oil (which can make you slip if spilled on the floor). Each can be a hazard, but the risk depends on how we use them. Fortunately, we can benefit from each of these products while managing the risks to keep them low.
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On Monday, I’ll be speaking at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Americans for Choice and Competition in Agriculture, which also goes by the name of AgChoice: “Feeding the World & Growing Our Economy: Agricultural Innovation in the 21st Century.”
The global population reached seven billion people on October 31, 2011, and is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. In order to meet the challenge of feeding this growing population, agricultural output must double and food production must increase by 70 percent by mid-century.
Despite a weak global economy, the demand for U.S. agricultural exports is growing and has increased 45 percent in the last five years. Leadership from the U.S. agricultural industry will play an important role in addressing these challenges, but only if policies that encourage increased innovation are adopted. Join Americans for Choice and Competition in Agriculture and other thought leaders to discuss the agricultural challenges that lie ahead in the 21st century including how innovation will play a key role and what policies need to be developed in order to encourage ongoing innovation in agriculture.
Speakers:
Dr. Roger Beachy, Founding President, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
Brandon Hunnicutt, Chairman, Nebraska Corn Growers Association
Gregory Conko, Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Chandler Goule, Vice President of Government Relations, National Farmers Union
11:45 A.M. – 1:30 P.M.
1302 Longworth House Office Building
One of the topics I’ll be addressing is the way in which precautionary U.S. and foreign regulation of food biotechnology has made it more difficult for scientists to develop, breed, and sell innovative new crop varieties that increase agricultural productivity and lighten farming’s environmental footprint.
Of particular interest to AgChoice and its farm industry members is the expiration of several patents on some of the most widely grown biotech crops — particularly RoundUp Ready soybeans. But silly and unnecessary regulations in Europe and parts of Asia may prevent a generic biotech seed industry from developing.
Come see the event to find out how.
Earlier today, Nicole Ciandella linked to an essay by the John Locke Foundation’s Fergus Hodgson, titled “The Absurdity of Raw Milk Prohibition.” It’s a good piece, worth reading. But Hodgson makes a couple of errors worth pointing out, so I thought I’d add my two cents.
Hodgson begins well enough:
“Picture a peaceful, Amish farmer, selling one of nature’s super foods — fresh, raw milk. Eager customers came from afar, even across state lines, to savor the taste and access a nutritious product. Who could oppose such harmonious commerce on Rainbow Acres Farm? Government officials and their enforcers, that’s who.
This Pennsylvania farmer has been the subject of a yearlong sting operation, which included stealth purchases and a 5 a.m. surprise inspection. In February, a federal judge imposed a permanent injunction that prohibited him from selling his milk across state lines.”
So far, so good. But then Hodgson makes an error of over-simplification: “To defend this violation of freedom of choice, proponents claim to be protecting others from the purported dangers of raw milk. But this claim is laughable, since evidence to the contrary has been mounting for decades.”
As I’ve written on occasion, the health risks associated with raw milk consumption are generally quite low, at least for adults with a healthy immune system. But they’re not zero. After all, pasteurization was seen as a remarkable scientific breakthrough and public health miracle for a reason: raw milk can harbor any number of nasty bacteria – including S. typhimurium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria, Campylobacter, and Brucella – which historically have had a nasty tendency to result in illness and, occasionally, death.
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It’s pretty amazing when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can essentially use extortion as a negotiating tool, and industry casts it as a plea to find “common ground.” You can’t blame industry too much for trying to place the issue in a positive light when they basically have a gun to the head. Check out EPA’s latest argument to industry as to why it should support reform to the Toxic Substances Control Act. A March 13 story in Risk Policy Report explains it this way:
Jim Jones, the Obama administration’s nominee to head EPA’s chemical safety office, is urging industry officials to reach a “common sense” agreement with environmentalists and other stakeholders on how to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act ( TSCA) in order to speed chemical assessments or face economic losses as consumers abandon substances they fear may not be safe [emphasis added].
Speaking to the 2012 Global Chemical Regulation Conference, Jones said it is in industry’s interest to reach an agreement on how to amend the law to speed chemical reviews since the agency’s recently released plan for assessing — and possibly regulating — existing chemicals under TSCA shows the current law does not allow for speedy action.
“If we really do share a goal [of] safer chemicals, the only way to get there is common sense reform. We’re going to assess [10-15 chemicals per year] and that’s going to leave you [vulnerable.] That’s what’s in it for you,” he said. “Now is the time. Figure out where the agreements are and disagreements” on TSCA reform, Jones added.
Jones’s comments underscore a real dilemma for industry: Even though EPA lacks scientific justification for regulating many chemicals — which have been used safely for decades — regulators can demonize products simply by placing them on “concern lists.” But TSCA reform won’t improve things for industry, it will simply feed the regulatory beast. Jones might as well have said: “We have a gun to your head. Now please give us the power to pull the trigger and put you out of your misery.”
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Every now and then, government regulators manage to do something reasonable. Last week, the Canadians made a smart move by accepting hard science over hype related to a chemical used in personal care products, such as shampoo and skincare products. Canadian Environmental Ministers wanted to list it as a “toxic substance,” but two years after a scientific review, claims about the chemical’s alleged toxicity are washed away. An industry group representing the chemical reports:
The Board of Review was composed of a panel of three renowned toxicologists appointed by the Canadian Environment Minister. The panel conducted a comprehensive scientific evaluation to assess the behavior of D5 in the environment. The Board’s report, which was released in October of 2011, concluded that “Siloxane D5 does not pose a danger to the environment or its biological diversity.” Furthermore, the Board found that “based on the information presented, Siloxane D5 will not pose a danger to the environment or its biological diversity in the future.”
This Canadian debate is of interest here in the United States for a few reasons. For one, some of the more wacky environmental activists have suggested that the chemical and related siloxanes — better known as silicones — present a threat to public health, despite the lack of any evidence. Consumers should gain some assurance that claims from these groups should be dismissed thanks to the Canadian review of Siloxane 5.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has also embarked on a review of siloxanes as part of its controversial “chemical action plan” program, which the Obama administration created under the auspices of the Toxic Substances Control Act. Historically, TSCA has not been used in an arbitrary and capricious fashion largely because it has one of the best risk standards written into environmental law, which CEI highlights in a study we released this week. Specifically, the EPA may regulate an existing chemical (EPA has stricter rules for “new” chemicals) when the agency finds that the chemical may pose an “unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.” The EPA explains on its website:
[U]nreasonable risk involves the balancing of the probability that harm will occur and the magnitude and severity of that harm against the effect of a proposed regulatory action on the availability to society of the expected benefits of the chemical substance.
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Canada is cracking down on the latest terrorist threat to innocent people everywhere: transgendered people. A July 2011 provision added to the Canadian Aeronautics Act’s Identity Screening Regulations says, “An air carrier shall not transport a passenger… who does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents.”
Suppose someone was born female but lives life as a male. If his valid government-issued photo ID still identifies him as female, he may not board an airplane. It can take years of filling out forms and enduring hearings to convince courts to legally recognize that someone has crossed genders, as the economist Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald) movingly writes in her autobiography, Crossing. The result is a de facto ban on flying for most transgendered Canadians.
Dennis Lebel is Canada’s Transportation Minister. He supports the ban. He believes it increases passenger safety.
It doesn’t, actually. Here’s why. A passenger is a threat if he carries weapons or explosives on board. If he doesn’t, he’s not. This is true whether or not his appearance matches his ID, or whether it says “M” or “F.” This is true even if the passenger uses a fake ID, or none at all. Can this person bring down a plane? That is the question.
In other words, showing ID has precisely nothing to do with passenger safety. It’s all for show. The point is if you have weapons and explosives or not.
Lebel and the Canadian security screeners who work for him should keep this in mind. The nasty little provision may or may not be specifically targeted at gender crossers. But in practice it is discrimination, and it does not make air travelers any safer. If anything, by distracting screeners from searching for weapons and explosives, it makes passengers a little less safe. This is bad policy all around. It should be repealed immediately.
Various media outlets are trying to scare the bejesus out of us by reporting on a new study published in this month’s issue of Injury Prevention, a leading peer-reviewed journal focused on — you guessed it — research related to reducing injuries. “Deaths of Headphone-Wearing Pedestrians Increase, Study Finds,” was the title of Bloomberg’s article on the research paper. This is one of the more accurate headlines I’ve seen on the study, although even this one is likely being misinterpreted by many, as I’ll explain in a moment. An example of an inaccurate, sloppy, scaremongering title comes from the Toronto Sun, “Wearing headphones while walking can be deadly: Study.” Please. Wearing headphones while walking will almost certainly not kill you.
Many in the media have been conflating what the researchers found, that more pedestrians involved in vehicle collisions have been reported to have been wearing headphones, with “headphone-wearing increases pedestrian-vehicle crash risk.” While the authors note that there is most likely a link between increased risk of pedestrian-vehicle collision and the pedestrian wearing headphones, they specifically point out in their conclusion: “Also, since this is a retrospective case series, neither causation nor correlation can be established between headphone use and pedestrian risk” [emphasis added]. This is because the methodology used by researchers to determine the number of collisions in recent years relied heavily on searches of news databases, such as LexisNexis and Google News, which is not the most scientifically robust way to tabulate incidents given media biases.
It is also worth noting, as the researchers themselves note in their paper, that while these headphone-wearing-pedestrian collisions more than tripled over the six years studied, MP3 player ownership quadrupled over the same period. Simply because more pedestrian-vehicle collisions involving headphone-wearing pedestrians while ownership of headphone-dependent devices increased at a greater rate does not prove headphones necessarily increase pedestrian-vehicle collision risk by much. If a greater proportion of pedestrians are wearing headphones, you would expect that more vehicle-pedestrian collisions would involve pedestrians wearing headphones.
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“Big Brother.” When commentators use that phrase to describe a government agency, it is most often not meant as a compliment.
Rather, it is wielded as the ultimate criticism of the government’s overreach. The pejorative use of this phrase, after all, dates back more than 60 years to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” in which “Big Brother” was the symbol of a totalitarian collectivist dictatorship.
Whenever a government agency is called “Big Brother” — whether by liberals regarding the NSA, by conservatives regarding the EPA, and regarding the TSA by just about everyone who doesn’t work there — most defenders of the entity push back against the use of the phrase. They angrily deny that the entity’s action can be described as anything close to that of “Big Brother.”
Yet amazingly, Michelle Singletary, The Washington Post‘s nationally syndicated personal finance columnist, has embraced the phrase in describing her desires for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Watchdog Should Act Like a Big Brother,” reads the headline of her latest column in the Post.
After interviewing Richard Cordray, whom President Obama installed as director of the bureau in an unprecedented “recess” appointment when the Senate was not actually in recess, Singletary argues that the bureau has a mandate to be a “big brother” to American consumers. “The agency, under his lead, is supposed to be the big brother (or sister) consumers need to enforce federal consumer financial protection laws and, if necessary, create rules that will head off unfair, deceptive or abusive financial practices and products,” she writes.
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Just in time for the holiday travel season,Vanity Fair’s Charles C. Mann took a trip through airport security with security expert Bruce Schneier. Mann used a fake boarding pass that he printed at home with a little bit of Photoshopping and some coaching from Schneier; it worked.
In fact, there are only three security measures that are effective, and they’re all already in place. They are “locking and reinforcing the cockpit doors, so terrorists can’t break in, positive baggage matching” — ensuring that people can’t put luggage on planes, and then not board them — “and teaching the passengers to fight back. The rest is security theater.”
It’s also time to allow passengers to keep their shoes on:
Taking off your shoes is next to useless. “It’s like saying, Last time the terrorists wore red shirts, so now we’re going to ban red shirts,” Schneier says. If the T.S.A. focuses on shoes, terrorists will put their explosives elsewhere. “Focusing on specific threats like shoe bombs or snow-globe bombs simply induces the bad guys to do something else. You end up spending a lot on the screening and you haven’t reduced the total threat.”
Schneier goes on to show, point-by-point, why almost every aspect of TSA’s security apparatus is spectacularly ineffective. Body scanners, behavioral detection officers, air marshals, and all the rest are the kind of big-budget production that doesn’t actually produce much in the way of increased safety. Fortunately, terrorism is rare; we are still safe.
Read the whole thing. And when you’re done, pick up a copy of Schneier’s book, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.
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