Filed under: Civil Rights, Government, Privacy, Society, Terrorism, Violence
I saw the blurb headline, figured it had to be a joke:
NFL adopts TSA-style full body pat-downs for fans at stadiums
No, it’s not. A bit of an exaggeration, but not a joke. Here’s the news item:
NFL wants pat-downs from ankles up at all stadiums
The NFL wants all fans patted down from the ankles up this season to improve fan safety.Under the new “enhanced” pat-down procedures, the NFL wants all 32 clubs to search fans from the ankles to the knees as well as the waist up. Previously, security guards only patted down fans from the waist up while looking for booze, weapons or other banned items.
The stricter physical screening policy impacts the 16.6 million fans expected to attend live regular season NFL games this season. The more thorough searches will spell longer lines for ticket-holding fans seeking entry to games. It’s sure to raise the ire of some fans who consider it an invasion of privacy.
Now, I don’t go to sporting events like that. I’m just not into being a fan for a sport. And so I wasn’t even aware that it was current policy to pat down fans “from the waist up while looking for booze, weapons or other banned items.”
People have been putting up with this level of hassle and personal intrusion? In order to pay a buttload of money for tickets to watch millionaires play a game, and then another buttload for overpriced food & drink in a likely taxpayer financed stadium owned by billionaires? Really?? Why?
Good lord, this has to be some of the most depressing news I’ve heard in a long time.
Little wonder that the TSA has been able to get away with the “enhanced pat-downs” and other crap – if people are willing to put up with being frisked in order to watch a game, *of course* they’re willing to put up with something marginally more intrusive in order to fly.
We used to value freedom. Personal liberty. Now we’ll give it up so we can spend a couple of hours at a football game. The conditioning to allow our ‘protectors’ to do whatever they want in order to keep us safe is complete.
Gah. I need a drink.
Jim Downey
It’s probably a mistake for me to talk about the TSA a bit more than a month before I actually have to fly somewhere, but such are the risks we take.
Via BoingBoing, this wonderful (and telling) headline: TSA to stop groping children
The problem is, it isn’t exactly true. What’s actually going to happen is that the TSA is ‘adjusting’ some of their procedures for children under 12. From the actual article cited by BB:
In the next few months, the TSA will implement new security procedures for fliers under 12, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate. They can still get patted down, although it will be by a different method, and they no longer have to remove their shoes. Even if they have velcro straps and are super easy to take on and off anyway.
Until we see the actual details of the new procedures, it’s impossible to characterize exactly *what* the TSA will be doing with children. And if you’re over 12? Sorry, looks like you’ll still be subject to the usual “enhanced pat-down” we’ve all come to know and love. And if the complete benefit is that some children won’t have to remove their shoes, then sorry, this is little more than a sop tossed to mollify parents.
This is like the old joke of a food maker advertising that their product is now “3% less radioactive!” – it doesn’t really inspire confidence.
But that’s OK, because the TSA has our best interests at heart, and we can trust them not just to respect our civil liberties, but to protect us, right?
Sure:
Airport Security Officers And Cops Snared In Multistate Oxycodone Ring, U.S. Attorney Says
Federal agents have broken up a drug ring that paid police and airport security officers to protect the illegal shipment from Florida to Connecticut of enormous quantities of highly addictive pain medication, authorities said Tuesday.
Three federal Transportation Security Administration officers, two police officers and 13 drug dealers in Florida, New York and Connecticut were charged with working for the ring that, in some weeks, dumped tens of thousands of oxycodone pills in the Waterbury area, according to a variety of federal and local police agencies involved in the investigation.
No, really – they have only your best interests at heart.
Jim Downey
The National Institute on Aging has come up with new research guidelines and two new clinical diagnosis relating to Alzheimer’s. From the NIA news release:
For the first time in 27 years, clinical diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease dementia have been revised, and research guidelines for earlier stages of the disease have been characterized to reflect a deeper understanding of the disorder. The National Institute on Aging/Alzheimer’s Association Diagnostic Guidelines for Alzheimer’s Disease outline some new approaches for clinicians and provide scientists with more advanced guidelines for moving forward with research on diagnosis and treatments. They mark a major change in how experts think about and study Alzheimer’s disease. Development of the new guidelines was led by the National Institutes of Health and the Alzheimer’s Association.
From NPR coverage of the news:
The new definitions, which were just published online by the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, acknowledge this dimly understood early phase of Alzheimer’s. Now there are two new pre-dementia phases: mild cognitive impairment and “preclinical Alzheimer’s.”
In mild cognitive impairment, a person’s changes in thinking are noticeable to himself, friends, or family. They would show up on tests of memory and recall, but don’t interfere with everyday activities. Alzheimer’s is just one possible cause. Because there are no treatments to prevent or stop Alzheimer’s, many people may not consider this diagnosis a blessing.
The second new phase, preclinical Alzheimer’s, is much squishier. There’s no list of symptoms that a doctor can whip out to say you’ve got it. Rather, the goal in creating this category is to see if scientists can define when the disease starts, and track it through biomarker tests, brain imaging, or other yet-to-be-invented tests. If that happens, it might someday lead to ways to prevent Alzheimer’s. But for now this category is useful only to researchers.
As I noted four years ago, I have faced the question of whether to be tested for a disease I may have, but for which there is very little in terms of treatment options (and no cure). From that blog post:
It is a very difficult decision to be tested for a genetic disease which you may have, and for which there is no known treatment (let alone a cure). If you test positive, you know exactly the sort of future you face. And, if you test positive, it can have a significant impact on your employment and insurance possibilities, even decades before you might experience any onset of symptoms.
There is a similar disease which runs in my family called Machado-Joseph. In terms of statistics, there is about a 68% chance that I carry the gene for it, though I do not have the other familial characteristics which seem to track with the disease. So I have elected not to be tested. Besides, at nearly 50 years of age, if I did have the onset of the disease, it would be likely that it would progress so slowly that I would die of something else (the younger the age of onset, the more rapidly the disease progresses).
That said, I have told my sister (who has the disease) that if her doctor wants to do the genetic test on me in order to have that additional bit of information, I would do so.
And I suppose that is where I come down on the issue of whether or not to do any of the new testing for Alzheimer’s: if it will help science better understand this disease, how it develops, and to chart possible treatments, I would participate. It may not be something I could benefit from myself, but I have to look at the bigger picture. I think we all do.
Jim Downey
I must admit, to a certain extent I hold my breath every year when April 19 comes around, because of the history associated with it.
Good to listen to the news this morning and only have it filled with the usual human tragedies and violence.
Well, you know what I mean.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Constitution, Cory Doctorow, Failure, Government, Privacy, Travel
Two items to share about the agency everyone loves to hate.
First, a state legislator has come up with a great idea down in Texas:
Texas Legislation Proposes Felony Charges for TSA Agents
Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) introduced a package of bills into the Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday that would challenge the TSA’s authority in a number of ways. The first bill, HB 1938, prohibits full body scanning equipment in any Texas airport and provides for criminal and civil penalties on any airport operator who installs the equipment. The second bill, HB 1937, criminalizes touching without consent and searches without probable cause.
In theory, Texas may be able to do this, under the 10th amendment of the Constitution. In practice, I bet the federal government would threaten to pull all funding support for airports and other transportation options, as well as challenge the law in the federal courts under the Commerce Clause, and the Texas legislature would cry "uncle" in short order. Shame, really, because it would be nice to reclaim our privacy rights and stop the groping.
But not only will we not be allowed to reclaim those privacy rights, the TSA wants us to pay even more for the privilege:
TSA Wants To Increase Airport Fees Because You’re Not Checking Your Bags
To avoid bag check fees, travelers are routinely opting to carry on their bags, but the TSA says that the cost is just getting shifted to tax payers, to the tune of $260 million a year. That’s because the more bags that don’t get checked, the more bags the TSA has to inspect by hand at security checkpoints. Now the TSA is looking to get a cut of some of the checked baggage fees the airlines collect.
* * *
The TSA has also been pushing for an increase in the airport security fee travelers currently pay. Currently passengers pay up to a $5 fee each for a one-way ticket.
Five bucks? That seems low to me – don’t sex workers usually charge more for such hands-on activity? No wonder the TSA wants to increase the charge.
Jim Downey
Via Cory @ BB. Cross posted to dKos.
Filed under: Government, movies, Nuclear weapons, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science Fiction, Terrorism, YouTube
About a year before I was born, the Strategic Air Command had a little movie made for training purposes. Here’s a nice clip from it:
And here’s a bit explaining the story behind the movie:
Washington, D.C., February 19, 2011 – “The Power of Decision” may be the first (and perhaps the only) U.S. government film depicting the Cold War nightmare of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear conflict. The U.S. Air Force produced it during 1956-1957 at the request of the Strategic Air Command. Unseen for years and made public for the first time by the National Security Archive, the film depicts the U.S. Air Force’s implementation of war plan “Quick Strike” in response to a Soviet surprise attack against the United States and European and East Asian allies. By the end of the film, after the Air Force launches a massive bomber-missile “double-punch,” millions of Americans, Russians, Europeans, and Japanese are dead.
60 million American casualties, actually, when all was said and done. And that was the “winning” scenario.
Is it any wonder that much of the popular culture (and the science fiction) of the time was concerned with dystopian futures, frequently involving apocalyptic nuclear war? It truly was a form of MADness.
And we came a lot closer to that actually happening on several occasions that most people realize. I’m not going to bother to dig up all the references, but in addition to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Yom Kippur War there were multiple instances of false alerts due to mechanical and communications failures which came to light following the end of the Cold War.
Is it any wonder that I have a hard time getting too worked up about the threat of ‘terrorism’? When you grew up expecting a nuclear holocaust, the prospect of random bombings doesn’t seem that big a deal.
Jim Downey
Got a note from a friend last evening:
Isn’t it cool to actually use the scientific method to figure these things out? I feel like I should send a thank you note to my high school chem teacher.
* * * * * * *
Last week one day when it was warm, I took advantage of the opportunity to get out to a nearby shooting range. I needed to proof some test loads for one of my guns, before I reloaded a bunch of ammo to those specs. That went fine.
I also planned on getting in a little pistol practice with a couple of my pistols I rely on for self defense. That didn’t go fine.
One of the guns had a problem. It failed to fire. I checked the ammunition, and determined that the firing pin wasn’t striking hard enough to initiate combustion. This was bad, and could have led to all manner of very negative outcomes.
* * * * * * *
Listening to the Diane Rehm Show this morning, they were talking about the protests and political situation in Wisconsin. One of the people Diane spoke with was the current Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels. Governor Daniels had been Director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Bush II Administration.
During the discussion, Gov. Daniels started in on how government deficits were what was driving the problems in Wisconsin. And he made a comment to the effect that this was just a reflection of the problems we’re having all across the country, particularly at the Federal level.
So far, so good. Deficit spending really *is* a problem, and it needs to be resolved at all levels of government. I couldn’t disagree with Gov. Daniels a bit on that.
Then he said something else: that the problems were all due to government spending, and that further cuts had to be made, in particular to the ‘entitlement programs.’ By this he meant Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
* * * * * * *
Yesterday I had the time to take apart the pistol which had malfunctioned. Based on what had happened, I knew to look at three possible causes: a problem with the ammunition; a problem with the firing pin; a problem with the spring which drives the hammer forward into the firing pin.
I had ruled out the ammunition as a likely cause. Yeah, the first couple of rounds I tried were reloads (my own), and it was possible that I had either gotten a bad batch of primers or they hadn’t been seated properly. But the third round I tried was factory ammunition. Factory ammo can also fail, though in my experience that is fairly rare. The chance that I would have three failures in a row with different ammunition struck me as highly unlikely.
So I’d probably find the source of the problem in the gun, with either the firing pin, or the hammer spring.
I did the basic dis-assembly, breaking the gun into a couple of main components. One of these was the bottom of the gun, the part that has the frame & grip. At this point I could test the strength of the hammer manually, and see whether it had adequate power. It did.
So I turned my attention to the top of the gun, the part with the slide and barrel and that stuff. Getting to the firing pin isn’t exactly difficult if you know what you’re doing, but it does mean you’re basically taking the whole thing completely apart. And it’s not something you do as part of a routine cleaning – the bit which holds the firing pin and makes it operate properly is pretty closed up, and designed to not need detail cleaning very often.
* * * * * * *
Income disparity in the US has gotten consistently worse for the last 40 years. It’s about twice as bad now as it was in 1968.
Remember the Social Security “lockbox“? How about the “peace dividend“? Do you remember how, during the latter part of the Clinton Administration, there was so much of a budget surplus that there was actually a discussion about the damage it would do to our economy if we retired too much of the national debt?
What happened? Where did these huge deficits come from?
Actually, I think there are a whole bunch of reasons. An economy as massive as ours is subject to a huge variety of forces, both internal and external. But let’s boil it down to the bare essentials:
- Increased spending.
- Decreased revenue.
Gov. Daniels, and most of the rest of the political class these days, is saying that the problem is almost entirely increased spending. And that therefore, the way to fix the problem is to decrease spending.
That would perhaps work. But what if it is due to decreased revenue instead? The Bush tax cuts, recently extended, dropped the US federal government’s total income from taxation below the historical averages. Furthermore, we’ve seen a steady decline in tax rates on the upper income earners and corporations for the last 50 years – the top marginal tax rate during the Eisenhower administration was 91%. For most of the Reagan Administration, it was 50%. During the Clinton years it was just under 40%. It dropped to 35% thanks to the Bush tax cuts.
And during the same time we’ve seen such huge declines in the tax rates, we’ve also seen a growing disparity in income distribution.
* * * * * * *
Got a note from a friend last evening:
Isn’t it cool to actually use the scientific method to figure these things out? I feel like I should send a thank you note to my high school chem teacher.
My friend was responding to the information I had shared about the problem I had with my gun, and how I had tracked it down thanks to a little application of the scientific method. Proper analysis, test the theory, draw conclusions. Problem solved.
But he could have just as well been responding to trying to determine what was the problem with our national deficit.
I think most people don’t really mind some income disparity – we all want to think that we will be rich, ourselves, one day. But the analysis of what is going on with the deficit is another matter, particularly when you start talking about making substantial cuts to programs which make a huge difference for the bottom end of the income distribution. Just going back to the tax level and policies of the Clinton era would not solve all our problems.
But it sure as hell would be a good place to start.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Constitution, DARPA, Emergency, Government, Politics, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, tech
The power to turn off is the power to destroy.*
I’m talking about exactly what we’re seeing in Egypt at present: when the power of the state is threatened, it will resort to almost any means to survive. Specifically, the government of Egypt has shut down the internet, mobile phones, and basically all modern communications in order to better control civil unrest.
And some in our government want the US to have the same power:
On Thursday Jan 27th at 22:34 UTC the Egyptian Government effectively removed Egypt from the internet. Nearly all inbound and outbound connections to the web were shut down. The internet intelligence authority Renesysexplains it here and confirms that “virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.” This has never happened before in the entire history of the internet, with a nation of this size. A block of this scale is completely unheard of, and Senator Joe Lieberman wants to be able to do the same thing in the US.
This isn’t a new move, last year Senators Lieberman and Collins introduced a fairly far-reaching bill that would allow the US Government to shut down civilian access to the internet should a “Cybersecurity Emergency” arise, and keep it offline indefinitely. That version of the bill received some criticism though Lieberman continued to insist it was important. The bill, now referred to as the ‘Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act’ (PCNAA) has been revised a bit and most notably now removes all judicial oversight. This bill is still currently circulating and will be voted on later this year. Lieberman has said it should be a top priority.
Think about that. Do you really want to hand over that kind of power to the government?
Or perhaps I should say: “do you really want to validate that kind of power in advance?” Because I am not naive enough to think that the government wouldn’t just do this in the event of a real emergency (in their opinion). But like with Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, there should be some check on such a decision after the fact – which there may not be with such a provision already in place. Handing someone that kind of power in advance is like handing them a loaded gun – they don’t necessarily have to use it in order for it to be a factor in all decisions which follow. Just the threat to use it is powerful, and shifts the whole dynamic.
Take another look at what is happening in Egypt. We never want to have to get to that point in trying to *reclaim* our civil liberties. Granting the government specific power to shut down the internet in order to ‘save us from a cyber security threat’ is just another in a long line of steps preying upon our fears. Don’t give in. And tell your senator what you think.
Jim Downey
*Marshall‘s actual quote was “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” From McCulloch v. Maryland.
I don’t agree with everything he has to say. But this piece by Philip Pullman is excellent on several counts, this passage among them:
I still remember the first library ticket I ever had. It must have been about 1957. My mother took me to the public library just off Battersea Park Road and enrolled me. I was thrilled. All those books, and I was allowed to borrow whichever I wanted! And I remember some of the first books I borrowed and fell in love with: the Moomin books by Tove Jansson; a French novel for children called A Hundred Million Francs; why did I like that? Why did I read it over and over again, and borrow it many times? I don’t know. But what a gift to give a child, this chance to discover that you can love a book and the characters in it, you can become their friend and share their adventures in your own imagination.
And the secrecy of it! The blessed privacy! No-one else can get in the way, no-one else can invade it, no-one else even knows what’s going on in that wonderful space that opens up between the reader and the book. That open democratic space full of thrills, full of excitement and fear, full of astonishment, where your own emotions and ideas are given back to you clarified, magnified, purified, valued. You’re a citizen of that great democratic space that opens up between you and the book. And the body that gave it to you is the public library. Can I possibly convey the magnitude of that gift?
I’ve got a wide streak of libertarianism – I don’t want others, particularly government, meddling in my life as though it were a nanny. But I was like Pullman – I came from a home which didn’t have books, and without a local library I would never have grown into the productive, creative adult I became. Not all kids will avail themselves of the opportunities a library presents, but it seems very much to me that Holmes had it right when he said: “Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society.”
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 
