The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
brasschecktv.com
brasschecktv.com
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-conf...
Dick Cheyney as sec. defense for Bush I setup the privatization policy for military non-combat jobs. Then he joined Haliburton - then went ad created a war to funnel profits his way.
Tom Ridge as the first director of homeland security required shipping containers to be searched and tagged and tracked etc - then he left to join the board of Savi/Lockheed Martin.
You think that Chertoff is any different?
What about Rumsfeld?
This is nothing new -- but it sure is getting annoying!
Would it be a "win" if the scanners were all removed because of corruption? No, the point is the acknowledgement of the rights of the individual to a certain level of privacy.
By the way, it's not weird for a man to switch to a company he's dealt with personally and whose products he presumably respects.
"The heart of the matter" is restoring our rights at the airport. Exposing the corruption that's part of the surveillance-industrial complex can play a big role in this. Privacy, effectivness, civil liberties, impact on business, and kids rights are all good avenues as well.
The devices are an invasion of privacy and that should be confronted head-on, otherwise, there will just be the next invasive device to deal with.
The entire security theater industry, along with the defense industry, is built on top of an untold number of conflicts of interest and perverse incentives.
Did the scanners cause controversy before they were installed? Sure, and under any sane system of governance they would have never progressed beyond that point. The problem was that, at every point that mattered, our officials were incentivized to invade our privacy (e.g., campaign contributions, direct profit from sale of devices, etc).
It seems to me far more productive, and far more likely to succeed to attack corruption and realign incentives than it is to make a moralistic case in front of a bunch of amoral thugs.
The REAL ID battle of 2007 is a good template for privacy and civil liberties successes. The coalition involved privacy and civil liberties organizations, security experts, libertarians, progressives, migrant rights activists, fiscal conservatives, agriculturalists, transgendered people, biblical literalists, and states-right'ers. A lot of people believe that we won largely on the cost issues.
By contrast, activism against the PATRIOT Act and FISA hasn't assembled that broad coalition. And guess what? Thus far we've lost.
So yes, I certainly agree that it's critical to confront the privacy issues head-on -- and there's plenty of that going on too. I just don't think that's the only way to approach it.
I think its troubling that you don't see anything wrong with this.
If it's perfectly reasonable that I'm prohibited from working for our printer paper supplier (however much I respect them) why is it ok for a government official to skip to a company that he wrote a big taxpayer check to?
The issue that I think is most relevant is that there has been virtually no transparency about the machines, the health and privacy risks they pose, etc.
It's as if these contractors with high level government connections made a big sale to the US Government and the public had no choice about whether to pay for it or whether to consent to the risks.
Learning that one of the main beneficiaries of this big sale was the very recent head of the government office that purchased the machines suggests that perhaps there was worry that transparency might have jeopardized that commission.
Suppose it was proven to help national security, suppose it was scientifically proven safe, would its use be palatable?
There is a question over what privacy needs to be protected. If this issue gets too into WHY these devices were purchased, we may lose the next privacy debate.
I would expect a corrupt individual to try and deflect attention by saying things like, "never mind how they were bought, look at how secure our airports are".
EDIT there are two issues I don't see that one has priority over the other. I agree, reluctantly, that to avoid confusing the public it might help to focus on one issue but possible corruption needs to be addressed eventually.
It should clearly be about both. Both are huge, existential problems.
And for the record, it hasn't been proven to help national security. It also doesn't make ice cream, but what if it did? Is the best idea we can come up with the one that coincidentally is being cheerled by Michael Chertoff?
Among many other misgivings, this is not the right place for the revolving door of politics, opportunism and business. US tax dollars are paying for all of this, after all.
You're curiously naive, or willfully ignorant, of how the USA's system of political patronage works.
Since when is right and wrong a factor in decision making?
As for revolving door promotions (e.g. civil server to lobbying and back again), you seem blissfully unaware, or myopic, of the notion "conflict of interest".
Before I let you go, tell me: What flavor of candy covered unicorns inhabit your fantasy world?
Please. Continue.
I'd want politicians/bureaucrats to be able to earn a living after office, but I fear that more often than not, there's an old boy network of giving out high paid jobs to compensate for past favors.
I'm not saying that corruption doesn't happen or isn't happening in this case (the case of unconscious bias--rather than outright corruption--is an even bigger concern), I'm just saying it's a mistake to reason that "Person X took a job at company Y after previously regulating Y at agency Z. Therefore, corruption."
What expertise does Chertoff have with regard to airport scanners? I'd be willing to be he's never even dealt with one. His value comes from contacts. His value could be that he made a secret deal to award the contract to this company in exchange for a high paying job. That doesn't make it true that this is what happened but it makes the whole thing suspicious.
The Representative that wrote the Medicare prescription plan quit Congress after its passage. He's now paid $2 million per year to be a lobbyist for the drug industry. I think it's fair to say that he was bought and paid for. Particularly in light of what a horrible piece of legislation it was.
Chertoff should not be able to directly profit from decisions he made while being Secretary of Homeland Security. I'm cynical and so I tend not to give the benefit of the doubt in these cases.
> What expertise does Chertoff have with regard to airport scanners? I'd be willing to be he's never even dealt with one.
Chertoff works for a law firm which does work contracted by the scanner company. Nobody claims Chertoff's expertise is in the technical aspects of scanners, it's in the workings of the government regulation, which makes him uniquely informed on dealing with the legal issues surrounding the scanner.
>The Representative that wrote the Medicare prescription plan quit Congress after its passage. He's now paid $2 million per year to be a lobbyist for the drug industry. I think it's fair to say that he was bought and paid for.
First, representatives don't write their own bills. They are written by staffers, and these staffers are usually employed by the committees of the house, not the individual representative.
Second, the bill went through innumerable change between its submission to the committee and it's passage. Unless all the voting representatives were on the take, they easily could have changed any particular lines they didn't like. At the end of the day, it was passed by both houses of congress.
Third, it unwise to construct elaborate bribery explanations when there are such easy, simply explanations. (Seniors are basically voting themselves money.)
> Particularly in light of what a horrible piece of legislation it was.
Are you really claiming that congress's passing of horrible legislation is evidence of corruption? Congress passes horrible legislation every day. It's what it does.
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The point is that even rudimentary knowledge about how the legislative process works usually debunks most of these conspiracy stories immediately.
You should be suspicious, sure, but if you're ascribing a significant Bayesian probability to these corruption charges being true without further evidence, you're making a serious mistake in reasoning.
Chertoff is not uniquely informed. He's a lawyer but I'd be willing to bet he's not even an expert on government regulation. He does have lots of contacts though.
"First, representatives don't write their own bills. They are written by staffers, and these staffers are usually employed by the committees of the house, not the individual representative."
True, he didn't write the actual words. He was chairman of the committee responsible for the legislation. He was in a position to ensure that it was written into the legislation that Medicare could not negotiate on the price of drugs.
Bills do go through changes but it's not difficult for the chairman of the committee that wrote the bill to ensure that key provisions remained. You know, Congressman sometimes do have power and are more than mere voting machines. Staffers don't run everything.
"Third, it unwise to construct elaborate bribery explanations when there are such easy, simply explanations. (Seniors are basically voting themselves money.)"
It's not an elaborate theory. It's actually a simple one. Corruption does happen and a red flag ought to be raised when the Congressman whose committee wrote the part of the legislation forbidding Medicare from negotiating on the price of the drugs it was being forced to buy gets a $2 million a year consulting job. There is nothing elaborate about this and rational people will look askance at this situation.
Bayesian probability can only be talked about in reference to a probability space and events of that probability space. It's not really relevant to talk about Baye's theorem in this instance since no events or probability space has been defined.
I wasn't using probability theory. I was using the fact that in my mind the best explanation why a Congressman who gets a $2 million a year job from the drug industry after passing horrible legislation that tremendously benefits the drug industry is most likely (used in a colloquial sense) corrupt.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups.
There is no doubt that people find this relevant and interesting. It'll pass.
It's very similar to standard media coverage of political horse races: This topic may be very important, in terms of consequences, but it's not intellectually interesting.