The TSA has finally managed to successfully turn the airports into a dragnet that pulls in large numbers of people guilty of all kinds of minor offenses that have nothing at all to do with terrorism.

"In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip," said Maccario from his office in Boston. "When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, ... there are behavior cues that show it. ... A brief flash of fear."

Such people are referred for secondary screening, which can include a pat-down search and an X-ray exam. The microfacial expressions, he said, are the same across many cultures.

Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.

So they have a systematic process of harrassing travellers. For every 100 travellers that they detain and harrass they find one person guilty of a "crime." Most of those crimes involve warrants out for things like unpaid parking tickets, possession of illegal drugs (a victimless crime), and "weapons violations" (unregistered firearms or knives that are outside local municipal rules likely possessed by people who aren't even planning to get on a plane and may not even know they are illegal, etc)...

As long as there is a risk of terrorism this system will be perpetuated, but its real purpose is in enforcing a myriad of laws regulating behavior that is at best only illegal because of its secondary social effects and not because it is directly harmful to anyone, and at worst is a direct effort at social control by narrow minded and powerful people.

The next time some TSA person smiles at you and asks how your day is going think of this passage from 1984:

He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

I know I will, and I know I'll be in for secondary screening while they try to determine whether my rage at their assault on the freedom this country once knew is a sign that I'm hiding something they can charge me for. Some day, perhaps, that rage itself will be illegal.

Airport profilers: They're watching your expressions

Palindrom posted this site a long time ago and kept reminding me to look at it. I skipped it initially because its intended for children, but its useful. Its a more manageable subset of the information on Project Vote Smart, with a focus on where the politician's money comes from. At least these guys know whats important, right? Look up your Senator and read the list of PACs...

She writes:

I was doing some digging around for sites to use with my students and stumbled upon this. This is a site designed for kids but I think it is extremely interesting for adults too. You can click on a congress person and get a link to their website, information on how to contact them, and all kinds of other useful information like where they went to school, what degrees they have and how long they have been in office. You can also click on an election cycle and see who contributed to their campaign. This site also boasts break downs in the congress members demographically. The other cool thing is that you can click on a committee and see members, last meeting, jurisdiction, and staff members complete with phone numbers. Browse the site. I found it informative.

Information About Members of Congress

For the seventh consecutive December, the magazine looks back on the passing year through a special lens: ideas. Editors and writers trawl the oceans of ingenuity, hoping to snag in our nets the many curious, inspired, perplexing and sometimes outright illegal innovations of the past 12 months. Then we lay them out on the dock, flipping and flopping and gasping for air, and toss back all but those that are fresh enough for our particular cut of intellectual sushi. For better or worse, these are 70 of the ideas that helped make 2007 what it was. Enjoy.

Virgil made the list with Wikiscanning. Congratulations, Virgil!

(Interestingly, one of the other ideas was also one Virgil came up with a few years ago, but didn't pursue perhaps due to discouragement from several friends.)

Several of the year's best ideas were also memes here, including:

Lap-Dance Science - Something in the Way She Moves?

The idea of Lite-Brite Fashion makes for an interesting contrast to the story of Star Simpson.

Pixelated Stained Glass - Pixelated Glass Window in Cologne Cathedral

The Radiohead Payment Model - Fans Decide How Much To Pay, and Radiohead’s Warm Glow

Wireless Energy, or Wi-tricity.

Weapon-Proof School Gear - My Child's Pack.

For commentary on the Ideas of years past, see 2004, 2005, and 2006.

The Year in Ideas, 2007 | The New York Times Magazine

k wrote:
I still think that if more tech minded people would bitch up a storm to their congresspeople rather than than bitching up a storm on the internet and then returning to a cave to hack some code, some progress might be made.

Advice to congress is either useful because it helps them understand the issue or useful because it represents political power or useful because it represents money. In this case there aren't enough people who run wifi access points and are going to vote based on this legislation to represent polticial power and these people don't have lots of money to donate to candidates. So only the first point is relevent and with the EFF and other organizations I think the public internet user is pretty well represented there. So, basically, I don't think lack of action is the problem.

I think the problem here is structural.

The news media makes money by praying on people's fears.
Politicians get elected by pandering to those fears.
Politicians like to pander to fears in cost free ways.

In this case there really isn't much else that Congress can easily do to help fight child pornography. They could raise taxes and fund more law enforcement, but thats not easy. This policy change is easy because it doesn't cost them much money and it throws a bone to the child porn fighters. So Congress proceeds in spite of the fact that there are some legitimate objections. Those objections stand in the way of the interests of Congress, and so they are ignored.

The real problem is that this same issue keeps coming up over and over again, and Congress keeps selecting these cost free solutions, and keeps ignoring the objections. Overtime a body of bad policy accumulates to the point where you're fining a coffee shop owner $300,000 for failing to report the otaku kids to the center for missing and exploited children. You have to pull together a bunch of bad law to get there.

The same thing is going on with copyright. It is astounding to me that the exact same politicians are still ratcheting up penalties year after year. Its become completely insane. But they are still at it, because bit by bit the IP industries get what they want, and they pay for it.

I'm not sure what its going to take to break these cycles. I thought the internet might help... might help people focus on other things than the fear the mass media constantly seeks to breed... I'm not sure anymore...

As to the way the bill was brought, I agree it was fast tracked in a disturbing way, but per the article : "the Democratic leadership rushed the SAFE Act to the floor under a procedure that's supposed to be reserved for noncontroversial legislation." I'm not sure if they're using some kind of official Congress-defined usage of "noncontroversial" or not, but if I may apply, post facto, the results of the vote (that'd be only 2 Nays), it would appear to at least meet the dictionary definition of the term, provided you accept that our representatives do actually represent our voices.

I think he means non-controversial among policy wonks rather than non-controversial among politicians. He is arguing that the political vote occured before the wonks had time to reach concensus about the details. Oh well, I guess there is always the conference committee...

RE: Thought Crime

k wrote:
I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but it seems to me that spending time working through the logistics of circumventing a bad piece of legislation that hasn't even passed yet to be a little like putting the cart before the horse.

This is still a political concern and the solution seems like it ought to be likewise. E.g. write your senator and congressperson, raise awareness (i recognize this is happening to some degree organically, since i just found out about it, but nonetheless), etc.

Have we become so cynical about the likelihood of being listened to that we assume bullshit laws will be passed and jump straight to figuring out how to get around them?

Apparently we ought to be. A version of this bill was rushed through the house Wednesday without following the usual processes. It presents a potentially unintended consequence that individual people who run wifi or other networks are now legally obligated to report child pornography. Because the definition of child pornography is so vauge you are better off reporting than not reporting if you see anything remotely suspicious.

Whats even more frustrating is that this bill seems to have apologists. George Ou says:

The bill in question... would enact huge fines for any... home users with open Access Points who fails to report child pornography users.

I must admit after reading that story I was pretty furious...

Then he turns around and says:

So as you can see, no one is going to be required to monitor their infrastructure.

You are right George. No one is required to monitor anything. However, if you have a wifi network at home and you have a bunch of friends over and you notice that one of them has hentai videos on their laptop, you could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines if you fail to report them to the police. Thats probably not what the people who crafted this bill intended, but thats the law they passed, because they aren't paying attention and they basically don't know what they are doing.

Child Pornography is a serious problem, but when Congress continually passes poorly crafted legislation with overbroad definitions and seeks to compell the entire country to enlist in a stazi like network they aren't taking the problem seriously. They are taking advantage of the problem to promote themselves, and they are doing violence to our Constitution in the process.

RE: Thought Crime

It is this order to choose Allah above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim in a mindset that is archaic and extreme.

If moderate Muslims believe there should be no compassion shown to the girl from Qatif, then what exactly makes them so moderate?

When a “moderate” Muslim’s sense of compassion and conscience collides with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful thinking.

Islam’s Silent Moderates - New York Times

Stefanie wrote:
Then again, I typically disagree with the Libertarian Party candidates on a couple of key issues, too. Point is, I wouldn't dismiss any candidate just for being imperfect.

I'm starting to get very critical of Paul. The language he uses is attractive to a lot of my friends and I don't think they should be supporting him. I think that they want to beleive that there is this person who is principled and beleives in individual freedom, but I don't think he actually shares the values that many of his supporters have.

He doesn't beleive the things that his supporters say he beleives.

People say that he is not anti-immigration, he is only against illegal immigration, but he has sponsored bills in the house this year that are targetted at legal immigrants and create substantial financial barriers for them.

He says he beleives in individual freedom, but his positions support the absolute power of state and local governments to impinge on Constitutionally protected rights.

In reality he is not a libertarian, he is a paleo-conservative. He wants to undo the financial structures created in response to the great depression, he wants to undo the international relationships that were created in response to the first and second world wars, and he wants to undo the civil liberties advances that were the product of the civil war. He wants to go back to the way things were in the 1830's wholesale, completely ignoring any and all hard lessons that we've learned along the way, and resurrecting numerous extremely evil systems in the process.

This is not just "imperfect" and I'm tired of hearing from apologists that we won't have the power to implement his entire agenda. His campaign is dangerous.

RE: The Volokh Conspiracy - Ron Paul on Racism

noteworthy wrote:
With every passing day, Johnathan Rapley's conception of the New Middle Ages seems increasingly likely.

I don't follow how this comment relates to the context. Most of the news out of Iraq seems positive. Of course its complicated and fragile, but clearly this is progress. Worrying that too many refugees might return is a good problem to have.

I also don't understand George Packer's comment that these developments were "unanticipated by almost everyone on the American side of the looking glass." These are precisely the kinds of changes that were hoped for as a result of the surge.

I further don't understand why the Democrats are still calling for immediate withdrawl. Putting more troops in (in a calculated way) reduced the violence. As I've said before I think this is exactly what Kerry planned to do. The tactics change was clearly a product of the Democrat's electoral victory in 2006. The fact that there is a chance for peace should not vindicate the decision to launch this extremely bloody conflict in any way. All in all, this should be seen as a political ad tactical victory for the center left. Unfortunately, the left seems to have married itself too closely to over simplified prowar vs. antiwar rhetoric. The fact is that the situation is fragile and calls for immediate withdrawl are not rooted in a careful assessment of the situation.

There is a big problem though. Kucinich has been raising some interesting questions about the privatization of Iraq's oil. I don't have a good linkable reference, but I'll post one when I find it. He might actually have a point, but no one is listening, and unfortunately a discussion of what people are doing with oil also fits too easily into over simplified rhetoric and so the issue has a good chance of staying ignored.

RE: Must Read: Iraq Round-Up

noteworthy wrote:
I own the book and have read in it, but I have never finished it. The Pulitzer Prize speaks to the merits of the book.

There are many great books that collect dust on my shelf. The Pulitzer Prize may speak to a book's merit, but the fact that you haven't finished it speaks to its power.

The tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others? In short, is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?

Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster - CNN.com