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I’m writing this as I sit on an incredibly long flight (six hours) from New York to Las Vegas. It’s not the longest flight I’ve ever been on (twelve hours to Tokyo), but it’s dragging. But this isn’t really the purpose of this post. I probably should have planned my meals better.

The other day I read an article about the new fast track security measures being put in place at airports as well as this author’s thoughts on how airports not using the TSA could one be a competitive advantage. Both of these were present in my mind when I went through a fairly rigorous search going through security at JFK this morning.

Out of principle I refuse to go through the body scanners in the security line. These scanners are the very epitome of the security theatre the government has constructed around our nation’s airports. We are now spending billions of dollars a year maintaining a set of security procedures, which according to experts, do very little to actually make us safer. Instead they just create the illusion of safety, hence the term security theatre.

I refuse to go through the body scanners because experts can’t agree on how much radiation we are actually being exposed to by going through them. I also refuse as a form of protest against the lack of effectiveness by the machines themselves. They were developed in response to the underwear bomber, with the thought process being that if the TSA had a machine that could see through our clothes, they could detect explosives on our bodies. Never mind the fact that it has have shown that the puddy like explosive substance they are designed to detect can just be rolled flat and rendered invisible to the machine (or that agents are more interested in just seeing people naked). Just another example of security theatre (or nepotism because the former head of the TSA who signed the contract with the company who provides these machines is now their CEO).

But I digress. This morning when I was told to go through the body scanner I calmly replied that I would like to opt out. It’s interesting to see how this process has evolved. It used to be I’d get a quick, “ok” and someone would wave a wand around my body and let me go on. Now I get a TSA agent responding by yelling, “We’ve got someone opting out!” and then turning around and telling the rest of the passengers that the line will now move slower because of me. They then have me go to the side and have a TSA agent go through this ridiculous process of reading all these statements to me and, I kid you not, remove his gloves, put on new ones, and snap them several times. He then proceeds to basically feel me up. But through all this I can’t help but notice that he is clearly much more embarrassed by this whole thing than I am. He stuttered over his words and kept avoiding making eye contact with me. Afterwards he immediately rushed off to a different area in the checkpoint. Even though the entire process is clearly designed to dissuade people from following suit, it really isn’t all that effective.

This brings me back to the original two articles I mentioned. In my mind, having the choice between two airports, where all things the same, the only difference was the presence of the TSA or a private security company, I choose the one with the private company every time. Too bad the TSA must approve any request for an airport to stop using their services and they’ve denied every single request so far.

Considering my stand on the body scanners, I’m really conflicted about what I think about the fast track security plan. Essentially if you pre-register you can have some background checks done to assure the TSA that you’re not a threat and go through a special, faster line at the security checkpoints. On the whole, I don’t see how this concept makes anyone any safer. You’re telling me that when you require people to give their full names and dates of birth when buying airline tickets, you’re not doing these sorts of checks? Sounds like more security theatre. So the real question is, am I giving in by signing up for this and surrendering liberty for convenience? As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

My hunch is no, I’m not really submitting to anything new. The government already knows plenty about me. If anything, the widespread use of this type of fast track line would highlight the ridiculousness of the very idea. That’s just me though, what do you think?

I’ve been down to the Occupy Wall Street protest a few times in the past couple of weeks. When people ask me about it I’m not always sure how to explain it. Unions, anarchists, environmentalists, disillusioned Tea Partiers, celebrities and everyone in between can be seen down there on any given day. There are so many disperate groups. They all want different outcomes and have different goals, but they all have one thing in common: they are all really mad about the current economic and political situation. In an op-ed, NY Times columnist Paul Krugman has summed it up better than I have been able to:

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

Makes me want to go re-watch Sidney Lumet’s classic film Network. Because I’m mad as hell and I can’t take it anymore. Read the full article on the NY Times web site.

Facebook messenger is finally here, but it is no longer the app I want. I’ll explain.

Back in May I wrote a post about how there was a need for a standalone messaging app and obviously some people at Facebook agreed. Read the full details on the app launch via TechCrunch.

Last week they launched the app. The timing was curious. At the same time London was in full on riot mode and now MP’s have set a date for a formal inquiry into the methods rioters were using to coordinate. They have singled out Facebook, Twitter and RIM (makers of the Blackberry) for inquiry. Details can be found here. RIM’s Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service appears to be the main target. The thought among some (not all) MP’s is that the UK government should have access to messages to either identify perpetrators of crimes or outright censor the messages. Serious free speech and privacy implications aside, here is what worries me about Facebook messenger. Facebook already at least censors these messages in helping the MPAA and RIAA fight piracy (evidence here). What’s to stop them from extending this censorship in times of perceived crisis? Slippery slope to say the least.

Here is what I now want. A standalone messenger app that works on either mobile device or computer. It behaves like text messaging in that the messages are generally shorter. It would detect where I am at the moment and direct messages only to that location. For example if I’m logged in on the computer and using that to chat it wouldn’t blow up my phone at the same time. It would be encrypted. It wouldn’t log messages or at least it would delete any older than a few days. It wouldn’t be owned by some company ready to sell me out for a few pennies. All my friends using it. It would be great.

Does something like this exist? If not, someone should build it.

Maybe the title of the post is a bit of an overstatement. It is actually very cool and rewarding to see that someone over at The Economist is thinking about the same questions as I was almost three years ago.

Essentially my hypothesis was that increased access to information would make a country more free than those with less access to information. (Disregard the obvious question about which way this relationship goes. Are countries more free because they have access to information or do they have more access to information because they are more free?) My original thinking was related to the internet, but it quickly became clear that I needed to expand that idea into communication in general. There just wasn’t enough solid data available to only focus on the internet. This was three years ago and the best data I could find at the time was another few years old. In the past five years alone, the number of internet users has doubled.

A very simplistic version of what eventually happened was that I took a combination of the percentage of the population of a country with access different types of communication (phones, radios, internet, etc.) and compared that to the Freedom House Index score of the country (a measure of how free a country is). I did this for about 180 countries. In the end there was only a slight correlation and I couldn’t event start to claim there was causation. I can still remember sitting in my professor’s office telling him I think I needed to start over. His advice was great. He essentially told me that it was beyond the scope of this project to actually come up with some big revelation and find out that two things were definitively connected. The point of the project in my case was to go through the process of doing research and learn how it worked. It would have been nice if at that time Freedom House was compiling internet freedom scores like they are today. That would have saved me some serious time and headaches.

In the end, it is really interesting to see how in my case the lack of available data ended up shifting my thesis topic away from the original question. In that vein, it was incredibly satisfying to come across this article in The Economist. With people asking if social media played a role in some of the Arab revolutions, it makes sense that serious thought is going into the question. I’d like to believe that unfettered access to information is making people more free, don’t you?

The image in question is below, here is the original article.

Interesting comparison.

Fraternity brother @jonathanclark has been tweeting about some political advertisements from Alabama where he went to grad school. I’m not sure if these are real or some sort of joke. The best one is embedded, the others can be found below.

• Bradley Byrne the political weather vane.
• Drivers License Language Requirements

Original source.

I’ll admit I was among the skeptics of the stimulus plan, but after seeing the data presented this way it makes you wonder. Maybe it is working.

Interesting data from the last election…

Found this today, very thought provoking:

When some Americans believe the current president is a communist cult leader trying to brainwash the nation’s schoolchildren, and other Americans want the last president to be dragged off his ranch in handcuffs, it is time to reassess the state of our union. So may I make a modest proposal. There is a way to end the bitter bickering over health care, affirmative action, abortion, religion in the public square, taxation, torture, and the proper role of government. It is called secession. Yes, I know: Splitting the U.S. into two nations is a bit extreme. But extremism in the defense of America is no vice. And since we’re already segregating ourselves by what we watch, listen, and read, why not go all the way?

Think of the possibilities. In a new nation fashioned out of the current red states-call it, for the sake of argument, Limbaughland-the federal tax rate would be cut to 10%, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security would be abolished, abortion would be illegal, gays would be closeted again, and Christianity would be the official state religion. Anyone could buy any kind of gun, no questions asked. In the current blue states, which we will call ObamaNation, the federal tax rate would top out at 90%; all employers would institute quota systems for minorities, women and less-abled persons; and you’d get your health care form a single-payer system like Canada’s. Fast food and guns would be banned, while gay marriage and marijuana would be legal. Voila! No more rancor, leaving only one remaining problem: What would we all feel so aggrieved about?”

-William Falk, editor of The Week