This "article" is just a nasty, shrill, highly political and vitrolic commentary. Can't we find more thoughtful content for HN? Yes I think it's significant that Chertoff's new company works for the body scanner folks, but this has already been dealt with on HN with links to much saner content.
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!
The issue is one of privacy. These corruption accusations detract from the heart of the matter.
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.
It would be a huge win if the scanners were removed because of corruption. It would be an even bigger win if people went to jail because of it, but I'm not holding my breath.
"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 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.
Short-sighted is not understanding that the example in this article is just a symptom of a much bigger problem, possibly the single greatest problem facing the US at this time, and needs to be opposed not only everywhere it occurs, but also at the root. Lawrence Lessig, the expert, can explain it more detail:
We'll have to deal with the next invasive device and the next invasive airport profiling proposal in any case. So yes we have to confront the issues head-on -- and we also want to win this battle so that we're in a better shape for the next one. Why is it short-sited to include anti-corruption and transparency advocates in the coalition here?
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.
In my contract it is not only weird but somewhat illegal for me to leave and work for a supplier - especially one I just approved a big order from.
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?
It's true that it's very common and there is often nothing untoward about it.
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.
The debate should be about the ethics of privacy and HOW it is being violated, not WHY.
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.
The issues are separate, privacy invasion is wrong and should be stopped. Corrupt procurement is a crime and should be prosecuted.
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.
All of these things should contribute to a debate that should not be artifically limited by the values of any participant or for simplicity's sake. Privacy and health are more aspects of a complicated situation that should not just be imposed on the population like this one is. I mean, I hope its not controversial to assert that the scanners are being imposed.
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.
A friend and I were just talking about a "Career Pattern" in which an executive who brought in a 3rd party (often a startup) winds up working for them after leaving his BigCo. It's all too common.
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?
This is how modern day corruption works. Smart politicians never take cash in exchange for favors. They get high paid consultancies after leaving office.
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.
Maybe someone with more experience in Washington can explain this better than I can, but everyone should know that the tenancy of people to move from government agencies into the industries those agencies regulate is rarely a case of nefarious corruption. Two facts contribute much more: (1) a person who is familiar with the inner workings of the agency is immensely valuable to industry because there are genuine confusions and inefficiencies in the industry about the regulations and (2) there really aren't that many highly qualified people in the world in any particular niche industry (like airport scanners).
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."
It's a conflict of interest and therefore ought to be viewed with suspicion. The motives are to be distrusted and there is good reason for this.
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.
Your accusations are exactly the kind of misguided thinking I was warning against.
> 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.
"which makes him uniquely informed on dealing with the legal issues surrounding the scanner."
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.
I'm going any deeper except to say that Chertoff (a) is a lawyer and (b) was the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. I can't think of anyone on the planet more informed on the regulatory issues surrounding airport scanners being purchased by the department of Homeland Security than Chertoff.
I have to agree with Brandon on this one. It seems clear to me that this topic is popular among the HN crowd not because there is anything particularly technical or intellectual about it, but because it fires up the libertarian political passions that happen to correlate with being a hacker.
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.
There is no doubt that "people" find this relevant and interesting. Do "good hackers", in their capacity as good hackers, find it relevant and interesting? I would definitely expect to see it high on the front page of Reddit, but this is not the sort of thing I come to Hacker News for. Politicians using their positions for future profit is not an interesting new phenomenon in any way.
A lot of people who read HN do fly. I know it's a slippery slope for submissions that can easily lead to psytrance music reviews on the front page, but these scanners are currently a hot topic and definitely something "people around here" bump up against in the course of their nerdly duties. That is to say, these things typically work on a case by case basis as far as your complaints go, and well, sometimes the b'ar eats you.
