Reason Magazine - Topics > Airlines/Airports

Idiot Tested, Not TSA Approved

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:00 EDT

Several years too late, the Transportation Security Administration is simplifying the lives of travelers by approving the use of X-ray-friendly laptop cases. According to the New York Times:

Two problems with the existing laptop cases are that security officers have difficulty seeing inside them with X-ray equipment, and many of the cases are so crammed with extra gear — power cords, a mouse and the like — that the computer is obscured.

To solve these problems, Ron Davis from Pathfinder Luggage says that the company's cases will be made of "nylon and foam," because "the X-ray machine will see right through that."

As it happens, I've been using an Incase Neoprene Sleeve to hold my MacBook for more than two years now. I know that it's X-ray friendly because, A) it holds only my computer and no other accessories, B) Neoprene is a type of foam; and C) the last several times I've flown, I neglected to remove my laptop from its case on the conveyer belt, and not once did a TSA employee ask me to take it out and send it back in. Why? Because the case didn't obstruct the views on the monitor.

Yet the TSA is refusing to set up an approval process, or a list of minimum technical specs, because X-rayable features on laptop cases should be "self evident." As a result, companies cannot "state nor imply that the bags were certified or approved by the T.S.A. or use a T.S.A. logo on them," and customers will have to hope they guessed right before placing their zipped computer on the belt.

It will be immediately apparent if a laptop case is not properly designed for unobscured visual inspection because it will not give security officers a clear X-ray image, Mr. Hawley said. The case and laptop will be removed from the belt for a close look by security officers, he said.

The recap: The current TSA policy is to let no one send his laptop through the X-ray machine while still inside its case. The new TSA policy entails encouraging manufacturers to come up with new cases, which the administration can't and won't endorse. It will then test those cases by letting all passengers send their encased laptops through the conveyer belt, whether they own a new one or not (because not even TSA employees will be able to tell the difference), then removing all the ones whose contents are obscured. Fantastic policy, and fantastically late.

Editor Jacob Sullum wrote here about the TSA's nipple checking policy.

The Absent-Minded Terrorist

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:11:00 EDT

The Transportation Security Administration has changed its policy on flying without identification. It's no longer allowed. According to TSA:

This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining their identity.

In other words, the policy is directed not at possible terrorists, but at rabble rousers like Jim Harper, who insist that the long-held right of anonymous movement ought to be preserved. However...

This new procedure will not affect passengers that may have misplaced, lost or otherwise do not have ID but are cooperative with officers. Cooperative passengers without ID may be subjected to additional screening protocols, including enhanced physical screening, enhanced carry-on and/or checked baggage screening, interviews with behavior detection or law enforcement officers and other measures.

It's hard to see how this is going to make flying any safer. Does TSA really believe that a terrorist is going to be the one loudly proclaiming his right to anonymous travel?

Brian Doherty wrote about millionaire John Gilmore's quest for anonymous travel in 2003.

Alaska-Size Chutzpah

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:15:00 EDT

Congress Daily reports that Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, grilled Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley yesterday over his agency's plans for a 50-cent increase in airline passenger fees to pay for baggage screening equipment:

[Stevens was] adamant in opposing the 50-cent-per-flight fee increase, claiming that his constituents have to fly more intrastate than other Americans because of the size and difficult terrain of Alaska and are seeing none of the security improvements. "I don't know why we have to pay intrastate charges for security we don't get," he said.

And exactly what value would most Americans have gotten from the "bridges to nowhere" that Stevens notoriously championed a few years ago? With a price tag of $453 million, they would have cost every man, woman, and child in the country $1.50, three times the proposed TSA fee that riles Stevens. (Alaska ultimately got the money without explicit earmarks; one of the bridge projects has been canceled, while the other may yet proceed.) Even without those projects, Alaska excels at fleecing U.S. taxpayers, pulling in $1.84 for every dollar it sends to Washington, D.C., according to the Tax Foundation's numbers for 2005, when it ranked third by that measure, thanks largely to Stevens' tireless pork pulling.

Friday Funnies

hpayne@detnews.com (Henry Payne) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:30:00 EDT

Terror at Ten Feet

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:58:00 EDT

Whenever I see the corporate logo of Northwest Airlines (NWA), I always think of a band that came straight outta Compton all those many years ago.

Anyhoo, NWA and Delta are in merger talks to become the world's biggest, and certainly worst in terms of service and pricing, airline (as it is, they both suck pretty hard right now). The pilots at both joints are lukewarm-to-cold on the deal and various congress critters have spoken out against the deal. Neither will be able to put the kibosh on things, though they can make the eventual outcome more difficult and costly.

A snippet from one article:

"It's not an industry that works," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, who lobbied Congress against a bid by US Airways for Delta last year.
"We're now getting to the point where there are so few carriers left, and they still can't make money," he said yesterday.
Delta and Northwest said they have no current plans to cut more U.S. flights beyond what they have disclosed separately -- something analysts see as limiting the cost savings or higher fares the airlines could reap from the deal. The carriers also don't plan to close any of their hubs. But they didn't rule out further capacity cuts in the future if fuel prices continue to rise....
The executives said they would like to close the deal by the end of this year, which would be before the merger-friendly Bush administration leaves office.
Several lawmakers already have railed against a Northwest-Delta combination, arguing that the deal will decrease competition and lead to higher fares. But Congress has little power to stop a transaction, and most experts believe the Justice Department will approve it.

I like mergers and I don't fear bigger companies that result from them, even if mergers typically fail when it comes most measures of success. Airline deregulation in terms of pricing of tickets has been an absolutely great thing, though it was never extended to airports and air traffic control, which creates all sorts of problems. The troubles with the airline industry are due to a lack of free markets (including the prohibition on foreign ownership of "domestic" carriers), not their presence. Bailed out after the 9/11 attacks, expect the ailing airline industry to keep going back for more at the government teat on a regular basis. The airline industry is one of the worst when it comes to pushing "free markets" when it benefits them, then crying for government protection/intervention when that will help them out.

Tell your tales of Shatnerian "Nightmares at 20,000 Feet"—or, much more likely, on the tarmac or in the terminal—here.

And go Braniff!

Update: Skip Oliva notes via email, "The other problem that you did not state is that antitrust regulation prohibits most temporary alliances—aka "cartels"—that might make more economic sense than outright mergers.

You're Stranded? You're Welcome.

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:00:00 EDT

The government crackdown on airlines over alleged safety lapses fits a familiar storyline: Conscientious regulators saving the public from heartless corporations that put lives at risk to fatten profits. It's a tale that would be perfect for a movie—since movies are famous for taking liberties with the truth.

In real life, this story may not have a happy ending. By forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights, the Federal Aviation Administration most likely did not prevent fatalities but caused them.

Commercial aviation, after all, is by far the safest form of travel. When people can't fly, many will drive. When they take to the road, they're at greater risk of ending up in the morgue. This is the law of unintended consequences with a vengeance.

What was the basis for the FAA's fateful action? Last month it slapped Southwest Airlines with $10 million in fines for flying planes that hadn't been inspected. Then American Airlines and other carriers scrubbed flights using MD-80 jets after the FAA took issue with how they secured certain wires in the wheel wells.

The agency said the wires have to be an inch apart, rather than the inch and a quarter American believed was sufficient. Executive Vice President Dan Garton said diplomatically that the FAA action suggests "a focus on extraordinarily strict adherence to specifics" that was not present in the past.

The FAA was embarrassed by the Southwest episode, which drew charges of dereliction from Capitol Hill, and it reacted with an uncharacteristic display of toughness on an old directive.

As The Washington Post reported, industry officials said that in the past, "the agency would probably have allowed the carrier to make the fixes over a period of days or weeks. They noted that the 2006 directive on the MD-80 wiring gave airlines 18 months to comply. That means that regulators, while concerned about the wiring, didn't believe that making the changes was a pressing safety matter."

But all of a sudden it became one, and the result was some 250,000 stranded travelers. The mass inconvenience would be justified if it meant saving even one or two lives. But unnoticed in the furor is that during all the time these carriers were doing something supposedly dangerous, it didn't cause any accidents. The carriers' definition of "safe" seems to have been vindicated.

That should come as no shock. As a rule, it makes sense to assume the industry puts great emphasis on safety. Aircraft manufacturers have a huge stake in producing safe vehicles, and airlines have powerful incentives not to crash those planes.

A carrier that truly shortchanges safety is not only risking the obvious loss of valuable equipment, hard-to-replace employees and loyal customers, but putting itself in danger of extinction. Get a reputation for recklessness, and travelers will flee your airline like the Titanic.

If greed were truly grounds to dispense with caution, the nation's tarmacs would be littered with corpses. Since 2001, the industry has lost some $27 billion—inspiring investor Warren Buffett to say that if there had been a far-sighted capitalist watching at Kitty Hawk, he would have shot the Wright brothers' plane down. If there was ever an industry that might be driven to desperate measures, this is it.

Yet as airline finances have suffered, safety has prospered. Just in the last decade, the fatality rate has plunged by 82 percent. Last year there was not a single death stemming from accidents involving scheduled carriers. The decline has occurred even as the number of planes and people in the air has greatly increased.
It's hard to believe this improvement stems from the stern vigilance of federal regulators. In the first place, Congress now tells us that, actually, regulation hasn't been nearly vigilant enough.

In the second, it's far-fetched to think that, in a business where there are nearly 27,000 flights per day, the FAA can prevent a reprobate carrier from cheating if it really wants to. The agency simply doesn't have enough personnel to monitor everything that could go wrong.

It may come as a surprise that the traveling public has to rely chiefly on the self-interest of airlines to keep their planes in one piece. But guess what? It works.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

They Can Have My Ring When They Pry It From My Cold, Dead Chest

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:54:00 EDT

Warning that "incidents of female terrorists hiding explosives in sensitive areas are on the rise all over the world," the Transportation Security Administration says "this scenario must be addressed at our nation's airports." By "sensitive areas," the TSA does not mean airplane cockpits or cargo holds; it means breasts and vaginas. Still, that does not explain why TSA agents at the airport in Lubbock, Texas, forced Mandi Hamlin to remove her nipple rings, saying she could not board her flight to Dallas until she did so. The removal was a painful and embarrassing process that required the use of pliers and elicited the snickers of TSA screeners.

On its website, the TSA says passengers with body piercings may have to undergo "additional screening for a pat-down inspection" if their intimate jewelry sets off the walk-through metal detector. But in Hamlin's case it didn't, and she says it never has. Instead she was selected for secondary examination at random (or by whatever mysterious criteria the TSA uses), and her nipple rings made the screener's wand beep. Hamlin explained the situation and offered to show a female screener her breasts in private to verify that the nipple rings were not explosives or weapons. She was not permitted to do so. Nor was she offered the choice the TSA advertises on its website:

You may be additionally screened because of hidden items such as body piercings, which alarmed the metal detector. If you are selected for additional screening, you may ask to remove your body piercing in private as an alternative to a pat-down search.

Hamlin wanted the pat-down, but she was never given the option. "In response to her complaint," CNN reports, "TSA's customer service manager in Lubbock concluded the screening was handled properly." It's bad enough when the TSA adopts inconvenient, invasive, yet ineffective procedures that seem designed mainly to create the illusion of security. It's worse when passengers can't even count on it to follow its own stupid policies.

More on TSA follies here, here, and here.

[via The Freedom Files]

Russian Bombers Buzz the Nimitz

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:11:00 EST

Cold War nostalgics and Putin paranoia mongers rejoice! From CNN:

American fighter jets intercepted two Russian bombers, one of which buzzed a U.S. aircraft carrier in the western Pacific on Saturday......
Russia's Defense Ministry said Tuesday that there was no violation of flight regulations during the incident. A ministry official said the flights are standard operating procedure for air force training.
One of them twice flew about 2,000 feet over the deck of the USS Nimitz Saturday......
The Russians and the U.S. carrier did not exchange verbal communications.
Four turboprop Tupolev-95 Bear bombers took off from Ukrainka Air Base, in Russia's Far East, in the middle of the night, Japanese officials told The Associated Press, adding that one of the planes violated Japanese airspace.
Russian bombers have been making flights over the western Pacific for several months
There have been eight incidents off Alaska since July. Among the latest, on September 5, six F-15s from Elmendorf Air Force Base, adjacent to Anchorage, Alaska, intercepted six Russian bombers about 50 miles from the northwest coast of Alaska.

Cathy Young on the complicated Vladimir Putin, back in January 2005 and subscribers should look for her latest feature reporting on Putin in a soon-forthcoming issue of reason.

For the Voice, You'll Have a Choice of William Daniels or Majel Barrett

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:20:00 EST

It doesn't fly, but it still sounds pretty cool. Tomorrow at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, G.M. plans to unveil a prototype of a self-driving car:

The automaker expects driverless vehicle technology to be ready for testing by 2015 and in vehicles that it sells by 2018, a G.M. spokesman, Scott Fosgard, said on Sunday.
"The technology exists right now to move cars without a driver," Mr. Fosgard said, adding that a self-driving vehicle would "know where all the vehicles are around it, dramatically reduce accidents and even reduce congestion."

In a 2007 reason review of Daniel Wilson's Where's My Jetpack?, Katherine Mangu-Ward asked whatever happened to the technological wonders promised by science fiction. On Hit & Run she has called attention to innovations that fall somewhat short of Jetsons-style transportation: an airplane that can be driven on the highway but can take off only at an airport and a hovercraft that's not allowed on public roads. The car that drives itself seems more practical.

Artifact: TSA-Inspired Art

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 09:46:00 EST

In the last year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the widely reviled agency responsible for snagging verboten lotion bottles and other contraband from air travelers, confiscated some 8 million items, including guns, knives, soda cans, nonbutane lighters (and many butane models too), and much more.

When it comes to knives and scissors, items with blades shorter than four inches are supposed to be allowed, but individual agents have wide discretion to ban anything they feel might present a safety threat. As a result, there are thousands of ostensibly OK scissors that end up in the TSA equivalent of Gitmo.

The D.C.-based artist Christopher Locke buys confiscated scissors that belong in the “grey area between what should be allowed on the plane, and what wasn’t allowed” and refashions them into strangely disquieting spiders and bugs, viewable online at heartlessmachine.com.

They look ready to attack, their animus piqued no doubt by their arbitrary fate in a post-9/11 world striving for moral and political clarity. Had another agent handled them, those scissors might have already landed in Hawaii.

Nutritionist Fed Up With Secondhand Fat

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:29:00 EST

The BBC reports that John Tickell, a "leading Australian nutritionist," thinks "society should take a more hardline stance against obesity and get tough on fat airline passengers." Specifically, he thinks it's only fair that fat passengers pay more for their seats than thin passengers do, since they contribute disproportionately to fuel costs. "I think we're a bit too nice, we're a bit too precious about minority groups," says Tickell. "I think the majority group must have something to say too."

Scott Stein suggests that Tickell visit a playground, where he could "find plenty of evidence of coddling of fat people—because, as you surely know, fat people are never teased, mocked, and humiliated by their peers." In any case, Stein notes, thin people are no longer "the majority group" in Australia or the United States; two-thirds of adults in both countries are considered "overweight." Then, too, if fuel consumption is the real issue, airlines ought to charge tall people more than short ones. Why focus just on width when height also contributes to weight?

One reason, apparently, is that Tickell wants to "highlight his country's obesity crisis." But the head of the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity, Tim Gill, objects to Tickell's punitive approach. "It's not fair to single out those people who have a problem, which is already impacting greatly on their life, and make them feel like pariahs," he says.

Why is it that public health types rarely raise similar objections to propaganda that mocks and denigrates smokers, smoking bans that push them into the street, and taxes that punish them for behavior that, according to anti-tobacco activists, they can't really control? Before you say "it's the secondhand smoke," consider Tickell's tirade against fat fellow fliers:

I fly Sydney to Perth—five hours—and being totally disadvantaged by some huge person next to me literally flopping over into my seat. Why should I pay the same as them?

Tickell's proposed solution, of course, does not really address the problem of secondhand fat. It makes more sense to assign obese people two seats, and then the question is whether they should have to pay for the extra seat. Of course they should, Michael Lynch argued on reason online back in 2002, when Southwest Airlines announced that it would start enforcing a longstanding policy to that effect. My own view (Mike's too, I think) is that airlines should neither be forbidden to charge people above a certain size for an extra seat (based on anti-discrimination laws, say) nor required to do so (to satisfy social engneers like Tickell). As with smoking rules in bars and restaurants, each airline should have to weigh the negative and positive reactions from its customers in deciding which policy makes the most sense.

Is That a Vial of Nitroglycerin in Your Turban, or Are You Just a Sikh?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:22:00 EDT

Some Sikhs object to a new TSA policy that allows discretionary "pat-downs" of headgear. The pat-downs, aimed at threats (such as liquid explosives) that would not trigger a metal detector, ostensibly have nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. But since the decision to feel up a passenger's hat will be left to individual screeners, many of whom may still be confusing the average bearded, turban-wearing Sikh man with Osama bin Laden, Sikhs are understandably concerned that they will be singled out for extra attention, stigmatizing them as potential jihadists and reinforcing public misconceptions. They also have religious objections to the fingering of their turbans.

If this new policy made sense as a security measure, the Sikhs' embarrassment and inconvenience might be considered (especially by non-Sikhs) an acceptable cost of protecting passengers from terrorism. But how likely is it that a terrorist would dress like a Sikh, which in the eyes of many Americans means dressing like a terrorist, so he can hide a tube of nitroglycerin in his turban? For that matter, has the TSA discovered any liquid explosives or liquid explosive components since it started focusing on this purported threat in 2006? If not, does that mean the new rules for liquids and gels are working?

Somehow I doubt it. Half the time when I travel, I forget to put my toothpaste and eyeglass cleaner in a separate "quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag," and typically no one notices. In performance tests TSA screeners routinely miss simulated guns and bombs. In this context, does adding hats to the list of items that require extra scrutiny, along with liquids, gels, shoes, laptops, tools, and sporting goods, make sense? If everything is the focus of special attention, nothing is.

On the brighter side, the TSA finally has lifted its senseless ban on "common lighters," almost a year after Congress said it could. The TSA notes that the U.S. was "the only country in the world to ban lighters" and that screeners were confiscating some 22,000 a day from passengers (and probably missing at least as many), which distracted them from more significant threats. ("Torch lighters," the fancy kind often used with cigars, are still prohibited.) Also, mothers will no longer be forced to taste their breast milk.

A Bump in the Road for Air Travelers

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 06:40:00 EDT

In a season of crowded planes, long security lines and numerous delays, there are only two kinds of travelers: those who dislike the airlines, and those who loathe and abominate the entire industry with every fiber of their being. So the Department of Transportation is not risking a mass revolt when it entertains the idea of making carriers pay large sums to passengers who, after buying a ticket, find it doesn't come with a seat.

Airlines overbook to assure full flights, but when everyone shows up, not everyone gets to go. Involuntary "bumping" of passengers is an old custom that has gotten more onerous, since it's not as easy to get on the next flight as it used to be. So groups claiming to represent consumers have been demanding that the government force airlines to boost their compensation.

Currently, offenders have to pay a maximum of $200 if a customer is rebooked on a flight scheduled to arrive within two hours of the original one, or $400 for flights that arrive later. Organizations like the Consumer Federation of America propose that these figures be raised to restore the value they had before inflation eroded it—which would amount to $624 and $1,248.

You will not hear many travelers oppose getting more satisfaction when a ticket agent spoils their day. But it's hard to see a problem serious enough to justify Washington's intervention. And in this case, an attempt to help consumers at the expense of carriers promises to leave both worse off.

The industry has good reasons for this practice. A no-show passenger can mean an empty seat, and every empty seat costs the airlines cash they badly need. As a group, they have managed to operate in the red for six straight years. Overbooking can be the difference between a flight that makes money and a flight that loses money.

Contrary to what you might assume, this supposedly rampant abuse is about as common as a vacant exit row. Out of every 10,000 passengers, on average, only 1.45 are involuntarily bumped. You could expect to fly thousands of times before you would ever be left at the gate.

One reason for this is that the airlines don't like turning away paying customers. So they strive to sell no more tickets than is absolutely necessary. Wallace Beall, senior director for revenue analysis at US Airways, told The New York Times, "Employees call in sick because they don't want to deal with overbookings." A passenger who is barred from boarding by Airline A is a passenger who in the future will go to great lengths to accumulate frequent-flier miles on Airline B.

Another reason few travelers get bumped is that the carriers solicit volunteers with ample enticements, which offer travelers a better deal than the government does. If you agree to be put on a later flight, you can generally expect to get a free roundtrip ticket to anywhere in the continental United States.

Of course, some travelers really have to get where they're going in a hurry. But those who put a high priority on not being turned away can easily protect themselves. If you buy your ticket early enough to get a seat assignment, you're virtually immune from bumping. Likewise for passengers who check in online and get their boarding passes.

The typical bumpee is someone who decides to fly at the last minute or doesn't check in until arriving at the airport. But that's also the person who, if airlines are deterred from overbooking, won't be able to buy a ticket at all. Instead of having a tiny chance of not getting aboard, this poor soul would have a 100 percent chance of not getting aboard. How would that make him better off?

It wouldn't. Fliers also benefit from the lower fares that overbooking helps to pay for. Without it, you would pay for the cost of your seat—and part of the cost of the empty one next to you. By selling more seats than they actually have, carriers can maximize revenues and minimize costs. Those two achievements help to preserve the low fares we enjoy today, which in inflation-adjusted terms are roughly half what they were 30 years ago.

Involuntary bumping, with the current modest compensation, is a less-than-perfect method of reconciling the interests of travelers and airlines. But there's no system so imperfect that a helping hand from Washington can't make it worse.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

TSA Wants Airlines to Ask Passengers Nosy Sex Questions

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:28:00 EDT

As it prepares to take over the job of checking airline passengers' names against the government's Master List of Every Terrorist in the World (a task now handled by the airlines), the Transportation Security Administration has come up with an innovative method for distinguishing between people on the list and people who happen to have similar names. "To reduce the likelihood of false matches," The New York Times reports, "airlines are to ask passengers for their date of birth and sex, although providing such information will not be required." For old-fashioned women of a certain age, supplying a birth date may be touchy, but I imagine they'll be even more offended when asked to identify their gender.

The TSA also will start requiring airlines to supply passenger lists for flights originating in other countries before the flights take off. The fact that airlines currently are allowed to wait until planes are in midair to transmit this information tells you something about how much confidence our government has in its "no fly" list. So does the fact that six years after 9/11 "John Smith" is considered an adequate identifier for a suspicious character who might want to blow up a plane or fly it into a skyscraper. Leaving aside the potential for confusion with all the other John Smiths in the world (a problem no one could possibly have foreseen), there is the possibility that a determined jihadist might not travel under his real name, assuming that it appeared on the list in the first place. The government does not even take this screening business seriously enough for it to qualify as a charade.

United Wild Kingdom

jblanks@reason.com (Jonathan Blanks) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:24:00 EDT

In an effort to curb human trafficking and child exploitation, the Home Office study proposes tracking all children who enter the U.K.:

Every child entering the UK should have their biometrics taken in an attempt to stop the trafficking of children for sex, domestic slavery, street crime and drug smuggling.

The plan to track children after they enter the UK comes in a Home Office-sponsored study, which admits that human trafficking is now a “real and significant threat” to the country.

There is the obligatory Drug War tie-in:

Chinese boys aged between 13 and 17 were identified as a specific group being trafficked, while Vietnamese boys and girls were also highlighted as a vulnerable group that had been particularly exploited in cannabis production.

“The cannabis factories that have been raided highlight the highly organised business of cannabis cultivation in this country,” the study says. “Houses have been transformed into highly efficient industrial cannabis production works using technical knowledge.

While modern slavery is certainly a problem that should be fought vigorously, taking detailed inventory of all children who enter is not the answer.

But if the Home Office does follow through with this, the least they could do is give the children a fighting chance at freedom: I suggest give the kids a running start before officers bring out the tranquilizer darts and tags.

The effect is the same—my plan is just more entertaining to watch.

Somehow the Final Connection Is(n't) Made

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:02:00 EDT

The NYT today reports the bleeding obvious: Flight delays are getting worse. More interestingly, the way delays are recorded does "not begin to capture the severity of the problem. That is because these statistics track how late airplanes are, not how late passengers are." So a missed connection might show up as a 1 hour holdup even if results in a 3 day delay:

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a study several years ago and found that when missed connections and flight cancellations are factored in, the average wait was two-thirds longer than the official statistic. That finding prompted the M.I.T. researchers to dust off their study, which they are updating now.
...
Some other airline delay statistics, meanwhile, are getting a fresh look, as well. After thousands of passengers were stranded for hours on tarmacs in New York and Texas this past winter, consumer advocates began complaining that Transportation Department data does not accurately track such meltdowns.
If a flight taxies out, sits for hours, and then taxies back in and is canceled, the delay is not recorded. Likewise, flights diverted to cities other than their destination are not figured into delay statistics.

The article suggests that one reason for worsening delays is that flights are increasingly full, which makes missing a connection far costlier than it used to be. (It misses the chance to speculate on the TSA's role.) But one aspect of flying that goes unmentioned is the ever-lengthening gap of time needed to just catch a plane in the first place. There was a time, not so long ago, when leaving one hour to get an international flight was a little risky but not unreasonable. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine security wouldn't just laugh in your face as you struggle with a multitude of shoes, belts and zip-lock bags.

Elsewhere in reason, read Julian Sanchez on the TSA's "no-fly list" and Jacob Sullum on the liquid ban.

Today's Terror Trivia

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:37:00 EDT

Fun fact: For four months, the head of London International Airport was on the American no-fly list.

Did Public Health Officials Underreact, Overreact, or Both?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:35:00 EDT

An audio recording from Andrew Speaker's May 10 meeting with Fulton County, Georgia, public health officials backs up his claim that they told him he was not a threat to others, despite requiring treatment for tuberculosis:

The Speakers asked whether Andrew could expect to be restricted to a room once he arrived at a Denver hospital for specialized treatment.
"Now, that I don't know," responded Dr. Eric A. Benning, director of the county health department's communicable diseases branch. "But because of the fact that you actually are not contagious, there's no reason for you to be sequestered."
In another piece of the recording, Dr. Benning told Mr. Speaker, "As far as we can tell you, you're not a threat to anybody right now."

The recording, by the way, was made by Speaker's father, who "described himself as 'a little hard of hearing,'" and "said he taped conversations frequently and had wanted to be able to review any diagnosis offered in the meeting." If these excerpts accurately reflect what public health officials were saying, Andrew Speaker's decision to leave for his European wedding and honeymoon seems reasonable. As for his decision to fly back after the CDC called to tell him he had extensively drug-resistant TB, he claims he asked whether he was any more contagious than he had originally believed, and the CDC said no. If this account is accurate, the threat to others had increased in the sense that the outcome was worse but not in the sense that the likelihood of that outcome had increased. If the likelihood of transmitting the disease was significant, the news that he had XDR TB should have affected his decision about whether to travel. But if the likelihood was essentially zero (as his father-in-law, a CDC tuberculosis expert, apparently thought), the updated diagnosis really needn't have figured in his decision, except to the extent that it made him anxious to fly home for treatment.

So far it looks like Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, was right in arguing that public health officials either underreacted at the beginning or overreacted later. Possibly they did both.

The Difference a Germ Makes

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:51:00 EDT

TB Andrew is no Typhoid Mary. Starting in 1900, Mary Mallon infected 47 people with typhoid fever while working as a cook, many of them after she had been warned she was a carrier and had promised to stop handling food for a living. At this point it seems unlikely that Andrew Speaker, the Atlanta lawyer who has been widely reviled for traveling by air after being diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis, infected anyone.

Notably, both those who condemn Speaker's recklessness and those who sympathize with him agree the relevant question is the danger he posed to other people, which was the justification for his forcible isolation in a Denver hospital. At a time when everything from eating French fries to playing Grand Theft Auto has been labeled a "public health" problem, the case of the TB-infected traveler helps clarify the grounds for government interventions aimed at preventing disease or injury.

When Speaker left for his wedding and honeymoon in Europe on May 12, he knew he had a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis but did not know he had extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB, a rare variety that's very hard to treat. He had no fever, he was not coughing, and tests of his sputum found no TB bacteria. He says his doctors had assured him he was not contagious.

According to Speaker, local public health officials, while recommending that he not fly, repeatedly told him he would not pose a significant threat to fellow passengers. That account is confirmed by Speaker's father, who says he has an audio recording to prove it.

Speaker's father-in-law, a tuberculosis expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not try to stop the trip. "I would never knowingly put my daughter, friends or anyone else at risk from such a disease," he said in a prepared statement, suggesting he agreed the risk of contagion was negligible.

While Speaker was in Rome, the CDC informed him he had XDR TB, told him he was on the U.S. "no fly" list, and recommended that he report to an Italian hospital for indefinite isolation. Knowing his best shot at successful treatment was in Denver, Speaker took a circuitous route home, flying to Montreal by way of Prague and driving across the U.S. border.

Speaker and his family insist he never would have traveled if he thought he might transmit tuberculosis to others. His sputum continues to be clear of TB bacteria, and none of the people with whom he has had extended contact, including his wife, has tested positive for tuberculosis exposure.

In situations like this, there is room for argument about how to balance the safety of bystanders against the civil liberties of disease carriers. Even in the case of Mary Mallon, who apparently never accepted the idea that she could feel perfectly healthy but still pass typhoid on to others, the government's ultimate response—isolation for the rest of her life—seems excessive, especially compared to the treatment of other recalcitrant carriers.

But at least in dealing with potentially deadly microorganisms that move from person to person, the rationale for government action is to prevent people from harming each other. By contrast, much of what passes for "public health" today is aimed at preventing people from harming themselves.

Activists and politicians use the language of public health to legitimize government efforts to discourage a wide range of risky habits, including smoking, drinking, overeating, underexercising, gambling, driving a car without a seat belt, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Unlike typhoid fever and tuberculosis, the risks associated with these activities are not imposed on people; they are voluntarily assumed.

In a society that loses sight of that crucial distinction, the government has an open-ended license to meddle in what used to be considered private decisions. Anyone who exposes himself to the risk of disease or injury becomes a menace to public health.

How to Get Off A Government Watch List

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:49:00 EDT

Ryan Singel at Wired offers some useful advice. A sample:

The first rule for most people in getting off a watch list is to accept that you are not on a list.
Most likely, if you are being singled out at the airport for extra scrutiny, or your credit report says you might match a Treasury list, you are the victim of a bad matching algorithm or a vague watch-list entry for some other person.
........
If you only occasionally get an SSSS on your boarding pass, you likely aren't on a watch list -- you've just been elected for random screening, or for buying a one-way ticket. (Real Americans fly roundtrip.)
...............

If your problem is domestic- or international-travel-related, you can try the Department of Homeland Security's new online redress system, called the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, reintroduced in February. (The old one was so badly designed that Congress opened an investigation). After filling out the form with details, a stymied traveler will need to submit copies of identification documents. You can file online, or submit a version by fax, mail or e-mail.
If DHS determines your name is matching incorrectly to a watch-list entry, it may add you to a white list that gets you through airport security without the extra scrutiny.
If you're attempting to shake free of a list you are actually on, it can only be done by the agency that put you on the list in the first place.

While thinking about air travel and government, you should read James Bovard's February 2004 cover story on the Transportation Security Administration's philosophy of "Dominate. Intimidate. Control ."

Big Old Jet Airliner...From Hell

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 06:48:00 EDT

Last year saw more bags lost or stolen, a decline in on-time performance, and a record number of people being bumped from flights. From an account of a new study about flying the friendly skies:

Last year, 6.50 bags were lost, stolen or damaged for every 1,000 passengers, compared with 6.06 in 2005....
On-time performance worsened last year, the report said, with 75.5 percent of flights arriving on time, compared with 77.3 percent in 2005....
The study found an increase in the number of passengers who were bumped or denied boarding because of oversold flights - 1.01 denied boardings per 10,000 passengers last year, compared with 0.89 per 10,000 in 2005.

Curiouser and curiouser: "Overall, complaints about the airlines last year held steady at about 0.88 complaints for every 100,000 passengers."

The study comes out of Nebraska University and Wichita State and is based on the Airline Quality Report, an annual report issued since 1991 that uses Department of Transportation stats. More here.

What is to be done? Finish the job of deregulation started in the late '70s (thank you, Alfred Kahn!) and reduce useless red tape and government bureaucracy in air traffic control, foreign-ownership rules, and more. Just ask Robert W. Poole, founder of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason Online and the print mag, and an expert in all things aviation.

'No Fly' Relaunch Delayed Again

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:15:00 EST

The Transportation Security Administration's revamping of the "no-fly" list, intended to prevent suspected terrorists from boarding aircraft, is officially five years behind schedule. The new, improved system is now expected to be online in 2010, seven years after the government started working on the latest version and nine years after 9/11. So far the government has spent some $220 million on the project, and "officials would not release an estimate of how much they expected to spend before the system was complete." I am not an expert in airline security or computer systems, but I find it hard to believe that it takes so much effort to add the information (such as birthdate and sex) needed to distinguish between, say, Catherine Stevens and Cat Stevens (to use the example of a so-far insoluble information management problem cited by The New York Times), or to avoid barring every Edward Kennedy in the country from flying. According to TSA Administrator Kip Hawley, merely eliminating "erroneous, redundant or incorrect listings" would make the list about half as long as it is now.

The FAA Rediscovers the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:47:00 EST

David Codrea, who sounded the alarm about the Federal Aviation Administration's apparent endorsement of the view that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms, notes that the agency has published a correction in the Federal Register:

When the FAA issued a final rule on human space flight, it described one rule as consistent with the Second Amendment of the Constitution because, among other things, the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment is a collective right. The FAA now withdraws that characterization and amends its description.

The offending passage, part of the FAA's justification for its ban on carrying firearms aboard spaceships, originally read (emphasis added):

The Second Amendment to the Constitution provides that "[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'' This right is not unfettered. Nearly every statute restricting the right to bear arms has been upheld. For example, in 1958, Congress made it a criminal offense to knowingly carry a firearm onto an airplane engaged in air transportation....Additionally, nearly all courts have also held that the Second Amendment is a collective right, rather than a personal right. Therefore, despite the Second Amendment collective right to bear arms, the FAA has the authority to prohibit firearms on launch and reentry vehicles for safety and security purposes.

It now reads:

The Second Amendment to the Constitution provides that "[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'' This right is not unfettered. Nearly every statute restricting the right to bear arms has been upheld. For example, in 1958, Congress made it a criminal offense to knowingly carry a firearm onto an airplane engaged in air transportation....By analogy, and for the reasons given when the FAA issued its human space flight requirements, the FAA has, consistent with the right to bear arms secured by the Second Amendment, the authority to prohibit firearms on launch and reentry vehicles for safety and security purposes.

Explaining the correction, the FAA notes that "the Executive Branch, through the Department of Justice, interprets the Second Amendment as securing a right of individuals to keep and bear arms." Codrea, who pointed out the inconsistency in a letter to the FAA, concludes:

If you know you're right, keep pushing—even if those with vastly more reach ignore you and others actively oppose you or put you down for it—all of which happened in this case. We can't let that deter us from doing what's right.

You Can't See Our Stinking Law

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:48:00 EST

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear John Gilmore's appeal of a 9th Circuit decision rejecting his demand to be shown the text of the regulation that is said to require air travelers to show ID. Background to the case is here; Brian Doherty delved into it for Reason in a 2003 cover story.

Last Call on Commuter Trains?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:03:00 EST

Egged on by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is thinking about banning alcohol from commuter trains on the Metro-North and Long Island railroads. "Times have changed and drunk driving is a major concern," says MTA board member Mitch Pally. "People get off the railroad and they get into cars," says Deena Cohen, president of MADD's Long Island chapter. "Somebody is going to get killed."

People also get off airplanes and get into cars, attend sporting events and get into cars, go to rock concerts and get into cars, eat at restaurants and get into cars, and leave bars and get into cars. As a result, somebody is going to get killed. Does that mean alcohol should be banned from all of these places as well? The relevant question, it seems to me, is whether people can drink on trains and planes, at ball games and concerts, and in bars and restaurants without driving home dangerously intoxicated. Plainly, they can, either by watching how much they drink or by hitching a ride with someone else. Surely it is possible to have a beer during an hour-long commute without endangering other people, even if you do drive home once you reach your destination. So Pally and Cohen's argument amounts to saying that no one should be allowed to drink on commuter trains because some people will abuse the privilege.

It's not hard to predict the unintended consequences of an alcohol ban. Some commuters will decide to drink before boardng the train and may end up consuming more than they otherwise would to make sure they have a nice buzz on the ride home, the upshot being that they are more intoxicated when they arrive than they used to be. Others may decide to drink in the city and drive home instead of taking the train. Somebody is going to get killed.

Notice, too, the evidence used to demonstrate the need for alcohol-free trains:

Pally's proposal follows a recent spate of accidents in which commuters have fallen through the gaps between the platforms and trains. In the most notorious case, a Minnesota teen was killed in August when she fell through a gap on the Long Island Rail Road on her way to a concert. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.23 percent nearly three times the legal driving limit.

I thought we were worried about intoxicated drivers. And what the hell does a drunk teenager have to do with alcohol sales to adults in train stations?

Since my commute consists of walking down the hall from my bedroom to my office, I frankly don't care all that much about alcohol on trains. But I do fly from time to time, and I can see where this is heading. One day the Mitch Pallys and Deena Cohens of the world will try to take my airborne, five-dollar gin and tonic away from me on the grounds that I might not be perfectly sober when I land at my destination and that I might be driving home instead of taking a cab. Somebody is going to get killed.