The Transportation Security Administration announced Wednesday plans to enhance air passenger privacy at security checkpoints, TSA Administrator John Pistole announced in a press release.
The changes will be made to the agency’s millimeter wave Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machines – the full body scanners that many travelers accuse of virtually undressing them for the eyes of TSA agents.
After being tested earlier this year at three U.S. airports, software modifications to the machines will be implemented at airports nationwide. The new software, known as Automated Target Recognition (ATR), displays possible security threats on the same generic image of a person that is used for all passengers.
I would sure love to hear the reason this couldn’t have been done from the beginning. (But at the same time it’s a little good it didn’t, as it helped wake a lot of people up to the complete lack of limits on how far the state will go.)
I was pretty disheartened by the lack of real public outrage at this. This concession by the TSA means nothing to me, I’m not even sure it’s a sign that there is any effect being had. More and more I’m coming the rather cynical view that there are just two groups of people in the world… wolves and the sheep the wolves eat. Would I rather eat or be eaten?
Just by looking around me. Nobody really believes in liberty. Even on these forums, many people don’t actually believe in liberty, they just want to be mini-kings and want the land they own to be their little mini-kingdom. The root problem in society that breathes life into the Leviathan State is the toleration of moral and legal double-standards. 99.9999% of people not only tolerate but embrace moral and legal double-standards… so long as they are on the winning side of the arrangement. I am starting to feel more and more positivistic about this situation… perhaps it’s an inevitable by-product of the nature of bargaining. If I shoot for half the pie, I’ll likely end up with just a third or maybe even only a tenth. Better to have as my goal at all times to have the whole pie to myself. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose but if I’m tenacious, I might just break even. This built-in special pleading means that people are not opposed to double-standards so much as they’re opposed to losing. This is David Friedman’s view, explicated here (read the section on Just Price).
“This is David Friedman’s view, explicated here (read the section on Just Price).”
I think you are misreading the point of that part of the article. It isn’t that it always pays to try to claim the whole surplus but that under a particular set of circumstances a commitment to claim a known increase in surplus is, on average, profitable. It depends in part on the fact that the party who is doing the claiming knows the amount of the increase and so can keep his demand within the bargaining range; the other party does not and so cannot.