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Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands. Some m

Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands. Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out. Ugh, how are they going to 'weed this out' exactly? Seems to me competitive pressures would lead private firms to do exactly what the TSA is doing i.e. give the appearance of being serious about security. And do it cheaply. Christ, all these high-profile hacks against big corporations recently and this guy really expects anyone to believe that competition will 'tend to' force businesses to take security seriously? The author hasn't given this a lot of thought, I strongly suspect. The TSA is awful. But the idea that competition and the free market is a panacea for all problems financial and social is too often used as a crutch by bureaucrats and politicians who don't want to do their god damn jobs, and as a cudgel by idiot pundits on the payroll of big business, as we see here. Just fix the TSA. Edit: and it appears Forbes stores your passwords as plaintext. Really shining example of the free market and competition magically solving all our problems, fellas.

fleitz 15y ago
Plaintext passwords solve the problem of being able to recover your password by email with out clicking some link bs. (Which are equally hackable with the crappy passwords that most people use.) Surprisingly, lots of people would prefer this to ultra secure one way hashes. The market provides what people want, not what makes them most 'secure'. If you don't like that forbes stores your password as plaintext you're free not to sign up. Also, you do use separate passwords for each site which completely nullifies the majority of the risk from such a system, correct? Or could it be that you chose the convenience of reusable passwords over security?
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  I do not reuse passwords site-to-site, however that nullifies almost none of the risk in storing passwords in plaintext over storing hashed passwords. Perhaps you can explain why you think that if you disagree. At any rate, that the market provides "what people want" (this is not always an uncontroversial statement) is precisely why airport security can not be deregulated. People tend to undervalue security until it's too late.
  - Symmetry 15y ago
    People tend to undervalue security until it's too late. This seems unclear to me. Surely, in being disproportionaly exposed to failures of security, as opposed to people getting away with insecure practices or the inconvenience of good security procedures, security professionals are going to have a distorted view of the costs of security? People tend to be very bad at multiplying in the process of making moral judgements[1], and its very hard to give equal weight to the sum total of traveler inconvenience our airline security policies cause relative to the risk of terrorist attacks. And there's no reason to think that the TSA takes into account the >100 people killed each year by their policies [2]. If you think that airline passengers aren't going to allow another 9/11 that's probably more deaths right there than the TSA could plausibly claim to be preventing in terms of airline bombings. I don't think private airline security would be perfect and it probably would go a bit too far towards lax security, but it would almost certainly be much better than what we have right now. [1] As an example, people will pay almost as much money to save the lives of 10 starving orphans as they will to save 1 starving orphan. No, I didn't get that reversed, and if you've ever studied psychology you shouldn't find that too surprising. [2] http://aem.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/gb78/wp/JLE_6301.pdf http://aem.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/gb78/wp/JLE_6301.pdf http://ur.umich.edu/0405/Nov22_04/09.shtml http://ur.umich.edu/0405/Nov22_04/09.shtml http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/5288-tsa-freedom-grope-may-lead-to-highway-fatalities http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/... http://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/2010/11/24/do-the-tsa-new-ait-body-scanners-hurt-more-than-they-help/ http://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/2010/11/24/do-the-tsa-new... and relatedly http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-airport-x-ray-scanners-harmful http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-... and previous HN discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049894 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049894
yock 15y ago
Don't attribute to malace what can be attributed to ignorance. What's more likely? High profile private organizations thinly veil their shoddy secruity measures hoping to never be exposed, or high profile private organizations erroneously believe their systems to be robustly secure? I'll take the latter.
iwwr 15y ago
Airlines themselves may want to take over security, since the TSA is hurting air travel. As for the TSA itself, the organization is causing preventable deaths by deterring people from flying, making them use the much more dangerous roads.
djiddish98 15y ago
This was the exact sentence in the article when I stopped reading it seriously (despite earlier attempts by the author). "Competitive pressure" = bad PR when a plane crashes. And then, the company will just lie low and latch on to another airline. IE - ValuJet merging with AirTran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet The TSA should be an easy agency to write a scathing article about. This author came in with some preconceived notions about the wonders of the free market and just layered the TSA on top, with little effect.
bdunbar 15y ago
Seems to me competitive pressures would lead private firms to do exactly what the TSA is doing i.e. give the appearance of being serious about security. In the marketplace competitive pressure leads to better service, not worse. LASIK has gone from a novelty for the rich to a treatment everyone can afford, for example. Possibly counter examples exist, but I can't think of any offhand. Perhaps after I've had my morning coffee. The reason I would prefer a private company over government is that you have a choice with a private firm: don't like AA's service, think their security guys are fools? Fly with Southwest. Write a letter to AA. Become a shareholder and annoy the board with your opinions. So do something like this: require private security firms to meet standards X, Y, Z. Enforcement by government inspection. Bust a standard, loose your business license. This works in other areas - workplace safety, food inspection. Am I missing something?
- seabee 15y ago
  I think you're missing that enforcement by government inspection tends to go against the "unrestricted free market" ideal, that customers will vote with their feet and not patronize unsafe businesses. (In reality customers are never that well informed to make such a decision.)
  - bdunbar 15y ago
    In theory an unrestricted free market is nice, in reality unworkable. The role of the State is provide ground rules and regulation of the market. A prudent State recognizes such a thing works best with a light hand, of course. Customers need not be un-informed on safety issues. There are many, many organizations that provide such information to consumers - think Consumer Reports, Ralph Nader and so on.
    - seabee 15y ago
      When you get to matters of safety you can either take an unforgiving, Darwinian view and stake people's survival on whether they read Consumer Reports that month, or you can take responsibility and be proactive about preventing theses dangers. The "pure free market" ideal of caveat emptor makes businesses sound an awful like muggers loitering in dark alleys waiting for victims; something you need to protect yourself from. Sure, in a perfectly rational market and with perfectly informed participants these dangers are known and avoided, but perfection is never achieved in reality. Government regulation and licensing, when done properly, papers over the irrationality and information asymmetry by making the decision of what a business can do. After all, would any rational person eat at a restaurant that gave you food poisoning more often than not? If the government didn't force its closure lack of business would, and with more sick people too.

fleitz 15y ago

Plaintext passwords solve the problem of being able to recover your password by email with out clicking some link bs. (Which are equally hackable with the crappy passwords that most people use.) Surprisingly, lots of people would prefer this to ultra secure one way hashes. The market provides what people want, not what makes them most 'secure'. If you don't like that forbes stores your password as plaintext you're free not to sign up. Also, you do use separate passwords for each site which completely nullifies the majority of the risk from such a system, correct? Or could it be that you chose the convenience of reusable passwords over security?

bluedanieru 15y ago
I do not reuse passwords site-to-site, however that nullifies almost none of the risk in storing passwords in plaintext over storing hashed passwords. Perhaps you can explain why you think that if you disagree. At any rate, that the market provides "what people want" (this is not always an uncontroversial statement) is precisely why airport security can not be deregulated. People tend to undervalue security until it's too late.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  People tend to undervalue security until it's too late. This seems unclear to me. Surely, in being disproportionaly exposed to failures of security, as opposed to people getting away with insecure practices or the inconvenience of good security procedures, security professionals are going to have a distorted view of the costs of security? People tend to be very bad at multiplying in the process of making moral judgements[1], and its very hard to give equal weight to the sum total of traveler inconvenience our airline security policies cause relative to the risk of terrorist attacks. And there's no reason to think that the TSA takes into account the >100 people killed each year by their policies [2]. If you think that airline passengers aren't going to allow another 9/11 that's probably more deaths right there than the TSA could plausibly claim to be preventing in terms of airline bombings. I don't think private airline security would be perfect and it probably would go a bit too far towards lax security, but it would almost certainly be much better than what we have right now. [1] As an example, people will pay almost as much money to save the lives of 10 starving orphans as they will to save 1 starving orphan. No, I didn't get that reversed, and if you've ever studied psychology you shouldn't find that too surprising. [2] http://aem.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/gb78/wp/JLE_6301.pdf http://aem.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/gb78/wp/JLE_6301.pdf http://ur.umich.edu/0405/Nov22_04/09.shtml http://ur.umich.edu/0405/Nov22_04/09.shtml http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/5288-tsa-freedom-grope-may-lead-to-highway-fatalities http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/... http://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/2010/11/24/do-the-tsa-new-ait-body-scanners-hurt-more-than-they-help/ http://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/2010/11/24/do-the-tsa-new... and relatedly http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-airport-x-ray-scanners-harmful http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-... and previous HN discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049894 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049894

yock 15y ago

Don't attribute to malace what can be attributed to ignorance. What's more likely? High profile private organizations thinly veil their shoddy secruity measures hoping to never be exposed, or high profile private organizations erroneously believe their systems to be robustly secure? I'll take the latter.

iwwr 15y ago

Airlines themselves may want to take over security, since the TSA is hurting air travel. As for the TSA itself, the organization is causing preventable deaths by deterring people from flying, making them use the much more dangerous roads.

djiddish98 15y ago

This was the exact sentence in the article when I stopped reading it seriously (despite earlier attempts by the author). "Competitive pressure" = bad PR when a plane crashes. And then, the company will just lie low and latch on to another airline. IE - ValuJet merging with AirTran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet The TSA should be an easy agency to write a scathing article about. This author came in with some preconceived notions about the wonders of the free market and just layered the TSA on top, with little effect.

bdunbar 15y ago

Seems to me competitive pressures would lead private firms to do exactly what the TSA is doing i.e. give the appearance of being serious about security. In the marketplace competitive pressure leads to better service, not worse. LASIK has gone from a novelty for the rich to a treatment everyone can afford, for example. Possibly counter examples exist, but I can't think of any offhand. Perhaps after I've had my morning coffee. The reason I would prefer a private company over government is that you have a choice with a private firm: don't like AA's service, think their security guys are fools? Fly with Southwest. Write a letter to AA. Become a shareholder and annoy the board with your opinions. So do something like this: require private security firms to meet standards X, Y, Z. Enforcement by government inspection. Bust a standard, loose your business license. This works in other areas - workplace safety, food inspection. Am I missing something?

seabee 15y ago
I think you're missing that enforcement by government inspection tends to go against the "unrestricted free market" ideal, that customers will vote with their feet and not patronize unsafe businesses. (In reality customers are never that well informed to make such a decision.)
- bdunbar 15y ago
  In theory an unrestricted free market is nice, in reality unworkable. The role of the State is provide ground rules and regulation of the market. A prudent State recognizes such a thing works best with a light hand, of course. Customers need not be un-informed on safety issues. There are many, many organizations that provide such information to consumers - think Consumer Reports, Ralph Nader and so on.
  - seabee 15y ago
    When you get to matters of safety you can either take an unforgiving, Darwinian view and stake people's survival on whether they read Consumer Reports that month, or you can take responsibility and be proactive about preventing theses dangers. The "pure free market" ideal of caveat emptor makes businesses sound an awful like muggers loitering in dark alleys waiting for victims; something you need to protect yourself from. Sure, in a perfectly rational market and with perfectly informed participants these dangers are known and avoided, but perfection is never achieved in reality. Government regulation and licensing, when done properly, papers over the irrationality and information asymmetry by making the decision of what a business can do. After all, would any rational person eat at a restaurant that gave you food poisoning more often than not? If the government didn't force its closure lack of business would, and with more sick people too.