8 ms·

Remember before 9/11 when airport security was sane? The biggest thing they kept drilling in was "don't leave your bags unattended," followed by "don't carry it

by dsl 13y ago

Remember before 9/11 when airport security was sane? The biggest thing they kept drilling in was "don't leave your bags unattended," followed by "don't carry items for persons unknown to you." Abstraction from consequences allowed for a large number of things to make it aboard planes. With minimal risk of getting caught, you could try once a week to put a bomb on a plane until you managed to succeed. Shipping containers are effectively the same threat. Due to the globalization and efficiency of trade, I can ship a box full of anything I want anywhere in the world, and the only way anyone will know the contents is if I declare it. Container cargo is how a ton of bad stuff gets into the country. Not just terrorist stuff, but drugs (and we aren't talking mexican skunk weed here), military grade arms, sex slaves, counterfeit nikes, etc. It is pretty much the wild west. Something should be done to verify and inspect cargo. A container full of 20 Filipino girls bound for massage parlors should be found and stopped. There is no realistic way of catching more than 1% of illicit shipments without serious investment or impacting the volume of trade that can take place. The best efforts than can be made, unfortunately, are by swinging the terrorism hammer to get dollars.

snitko 13y ago
How about you make things that are illegal - legal. Then you don't need to inspect anything. And for those things that are truly horrible - like sex slavery - stop fighting the symptom. Shipping companies are not the root cause of sex slavery. There is a demand for such things. Eliminate the demand and there will be no sex slaves.
- delta1 13y ago
  > Eliminate the demand And how exactly do you propose to do that?
  - quinnchr 13y ago
    Legalize and regulate prostitution, boom you've eliminated the market for sex slavery, and maybe you can provide a safe work environment for men and women who are going to be sex workers regardless of legality.
    - kalleboo 13y ago
      I'm not sure that works. Berry-picking is legal in scandinavia, but each summer people are still brought in by the truckload from eastern europe by scamsters and then forced to work off their debt.
      - quinnchr 13y ago
        And what's the legality of employing migrant workers?
        vidarh 13y ago
        It is generally legal, and welcomed for seasonal work in particular. Which makes it easy to avoid scrutiny for those who wants to exploit someone, as the visible part of their activity is entirely legal.
        quinnchr 13y ago
        I'll admit I don't know much (anything) about labor laws in Sweden. From what I've read legal migrant workers are afforded access to the welfare state and rights such as collective bargaining. Which is awesome, but what's the enforcement like for companies who hire undocumented workers? From what I've read so far enforcement seems to be aimed at deporting workers and not punishing the companies. Seems like a case for punishing the perpetrators and not the victims.
        runarb 13y ago
        As I understand it, because of the European Union’s rules about free movement of labor any EU citizen can work everywhere in the EU legally with very little paperwork. Legal migrants are given full access to the welfare state from their first hour of work. Most migrant workers are therefore from Eastern Europe, and can work there legally. I don't know about Sweden, but here in Norway enforcement is pretty strict. Industries that the government considers especially prone to illegal activities, like construction, are inspected regularly. There is also a system of forced tariff (minimum pay, requirement to pay extra for overtime, and other standards), and companies can be hold collective responsible for what their subcontractors does. Employers that don't follow the rules face large fines, confiscations and prison. Every worker has the right to collective bargaining. Illegal immigrants can of course be deported, but because there is no place to incarcerate them until they can be sent home, the government mainly focus on deporting criminals and thus with a known home address, not scooping up illegals where their may work. However we have a new government that may make changes to this now.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Last I checked, food was legal, and yet we have food inspectors (though hardly enough) to check for things like excess levels of e. coli and other charmers, horsemeat crossdressing as beef, melamine playing in dairy products, and the like. Simply legalizing something doesn't end the need for inspections. And there's still the matter of stuff you really don't want and cannot reasonably legalize (or expect legalization to magically make all problems go away) which will require inspection. You know, so that your now-legal melamine-tainted, e. coli infested, beef-that's-really-horsemeat isn't, say, someone's science-project hydrogen bomb or smallpox aerosol.
- DanBC 13y ago
  This is gently baffling. Very few people leave their home country with the intent of becoming a sex slave. They pay some money to leave their country and enter another. When they arrive they're told they still owe $X, and need to pay it off. One way to pay is to become a sex worker. Their legal documents are taken from them. They are told that the police will lock them in prison or deport them if they try to get help. Domestic sex workers rarely turn to sex work out of free choice. They've made bad decisions, and now they're addicted to drugs, or in deep debt, and sex work is the only way they can get money. The few people who enjoy sex work are not enough to satiate demand for sex workers, especially if it's legal. It's nice to think that a bit of sex work is one way that people could chose to put themselves through college and then move on to much better work, but unfortunately that's nothing like the truth of sex work.
  - xixi77 13y ago
    Their legal documents are taken from them. They are told that the police will lock them in prison or deport them if they try to get help. You are down to the very root of the problem here; the logical thing to do would be to make sure these threats are not credible, but it seems you are advocating exactly the opposite. Domestic sex workers rarely turn to sex work out of free choice. They've made bad decisions, and now they're addicted to drugs, or in deep debt, and sex work is the only way they can get money. There are many (most?) professions that people choose primarily because that is the best way for them to make money. Why take exception with sex work? The few people who enjoy sex work are not enough to satiate demand for sex workers, especially if it's legal. What does this even mean? Normally, demand and supply are made equal through price, and this is exactly how it happens in sex work, just as in any other. It's nice to think that a bit of sex work is one way that people could chose to put themselves through college and then move on to much better work, but unfortunately that's nothing like the truth of sex work. s/sex work/any other manual job/, and your statement would still stand true, except it often provides a much higher hourly rate for the worker, compared to most alternatives. Fundamentally, this is nothing but covert moralizing, implicitly arguing that if other people make choices that you personally consider repugnant, they are somehow objectively wrong and need to be re-educated to see the error of their ways.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Zigurd 13y ago
> The best efforts than can be made, unfortunately, are by swinging the terrorism hammer to get dollars. You seem to be making a virtue of terrorism pimping. One of the biggest problems we have is the oversized security state. You are advocating for more, achieved by the same means that got us to where we are.
- api 13y ago
  I'm on the fence about this issue. The problem is that this is often the only way to get a bureaucracy to do anything, ever. For example... I am skeptical of manmade global warming alarmism. Not that I don't think humans might be altering the climate, but I think it's probably low on the list of real environmental and ecological risks we face. Nevertheless I think it's good to "pimp" it. There are so many other reasons we need to move off fossil fuels sooner rather than later, anything that causes us to do this is almost by definition good.

by dsl 13y ago

snitko 13y ago

How about you make things that are illegal - legal. Then you don't need to inspect anything. And for those things that are truly horrible - like sex slavery - stop fighting the symptom. Shipping companies are not the root cause of sex slavery. There is a demand for such things. Eliminate the demand and there will be no sex slaves.

delta1 13y ago
> Eliminate the demand And how exactly do you propose to do that?
- quinnchr 13y ago
  Legalize and regulate prostitution, boom you've eliminated the market for sex slavery, and maybe you can provide a safe work environment for men and women who are going to be sex workers regardless of legality.
  - kalleboo 13y ago
    I'm not sure that works. Berry-picking is legal in scandinavia, but each summer people are still brought in by the truckload from eastern europe by scamsters and then forced to work off their debt.
    - quinnchr 13y ago
      And what's the legality of employing migrant workers?
      - vidarh 13y ago
        It is generally legal, and welcomed for seasonal work in particular. Which makes it easy to avoid scrutiny for those who wants to exploit someone, as the visible part of their activity is entirely legal.
        quinnchr 13y ago
        I'll admit I don't know much (anything) about labor laws in Sweden. From what I've read legal migrant workers are afforded access to the welfare state and rights such as collective bargaining. Which is awesome, but what's the enforcement like for companies who hire undocumented workers? From what I've read so far enforcement seems to be aimed at deporting workers and not punishing the companies. Seems like a case for punishing the perpetrators and not the victims.
        runarb 13y ago
        As I understand it, because of the European Union’s rules about free movement of labor any EU citizen can work everywhere in the EU legally with very little paperwork. Legal migrants are given full access to the welfare state from their first hour of work. Most migrant workers are therefore from Eastern Europe, and can work there legally. I don't know about Sweden, but here in Norway enforcement is pretty strict. Industries that the government considers especially prone to illegal activities, like construction, are inspected regularly. There is also a system of forced tariff (minimum pay, requirement to pay extra for overtime, and other standards), and companies can be hold collective responsible for what their subcontractors does. Employers that don't follow the rules face large fines, confiscations and prison. Every worker has the right to collective bargaining. Illegal immigrants can of course be deported, but because there is no place to incarcerate them until they can be sent home, the government mainly focus on deporting criminals and thus with a known home address, not scooping up illegals where their may work. However we have a new government that may make changes to this now.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Last I checked, food was legal, and yet we have food inspectors (though hardly enough) to check for things like excess levels of e. coli and other charmers, horsemeat crossdressing as beef, melamine playing in dairy products, and the like. Simply legalizing something doesn't end the need for inspections. And there's still the matter of stuff you really don't want and cannot reasonably legalize (or expect legalization to magically make all problems go away) which will require inspection. You know, so that your now-legal melamine-tainted, e. coli infested, beef-that's-really-horsemeat isn't, say, someone's science-project hydrogen bomb or smallpox aerosol.
DanBC 13y ago
This is gently baffling. Very few people leave their home country with the intent of becoming a sex slave. They pay some money to leave their country and enter another. When they arrive they're told they still owe $X, and need to pay it off. One way to pay is to become a sex worker. Their legal documents are taken from them. They are told that the police will lock them in prison or deport them if they try to get help. Domestic sex workers rarely turn to sex work out of free choice. They've made bad decisions, and now they're addicted to drugs, or in deep debt, and sex work is the only way they can get money. The few people who enjoy sex work are not enough to satiate demand for sex workers, especially if it's legal. It's nice to think that a bit of sex work is one way that people could chose to put themselves through college and then move on to much better work, but unfortunately that's nothing like the truth of sex work.
- xixi77 13y ago
  Their legal documents are taken from them. They are told that the police will lock them in prison or deport them if they try to get help. You are down to the very root of the problem here; the logical thing to do would be to make sure these threats are not credible, but it seems you are advocating exactly the opposite. Domestic sex workers rarely turn to sex work out of free choice. They've made bad decisions, and now they're addicted to drugs, or in deep debt, and sex work is the only way they can get money. There are many (most?) professions that people choose primarily because that is the best way for them to make money. Why take exception with sex work? The few people who enjoy sex work are not enough to satiate demand for sex workers, especially if it's legal. What does this even mean? Normally, demand and supply are made equal through price, and this is exactly how it happens in sex work, just as in any other. It's nice to think that a bit of sex work is one way that people could chose to put themselves through college and then move on to much better work, but unfortunately that's nothing like the truth of sex work. s/sex work/any other manual job/, and your statement would still stand true, except it often provides a much higher hourly rate for the worker, compared to most alternatives. Fundamentally, this is nothing but covert moralizing, implicitly arguing that if other people make choices that you personally consider repugnant, they are somehow objectively wrong and need to be re-educated to see the error of their ways.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Zigurd 13y ago

> The best efforts than can be made, unfortunately, are by swinging the terrorism hammer to get dollars. You seem to be making a virtue of terrorism pimping. One of the biggest problems we have is the oversized security state. You are advocating for more, achieved by the same means that got us to where we are.

api 13y ago
I'm on the fence about this issue. The problem is that this is often the only way to get a bureaucracy to do anything, ever. For example... I am skeptical of manmade global warming alarmism. Not that I don't think humans might be altering the climate, but I think it's probably low on the list of real environmental and ecological risks we face. Nevertheless I think it's good to "pimp" it. There are so many other reasons we need to move off fossil fuels sooner rather than later, anything that causes us to do this is almost by definition good.