Why are people randomly picked to go through the scanner? Wouldn't something more comprehensive be a lot more effective?
Boil the frog slowly.
The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#32This is one of the first times I've ever flagged an article. This is definitely NOT hacker news: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I do sympathise but On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. There is no doubt that people find this relevant and interesting. It'll pass.
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.
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#33Maybe 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."
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#34This is one of the first times I've ever flagged an article. This is definitely NOT hacker news: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I do sympathise but On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. There is no doubt that people find this relevant and interesting. It'll pass.
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.
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#35This "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.
Where would that "saner content" be?
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#36Maybe 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 confu…
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.
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#37Maybe 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 confu…
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…
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.
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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 m…
"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.
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 m…
"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…
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.
Re: The guy who ordered the body scanners now works for the company that makes them
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
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.
The guy that replaces him is instantly more knowledgeable about that subject because they where now deciding most of the edge cases.