Market Competition for Security Measures

[mmotyka at lsil.com]

You seem to have left out the fact that the single largest player in the
"market" today is the government. The security measures that are now in
place for air travel are IMHO an abuse by regulators that amounts to
using a private actor as a proxy for an illegal search : to whit names,
flight numbers and dates. Feinstein was on the news this morning talking
about using airlight flight manifests to develop databases for tracking
movements.

As far as I am concerned an airline ticket should be a bearer instrument
entitling the holder to passage. Their job is to get people from A to B.
I should be able to travel as Ben Franklin with an ID I printed myself
as long as the fare has been paid. The reasons for my travel, how and
when I paid for my ticket and the date of my return trip are irrelevant.
Had the cockpit doors been secure, the pilots able to watch CCTV of the
passenger areas, plainclothes police been aboard and the info gained
from Ramzi Yousef's PC captured in Manila been incorporated into hijack
training and protocols 911 would not have happened even if half of al
Quaeda had been flying United that day.

About the only implementation of a trust certificate that would be
acceptable is one that was issued after convincing the issuer that you
were a "good guy" and was tied to you by perhaps a biometric and a PIN
attribute but for which all connections to your identity were not
stored. IOW, "we don't know who you are but we believe the certificate
belongs to you, we trust the issuer and they trusted you so off you go
then."

I'm sure there are protocols for proving membership without betraying
identity.

I want a choice in whether I leave a record of my travels or not. For
estate reasons I may want to escrow my travel records for the duration
of the trip. Bottom line : I want more control, more freedom, not less.

Mike