Originally from Slashdot:

[...]

One side of the Atlantic implements an oppressive law, tax, or spy on your own citizens regime, and then the other side of the Atlantic says, see they did it and it was good so we shall do it too and we can do it even better. Repeat over and over and.... BAMMMM ..... you are living in Fascist world.

Both sides of the Atlantic are also passing these same obscene laws because the same multinationals are lobbying, bribing and pressuring politicians the world over to legislate their profitability.

At this point I mostly debate if I lived in a world dominated by Fascist governments or governments which are for all intents and purposes organized crime syndicates, I think a little of both. They are taking vast sums from ordinary people and transferring it to their rich friends and themselves. It boggles the mind that working people in the U.S. are taxed at least 25% income tax and 12.5% payroll taxes(counting the employer half) for 37.5% at a minimum. Billionaire hedge fund operators are taxed at 15%. These same hedge funds manager tax their own clients more than that, over 20% (2% management fees and 20% of profits).

I was watching Frontline on PBS last night on Brookseley Born [wikipedia.org]. A great story. During the Clinton administration she tried to use the authority she had at the obscure Commodities Futures Trading Commission to regulate derivatives. If she had succeeded she might well have prevented at least the AIG part of the recent financial crisis. Instead she was crushed by Alan Greenspan, Phil Graham, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers. Long Term Capital Management collapsed during this period trading derivatives, nearly sparking a major panic, proving Born right and they continued to crush her.

Alan Greenspan supposedly told Born that she was NOT suppose to pursue fraud in derivatives or commodities though it was explicitly in her agencies charter to do just that.

Bob Rubin went on to help lead Citigroup in to complete ruin and billions of tax payer bailouts.

Phil Graham's wife was on the board at Enron, he went to UBS where his Swiss bank ran tax shelters for thousands of wealthy Americans, and was a leading player in the collapse during which he called us all a bunch of whiners.

Larry Summers is now Obama's senior economic adviser.

All four of these people should be run out of every government position, boardroom or any other position of authority because they are a delightful mix of stupid and criminal. Its especially obscene for Larry Summers to be calling the shots on financial matters in the Obama administration. Paul Volcker might actually fix the bankster problem but he has been completely shut out by Summers and Geitner.

Q:  So now let’s cover the basics; how is the Foundation set up?

A:  Microsoft organized CodePlex under the non-profit laws of the State of Washington, which may be a good neutral choice, or may not.  Most attorneys (myself included) aren’t familiar with Washington law, so it’s hard to tell (I always use Delaware law when forming a new non-profit, since its laws are very flexible, and most attorneys have some familiarity with it).  Also, CodePlex has not been set up as a membership organization, which is very unusual for an organization operating in an area that usually relies on consensus in order to be credible.

Q:  Is that good or bad?

A:  In my view, it’s bad, because it means that the Board of Directors not only has complete control, but the Board is also self-perpetuating (i.e., the directors elect their own successors).  Moreover, there are no term limits on how long a Board member can serve.  In this kind of organization, the Board is not answerable to the participants, and the participants have no say or control at all over how the organization is managed or evolves.

Q:  But as long as the Board is balanced, shouldn’t that be OK?

[...]

In this case, individuals and companies that decide to participate in CodePlex won’t be able to vote for the directors at all.  At minimum, this means that CodePlex will have to work very hard to convince others that the Board really is balanced, and therefore will look out for the best interests of all stakeholders, and not just the company that is paying all of the bills.

Q:  Is there any way to tell from the documents how likely that will be?

A:  There’s one provision that particularly concerns me. Currently, the Board has six members, and the Bylaws provide that the successor board that will be appointed within 100 days will have only five members – that’s a very small board indeed.
[...]

Q:  Why do these templates matter?

A:  In two ways.  First, the CodePlex site says that the Foundation will be promoting their use throughout the industry.  Second, the site states that CodePlex is intended not only to develop and promulgate best practices, but to host open source projects as well.  Unless CodePlex is set up in a truly neutral fashion, that will lead many people to worry that Microsoft wants to create and legitimize “their” kind of development environment, where Microsoft can feel safe launching projects (all of the initial projects under consideration are Microsoft projects) under IPR rules, and under licenses, that fit their view of what open source should be all about.

Whether it likes it or not, Microsoft is likely to be held to a higher standard with CodePlex than another company might, due to it’s historical hostility to open source, and to it’s current mixed messaging on the same topic.  I expect that unless significant changes are made, many people will conclude that CodePlex is intended to become some sort of “alternative universe” of open source development, populated by Microsoft business partners, where only the more limited types of open source licenses are considered to be good options for developers to use.  Those licenses are fine for some purposes, but most developers – and even commercial companies - don’t choose them today.  If CodePlex flourishes under this type of regime, I won't be surprised if Microsoft (as would most other vendors in the same situation) begins to tell customers that this type of patent-friendly environment is what open source software is “really” all about.

When you combine this with the assertions at the CodePlex site that a primary goal is to get more software vendor employees participating in open source projects across the board, you can easily see why the community might fear that CodePlex has been formed in part to recruit legions of new project participants that will have a new and different agenda than the existing members of the already existing projects that they join.

Welcome to ConsortiumInfo.org
Wednesday, October 07 2009 @ 06:53 AM EDT

The CodePlex Foundation: First Impressions (and Recommendations)

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Monday, September 14 2009 @ 10:29 AM EDT

Contributed by: Andy Updegrove

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Well, it’s been a busy week in Lake Wobegon, hasn’t it?  First, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Microsoft had unwittingly sold 22 patents, not to the Allied Security Trust (which might have resold them to patent trolls), but to the Open Inventions Network.  A few days later, perhaps sooner than planned, Microsoft announced the formation of a new non-profit organization, the CodePlex Foundation, with the mission of “enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities.”

Not surprisingly, more articles were written about the apparent snookering of Microsoft by AST and OIN than about the new Foundation.   But while the tale of the 22 patents is now largely over, the CodePlex story is just beginning.  Microsoft says that its goal for the new Foundation is to create an open and neutral environment, and that the formation documents posted and governance structure described at the CodePlex Foundation site can provide a foundation for such an organization.  The CodePlex site also makes clear that the Bylaws you can find there are just a starter set, stating, “Our governance documents are deliberately sparse, because we expect them to change.”

That’s good to hear, because I’ve reviewed all of the material at the CodePlex site, and I think that quite a bit of the governance structure will need to change before CodePlex can expect to attract broad participation.

Over the past 22 years, I’ve helped structure scores of open, consensus based consortia and foundations, and represented over 100 in all (disclosure: they include the Linux Foundation; a full list can be found here).  In this blog entry, I’ll show where I think the legal and governance structure of CodePlex has wandered off the open path, and offer specific recommendations for how the structure could be changed to give people (other than Microsoft business partners) confidence that CodePlex will be an organization worth joining.

Since there’s a lot of ground to cover, to make it an easier read I’ll use the self-interview approach that I’ve picked up from Steve O’Grady over at RedMonk.

Q:  What’s the sixty thousand foot guidance on how to set up an organization that will inspire confidence that it’s safe to join?

A:  It’s all about three closely related factors: appearances, control mechanisms, and broad support.  What you want to do is to create a structure that you demonstrably _can’t_ control.  If you claim that you want the organization you launch to be neutral, and then people find “gotchas” in the documents, you’ve lost the credibility war on the first day of battle.

It also helps enormously to launch with multiple partners, rather than try to add them later after people are no longer paying attention.  You’ll never get more press than on the day you do your public launch, and if both competitors as well as allies are standing next to you on the stage as co-founders, that sends a powerful message that the organization really is not under any individual company's control.

For this reason, new organizations traditionally operate in stealth mode until they sign up an impressive roster of co-founders, so that people pay attention, and figure that there is broad industry support for what you want to accomplish.  If instead you’re out there all alone, then people wonder why that’s so.

In this case, Microsoft launched without any co-sponsors (it has been theorized by many that the launch date was accelerated to offset the adverse publicity generated by the disclosure of the sale of the 22 patents), which I think was a mistake.  If you go through the CodePlex site, you also learn that, while additional sponsors will be welcome, Microsoft has provided $1 million in funding for the first year’s operation.  Microsoft will also provide the staff that will run the organization.

While it’s good that Microsoft is willing to provide so much economic support in times like these, it’s not helpful in building trust that the organization really will be independent and neutral.  For better or worse, if all of the money and all of the staff come from one company, it will be hard for most folks to believe that CodePlex it will really be neutral in action.

Perhaps most significantly, when you go through the formation documents in greater detail, you also start running into “gotchas.”  Some of these can be easily changed, and perhaps were meant to be open for discussion.  But others (such as the decision not to form CodePlex as a membership organization) are so fundamental that I expect that Microsoft doesn’t intend for them to change.

The bottom line is that forming a successful consensus-based organizations is a bit like stepping through the looking glass – you win by giving things away, not by extracting value from others or controlling them.  You have to create a place where people can be expected to conclude that it's safer to be a part of the organization, than to stay outside.  Consequently, if it looks like you've kept too much control, the best you can hope for is to form a glorified user group.  I’ve written extensively on how to form an organization that is convincingly open, for example here and here.

Q:  So now let’s cover the basics; how is the Foundation set up?

A:  Microsoft organized CodePlex under the non-profit laws of the State of Washington, which may be a good neutral choice, or may not.  Most attorneys (myself included) aren’t familiar with Washington law, so it’s hard to tell (I always use Delaware law when forming a new non-profit, since its laws are very flexible, and most attorneys have some familiarity with it).  Also, CodePlex has not been set up as a membership organization, which is very unusual for an organization operating in an area that usually relies on consensus in order to be credible.

Q:  Is that good or bad?

A:  In my view, it’s bad, because it means that the Board of Directors not only has complete control, but the Board is also self-perpetuating (i.e., the directors elect their own successors).  Moreover, there are no term limits on how long a Board member can serve.  In this kind of organization, the Board is not answerable to the participants, and the participants have no say or control at all over how the organization is managed or evolves.

a) Someone might actually find it here. Yeah, I think you (the readers) are all in my head, but ok;

b) Personal archive.

So... Story at linuxfountadion.org

The details are that Microsoft assembled a package of patents “relating to open source” and put them up for sale to patent trolls. Microsoft thought they were selling them to AST, a group that buys patents, offers licenses to its members, and then resells the patents. AST calls this their “catch and release” policy. Microsoft would certainly have known that the likely buyer when AST resold their patents in a few months would be a patent troll that would use the patents to attack non-member Linux companies. Thus, by selling patents that target Linux, Microsoft could help generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux, without needing to attack the Linux community directly in their own name.

Microsoft has "changed". That one never gets old...

Red Hat had this to say, emphasis mine:

The Open Invention Network (OIN) learned recently that Microsoft was planning to auction off some of its software patents, which we understand it marketed to trolls and some other non-practicing entities. It also used marketing materials that highlighted offensive uses of the patents against open source software, including a number of the most popular open source packages.

This looked to us like a classic FUD effort. To unleash FUD, you assemble a lot of patents of uncertain value, annotate them with a roadmap for the companies and products to be targeted with the patents, put the lot in the hands of trolls schooled in patent aggression, and then stand back and wait for the FUD to spread with its chilling effect.

[...]

Over here (Uruguay), welfare hasn't gotten to the point where it can afford someone what you describe.

You know what happens? They do "work", in a sense, but not the kind of work we'd want them to have: families have chariots (litterally, with horses pulling them), and go scrounging around the trash cans. They are now supposedly authorized by the government (after some tense protests), there are an estimate of 50.000 of them (Image: http://www.180.com.uy/tmp/thumbs/a93c0188583eb74b25d3814529e88b28.jpg [180.com.uy] ), they live by classifying the refuse, trying to separate metals and cardboard and plastics.

And those are the ones that do work. There's also another kind, who send their children to board buses and ask for charity, or to ask for money at the street lights (basically every significant street light has its beggars). Children are beaten if they don't fill the "quota" set by their parents. And they do get enough money, more than what's usual for a day's works at minimum wage.

Other people "work" as "car minders" (?).. they stay at the block where you park, and ask for money in return for "caring" for your car (and god help you if you don't pay them..). Don't think that just by paying them they won't steal if they have the opportunity (I've personally seen the one in my block steal, and now I'm in a kind of cold war with him, and can't park in my block anymore), and they're no insurance against having your car stolen either.

In all, the "refuse classifiers" (the guys on chariots) at least try to do something. Though the municipal government complains that they make the trash cleaning job a lot worse, because they leave a mess behind after they go through the trash cans.

I don't know exactly how the social programs in the U.K. work, but I do know the ones in the U.S. are practically perfectly designed to make absolutely certain that once a person is in the system, they won't get back out. Just as soon as someone shows signs that they might get back on their feet they hit the program limits and end up worse off than when they were unemployed. To show the extent of the problem, just having $300 in the bank is enough to get services terminated, even if it was a one-off windfall or an attempt to save for a car so you can get work.

The people who get out are the ones who just had a spell of the worst sort of luck and were then able to resume working for considerably more than minimum wage. If you expect the worst of people, then punish them for doing anything but the worst, it's not hard to guess what will happen.

Put another way, how many people of ANY social class will be inclined to work more in order to have less? Or even to just stay where they are? I don't think very many would.

Meanwhile, many HR departments are not terribly interested in a 30 or 40 year old with a family applying for an entry level position. That is, a person who did exactly what society said they should and improved their education to get out of a dead end situation then finds that the window has closed.

It is too bad that magazines like Infoworld cannot (or do not) bring their old material into the World Wide Web. As the debacle unfurled, Infoworld sent an editor to interview the highest guy at Microsoft in charge of DOS. The interview went like this:

IW: "Lotus 1-2-3 is the most popular application running on PCs today. Your new version of DOS does not work with it. Didn't you do any testing?"

MS: "Yes of course we did testing."

IW: "What were the results of your tests?"

MS: "We knew there would be problems."

It was only afterward that the phrase "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run" was exposed.

In case you didn't live through this history (I did):

Microsoft was a partner in the L.I.M. specification that allowed programs to access extended memory. L.I.M. = Lotus, Intel, and Microsoft.

Microsoft changed Windows and (and through it their new spreadsheet product, Excel) to do LIM access on word boundaries instead of byte boundaries. Then they changed the LIM driver to only work on word boundaries, and to cause a fault in the programs that attempted access on byte boundaries. Super conveniently, they didn't bother to notify Lotus (or Intel) that they implemented a we-are-going-to-break-all-your-programs change to the L.I.M. spec.

They shipped DOS first, and apologized later. Except they didn't apologize. They ran advertisements picturing a jet fighter pilot crash helmet. "Crash proof. Doesn't it make sense to get your applications from the people who make your OS?"

More history: the first time you launched Lotus 1-2-3 in Windows with the new DOS, the dialog box said "This program has violated system integrity. You should reboot to ensure proper operation of the system. If it happens again, consult with your application vendor."

Clearly the blame was pointed at Lotus 1-2-3 by Microsoft in Windows. But what changed?

DOS was finally done when Lotus wouldn't run.

Infoworld also interviewed people at Lotus. Infoworld asked if Lotus was going to sue, and the Lotus person said no, for two reasons. One, that Lotus was still dependent on Microsoft and DOS (reading between the lines, it looked like they were saying they've sabotaged us once already, and could do it again). Two, the lawyers at Lotus asked the engineers about the change, and came to the conclusion that Microsoft would claim they made the change because "it is better". Word boundaries for memory access are easier than byte boundaries.

The evil here is that the change was made with malice aforethought toward Lotus, AND, the notification of the change was withheld from Lotus.

Lotus would probably have agreed that word boundaries were better. The crime was they were denied an opportunity to prepare for the change.

But proving to a judge (and this was before judges were at all tech-savvy) that Microsoft didn't innocently bungle a line of communication or two was not a case the Lotus lawyers thought they could win. The technical argument "it is better" would have to be offset by "no it's not. it is memory wasteful" which in the age of 2MB RAM machines meant something.

As for your claim that people wouldn't buy the new DOS - they didn't. Microsoft slip-streamed the new version of DOS to Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, et. al. They told HP (and everybody) "Here is a new version of DOS. Include it with your new machines instead of the old version of DOS." As the debacle unfurled, HP had to quick issue old versions of DOS to everyone that that got screwed. (I was one of those HP customers at the time).

I realize that you are probably a Microsoft shill that will always attempt to discredit the deliberate damage Microsoft inflicted on it's biggest competitor. Which is why I am going to call you out on it. If you don't want to be called a shill, then you need to not be a shill.

The truth is Microsoft changed DOS and knew it would completely screw over Lotus. They had tested it. They wrote a Windows error message to shift the blame to Lotus 1-2-3.

Frankly, it was a huge dis-service to the whole world that Lotus did not take Microsoft to court. Crime shouldn't pay.

All we can do now is remember that Microsoft cannot be trusted.

Shall I tell you about the FIVE different ways Microsoft wrote / altered programs to screw Novell? And then there is IBM and OS/2. Stac and DoubleSpace. Sun and Java. Netscape and Navigator. There is more....

Microsoft cannot be trusted.

Say it with me again: Microsoft cannot be trusted.

BBC:

Action to prevent an "illegal rave" in Devon last week has been defended by police, despite claims the event was merely an organised birthday barbecue.

[...]

Andrew Poole, who was celebrating his 30th birthday, claimed police riot vans turned up before any music was played.

But police said it had been advertised on the internet as an all-night party.

Mr Poole, a coach driver from Sowton, said 15 family and friends had come to the event, where they were watched by a police helicopter for about 15 minutes.

[...]

"The decision to close down a rave or illegal music festival is not taken lightly," a police spokeswoman said.

Yeah, I guess they just got bored of chasing witches terrorists, so they had to justify their paycheck. I wouldn't take my uselessness lightly either. Sure, unlicensed raves are actually illegal in the UK for a while, but that's hardly something the police should give a fuck about.

Then, there's also this, which I hadn't watched yet. Very very appaling.

The harassment and exclusion of legal observers, the violent arrest of women refusing to be searched, the aggressive interrogation of local residents, the threatening of journalists with arrest for doing their job, the confiscation of 100s of items such as childrens' costumes and crayons, attempted dawn raids on the camp, the use of batons and CS gas against peaceful protesters, and the forced search of 1000s of people and the adding of their personal data to a secret database. This type of political policing has to stop, and the right to legitimate protest re-established.

I will definitely be avoiding the UK the same way as I'll be avoiding Iran.

"Brown's picked up a short-term lift on account of how he does look good wearing a dark tie and a solemn expression whilst appearing to save the world from economic catastrophe."

He may or may not have saved the world from "economic catastrophe", that remains to be seen, but he most definitely did rush the world deeper in to state capitalism over night and without much beyond a whimper of dissent. State capitalism is also known as Fascism. Fascism and police states go hand in hand. The two events, the government seizing control of the financial system, and introducing ever greater surveillance are complimentary parts of the same agenda. All of the surveillance measures insures an orderly society, greater productivity, quells disruptive unrest and helps to enhance profitability. Seizing control of the financial system insures an orderly society, greater productivity, quells disruptive unrest and helps to enhance profitability.

Fascism became a dirty world during World War II but its making a comeback with a vengeance today, though most people are just afraid to call a spade a spade, making it so much easier for it to return to acendency since everyone is afraid to says its name, kind of like Voldemort in Harry Potter. It makes people feel better if they tell themselves they still live in free market Democracies. Just as 9/11 and the London and Madrid bombings were used to justify the police state, the financial crisis was used by ruthless politicians to justify a plunge in to state capitalism. Its kind of sad so much was expended in World War II to stop the tide of Fascism for it to just return through the back door 60 years later.

Its especially disturbing how its playing in the U.S. Goldman Sachs Trading Company and its "investment trusts", Shenandoah and Blue Ridge, were one of the original exercises in leverage in the U.S. financial system. Goldman Sachs created this highly leveraged scheme in 1928 during a bubble, right before the great crash. They sold them for $104 dollars a share, and they ended around a $1 a share. They were after that widely reviled to as a Ponzi Scheme shrouded in the legitimacy of Wall Street. Its somewhat ironic that with Goldman Sachs checkered history its CEO, Henry Paulson, was the point man in 2004 in successfully lobbying the SEC to lift leverage limits on the big Wall Street investment banks from 12-1 to 40-1 so they could once again create highly leveraged, Wall Street backed, Ponzi schemes. All the investment banks promptly ran their leverage up to 30-1 or more. It insured the investment banks would collapse at the slightest down turn. Leverage is hugely profitable in an up market because of the multiplier. But it works both ways and the slightest down turn, wipes out the leveraged company's capital reserves in a heart beat as it just did. It was entirely predictable leaving you to wonder either how could they be so incompetent, so ignorant of their own corprate history or what was the ulterior motive.

The crashing of the Ponzi scheme wasn't a problem since Henry Paulson had since become Treasure Secretary, and under the guise of a program that was supposed to buy distressed mortgage backed securities, and unfreeze the credit markets, instead he is handing the entire $250 billion first installment to Goldman Sachs and the rest of the over leveraged banks to undo a problem he while the whole world cheers the largest bank robbery in history. Are the banks going to loan out the money to unfreeze the credit markets... no. Are they going to help distressed home owners with it.... no. Does it get distressed assets off their books.... no. They are going to put it in their vaults to replace the capital that was wiped out due to excessive leverage and for them to draw their leverage back down to something like 15-1, where it was before Paulson's little scheme. He is using a quarter trillion in tax payer money to undo the damage he himself inflicted on the financial system. Only in America and only on Wall Street could a crime of this magnitude be perpetrated to the cheers of the press and policians, and with little more than a whimper from the people.

Another one of these high crimes originates in Robert Rubin another former Goldman Sachs leader. Rubin along with Greenspan championed complete deregulation of credit default swaps, a financial innovation Warren Buffet calls a financial "weapon of mass destruction". Swaps are basically insurance policies companies write to each other to promise to pay off debt if a company goes bankrupt, for which they get a fee, and which allows the buyer to increase their leverage. Probably an OK idea excepting since there is no regulation so there need be no reserves to back the insurance policy. Swaps quickly became another Ponzi schemes which generated huge profits and bonuses for the executives writing the swaps though they had no intent or ability to ever pay them off. They just had to hope no one ever defaulted on their debt and they could keep collecting their fees and putting them in their bonus checks. This scheme apparently reached a new height at AIG. There a small division of 300 people in a company of 100,000 employees raked in 3 billion in bonuses writing swaps, and brought down AIG when Lehman did in fact default on its debt. Once again Paulson just stepped in and pumped $120 billion and counting in to AIG to bail them out from a financial innovation that was destined to cause a collapse. A 1994 congressional budget office analysis of them said exactly that. Its quite likely that Paulson will have to pump tens of billions more in to AIG to pay off all the swaps that are coming due to keep it afloat.

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase.

How nice. It completly stops criminals. Unless they steal mobile phones or something.

AndGodSed reminds us:

The UK is a shining example of data getting lost.

How long before a terrorist hacker steals the info and spoofs a phonecall to a bomb that is detonated via cellphone?

Suddenly the possibilities of being wrongly implemented in a terrorist plot is so much more possible.

This is a bad idea all around.

I am glad that I do not live in the US or the UK - if my country implements this kind of policy I would start browsing using the TOR network, set up my own mailserver to do direct relay and eventually fall back on using older means of communication - snail mail and pretty much nothing else.

Who is it that said "As soon as we change our way of living the terrorists have won"?

I tell you now - terrorists are holding the citizens of the US and the UK captive via proxy, and the proxy is ironically the very governments they are battling.

They win on all fronts at this moment.

What Is TSA?
We are the Transportation Security Administration, formed immediately following the tragedies of Sept. 11.  Our agency is a component of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for security of the nation's transportation systems.

It is a company made of very friendly people. They help you when you have to much nice things when you travel by taking them away.

As a screener at Newark Liberty International Airport, Pythias Brown was supposed to keep deadly objects off airplanes. But for the past year, authorities allege, Brown has been swiping electronic equipment from luggage of the passengers he was supposed to protect.

A laptop here, a cell phone there. Within months, he had snatched more than 100 items, authorities say.

But this summer, Brown got too ambitious for his own good, allegedly stealing a $47,900 camera from an HBO crew and a camcorder from a CNN employee, authorities said.

Fuck with regular people is ok (ask Paulson), fucking rich people is not ok.

Uselding said the TSA worked closely with homeland security investigators to bring the charges against Brown. She also said that his crimes were rare and that less than 300 TSA employees have been terminated for theft.

"The actions of a few individuals in no way reflect on the outstanding job our more than 43,000 security officers do every day to ensure the security of the traveling public," she said.

Yeah, that makes it so unlikely to happen... (For those outside of the US, I have learned that Americans travel a lot, especially by plain.)

But, if you travel with a gun...

Well, no they can't [search your luggage away from you,] at least when traveling with a firearm. You get to have real locks, the bag(s) are inspected in front of you, and you lock 'em. They also can't label it as having a firearm in it, in plain English or in a code/symbol/special tag, other than the bag has been cleared.

And any firearm will do. For under $100, you can get the action (serial numbered part, the part BATFE says is the gun) for a single shot shotgun - you don't need to keep the stock, barrel, etc. attached. You can put it in a camera sized case, locked, and put that in your regular luggage, also locked with a proper lock. Check in, tell them you need to declare a firearm (helps to have your airlines policies printed out, as well as the FAA and BATFE regs), get it checked, adn life is good.

Best part is getting to watch the look on the luggage guys face if your stuff doesn't show up or has been opened. Amazing what the phrase "Will you call the BATFE, or do I need to?" will do.

Of course, this doesn't help with international travel, but for domestic it works like a champ.