FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet

First time accepted submitter cathyreisenwitz writes "The New York Times' Bits blog has a great piece on the FAA's inconvenient, outdated and unhelpful rules regarding electronic devices on planes: 'Dealing with the F.A.A. on this topic is like arguing with a stubborn teenager. The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane's avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers.' The rules illustrate why we shouldn't let the government regulate the internet: Government regulations are nearly always outdated and too cautious."

Comments

Wow

[avandesande]

Imagine if the avionics industry wasn't regulated?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a retired military pilot currently employed in the military industrial complex. I call BS. All it requires is standards and a standards based certification process. You determine how much RFI the airplane can take (which I imagine is quite a bit considering it has to operate in close proximity to all kinds of high powered RF transmitters) and then you establish a standard that is some fraction of that (half/third). You then require certification as "FAA APPROVED". Manufacturers would be falling all over themselves to get certified and get the "FAA" sticker on the box. Throw your iPad in an anechoic chamber and figure out what the emissions are.

This ain't rocket science, however the FAA has the "You never know" safety mindset. The risk management decision for them is "does the benefit outweigh the risk? To the FAA, the benefit of allowing liberal use of electronics is zero, so unless the risk can also be proven to be zero, it is impossible to outweigh the risk (no matter how small). That type of thinking is often desirable in a high risk, high consequence business like aviation, however taken to extreme it drives out common sense and logical risk management.

Unhelpful article

[plover]

The blog uses a lot of charged words without saying anything of value. "Rules bad. Regulations bad. FAA dumb." And somehow this translates directly into "regulating the Internet is doomed to fail."

First, I completely disagree with the "FAA dumb" comment. The FAA may be cautious, yes, but their mandate is aircraft safety -- it's their job to be cautious. I don't disagree with the other sentiments, but there is no logical argument put forth that explains why the rules are bad, why the regulations fail, or why the approach taken by an agency whose job is human safety (and not human convenience) will somehow doom the internet.

Re:burden of proof goes the other way

[jbolden]

Liberty doesn't always come first. Liberty gets balanced all the time against other interests. There wouldn't be FAA regulation of what goes on between private ticket holders and private airlines at all if liberty always came first. They would just leave it up to the airlines. The airlines don't want that though, because they don't want ultimate responsibility they want shared responsibility.

The FAA is way too cautious about safety in a rational universe. But note that every time a plane goes down and few hundred people die it makes national news, often for several days. Which means the public weighs flight deaths much more heavily than deaths from heart attack or car accidents or poor nutrition. We live in a representative democracy and the FAA is irrational because the public is.

Re:burden of proof goes the other way

[Citizen of Earth]

That is not how it work is aviation. The rule is you have to prove it is not harmful.

It has been proven. Consider that 90% of flyers have a cell phone and 20% of them on every flight either forget to or refuse to turn off their transmission functions. (It's not like the stewards actually check this.) So, we have millions of experiments every year and not one single adverse effect. I doubt many other flight-safety regulations receive this level of testing.