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EU Agrees to Give Passenger Data to U.S.
de la mettrie writes "The EU Commission has agreed in principle to make airlines provide U.S. Homeland Security with detailed passenger data for flights to the USA. Things Uncle Sam would like to know about passengers include their itinerary, their credit card number and whether or not they asked for a meal without pork. The data are supposed to help prevent terror attacks and are to be 'handled appropriately'." The U.S. is collecting the data for a massive passenger database, intended to increase passenger profiling.
Ok they agreed to give the information...
But where does this information come from?
Does the EU also invade passengers privacy?
The way things are turning in the US now, becoming a police state, I have no interested in going there anymore. There are far more interesting places to go to in the rest of the world anyway..
Passenger profiling helps terrorists and organized crime.
Sometimes I wonder if this isnt all just an attempt to give peace of mind to people such as the yuppie group who live in America... As such, I question weather or not an inititive like this would actually have effect without causing descrimination (which America stereotypically as a whole is seems to be against). I'm a little more suspicious of giving them my credit card number then I am weather I like white meat.
On the other hand, does anyone know how Israel has delt with airports? I watched a documentary on PBS or TLC once about it and remember that their security is down right anal, yet they *seem* to have fewer problems. My suggestion would be to follow in those footsteps and avoid this hodgepodge attempt at false security. Granted, it probably wont happen due to increased delays and lack of convinience to the American traveler... bah
Speaking of security this came to mind again:
"Those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for safety, deserve NEITHER liberty nore safety..." Benjamin Franklin (quote taken from memory, not reference, probably worded differently)
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We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
This is an interesting data point to want to collect, but how much does it really mean? Both Islam & Judaism shun pork, but only the former are "known" to be the bomber type. And if someone was going to do something, couldn't they take the generic meal & not eat it? (I know that personally I wouldn't want to have my last meal be a tray of warmed over airline food -- yuck.) Or if they really want to avoid suspicions, just not eat the part they find offensive? That seems best for someone that assumes thie meal choice is going to raise suspicions & wants to keep a low profile.
It seems to me that the meal choice is something that a person who is up to something would either [a] be too preoccupied to worry about, or [b] would think of & take a non-obvious choice (like the default meal, or a vegetarian meal) in order to avoid suspicions. Either way, the "bad guys" aren't going to do the obvious thing, and you end up with a crude form of racial profiling for thousands of honest people. How is that helpful?
The George Buh [sick] security doctrine: grasp at enough straws & throw out enough civil liberties and maybe, just maybe, you can trick the public into believing that these policies are going to do a whit of good. Remarkably, it seems to be working, if only domestically...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
There is Japanese tale of 47 Samurai (http://www.jon-schmid.com/japan1/Sengakuji.htm) who dishonored themselves to avenge the death of their master. By drinking and whoring and partying they made the assassin (the neighboring warlord) believe they were no threat, and so they were able to walk right in and kill the guy. They, having avenged their master's death, had to kill themselves afterwards to undo the dishonor.. making them heroes... in a sense.
Could not a really devout terrorist do the same too? Ordering pork (its not like they need to actually eat it), appearing anything BUT a terrorist,so as to infiltrate these security methods and commit some act?
meh
Nothing has changed in the minds of our administrators and generals. They have always done this in the past. What has changed is that they need not apologize anymore. They can cut corners and costs. The information that they once had to collect covertly is now available on demand. So now that they demand information publicly, what new depths of covert intelligence is being collected? If this is what they get willingly, what are they taking under cover?
I see the fnords.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
Nowhere in the linked articles does it say anything about meal choices being monitored. What is the source for this, other than the word of the original e-mailer? Even if this is just a "News for Nerds" site, I'd appreciate some corroboration to back up a fairly outrageous claim. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof and an e-mail from Joe Anonymous doesn't cut it anymore. I don't expect the New York Times but sheeesh... (Of course, if the Feds are monitoring pig consumption, then I'd like to know. I need to cut back on the pork rinds anyway.)
Noticing that isn't useful -- anybody with recurring business in the same city and a more-or-less routine schedule is going to repeatedly fly on the same flight.
Start accepting that taking reasonable actions in collecting intelligence could help in preventing another terrorist attack.
This begs the question of what is "reasonable". Identifying passengers on an airplane and checking them against a watch list of people for whom grounds of suspicion have been established is reasonable. Poindexter's one-stop dossier project is not. Depending on the exact extent of the "passenger data" being provided by the EU, the step described in this story may or may not be reasonable.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The problem in this case is not with the fact that one's meal preference is public, the problem is that the US government potentially uses it to subject people to extra hassles at airports. That's discrimination. And, in fact, my "reasonable expectation" is that if I type my meal preference into Expedia, the flight crew knows it, and the guy sitting next to me on the plane knows it; nobody else has any justification to correlate what I eat with who I am.
It may be costly, it may be time consuming, but the only way a society that wants to be free and open can do passenger screening is by applying non-discrimination uniformly. And, yes, this means more luggage screening. But the alternative in which some people are waved through security because they are of the appropriate racial, ethnic, and religious background, and others are subjected to interrogations will tear a society apart. Do that for a few years, and you will be creating terrorists at home as second class citizens become more and more resentful.
Actually, I had a similar thought for a few years, just out of pessimism about life. As well funded as these terrorists are, they could just charter a plane, load it with explosives, and fly it into a building. Especially if they got a cargo plane, which are a lot cheaper than corporate jets, and hold five times more. Instant unstoppable bomb. As long as it followed normal flight lanes up until the last minute, no one would know. Then drop down to treetop level to avoid radar, and plow into whatever target they have in mind. Even if the military could shoot it down, the terror aspect of the act would be tremendous, as everyone would realize how easy it would be to do this.
I was thinking about this long before September 11, 2001. I was surprised it took so long for someone elso to think about it. And I'm surprised no one has used this variation in the last year.
The simple fact of the matter is that Osama Bin Laden has declared a Jihad against the United States and its interests. That man has a large following of fundamentalists that believe in his words and will stop at nothing to carry out this 'Holy War' against a people that generally enjoy a peaceful existence.
Granted, this was brought on by years upon years of terrible foreign policy and a reliance on oil products. If we could have sworn off oil decades ago, we likely wouldn't be experiencing the terrible reality that we are experiencing now.
When before in history has a group allying itself with no country just their religous beliefs gone to such lengths to murder and cause mass destruction?
Your statements make it seem as though you think it is alright that they committed those acts of murder. Furthermore, like its okay for a fundamentalist religous group to target and murder a nation of people simply because of the policies of a government body that most of those people disagree with.
All of this disagreeing, leading to mass murder crap is getting the human race nowhere. We all generally have the same needs. We all generally laugh the same, cry the same and bleed the same.
The wholesale slaughter of any people, regardless of the reasons, is never justified.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
True. Terrorism works best when you don't attack the same way twice, and Al Qaeda is a prime example of this. They never attack a similar target twice and don't use the same method of attack twice.
Instead of spending billions on securing something that just needed tweaking they should be spending the money identifying weaknesses as seen through the eyes of a terrorist.
The next attack probably won't be on American soil. The next attack won't be using a plane.
The IRA in Ireland used these methods for years. If you attack using a car bomb once, next time use a mortar. Time after that call in a bomb hoax - don't need to do anything, but everything gets closed down anyway. Time after that drop a bomb in a litter bin. Time after that use a sniper. Each time security gets changed they attacked a different way.
" to suggest that america has turned into the state depicted in "1984" is absolutely absurd and ignorant. y"
I guess your one of the lucky ones who isn't being held without bail with no charges brought against and at the same time is being denid of any basic legal rights. I suppose you don't know any librarians either?
Your the one who is ignorant about what is going on. Our forefathers would be storming Washington right now if they were alive and demanding these widespread abuses of power and denying of civil right cease.
The absolute best defence is randomness. There is no possible strategy that can defeat randomness.
By profiling people - in any way whatsover - all you are doing is telling a potential hijacker what not to do.
The 9/11 hijackers did a number of flights to determine what would trigger the "alarms" and what wouldn't. Exactly the same thing will happen here until we reach a point where the only people to set off a search alarm will be honest citizens. The real criminals will have made sure that they have faded perfectly into the background.
However, if you search people randomly then the criminal will never know if he can sneak past or not.
Ignorance is nothing to be jealous of.
The BBC website has an interesting poll of people's opinions about the Iraq situation. As expected, the public of Baghdad universally have a very warped view of the world. Something I found surprising was that even people in Beijing seem to be well informed about the issues involved and have opinions that have obviously been formed by evaluating for themselves what they are being told. What is really scary is when people come out with things like this:
As an American, I'm curious: Just what aspects of our society do you admire? Most opinions I hear are either very positive ('We are better then everyone else'; mostly from US citizens) or very negative ('They think their better then everybody else'; rest of world).
echo 'Header append X-HD-DVD "0x09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0"' >>
" All this personal information -- more than 30 data elements including every destination to which we travel, who we travel with, how we pay for the tickets (sometimes including credit card numbers), what contact numbers we provide, even any dietary preferences or health-related requirements we communicate to the airline -- will be available for an almost limitless range of governmental purposes under the broad information-sharing provisions of the Customs Act. ..."
" This is unprecedented. The Government of Canada has absolutely no business creating a massive database of personal information about all law-abiding Canadians that is collected without our consent from third parties, not to provide us with any service but simply to have it available to use against us if it ever becomes expedient to do so. Compiling dossiers on the private activities of all law-abiding citizens is the sort of thing the Stasi secret police used to do in the former East Germany. It has no place in a free and democratic society. ..."
" It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant disregard for the rights of Canadians. This database is legally wrong and morally wrong. If the Government can get away with systematically logging and analyzing all the foreign travel activities of every law-abiding citizen, then no other private activity will long be safe from being included in the same personal dossiers -- our shopping, our banking, our communications, our movements within the country. The "Big Brother" society will be irrevocably upon us. ..."
Unfortunately we in the US don't have anyone in a comparable position as this guy-- an ombudsman of privacy-- so its unlikely this proposal will be revamped to take privacy into consideration. I'd worry that complaining about it will get you on the list, and once there, you can't get off (or even correct data about yourself). Does this new system actually get us additional security for its great loss of privacy? Quoting once more: "...I have suggested that any [proposed new law] must meet a four-part test: