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.

Comments

Question

[SavingPrivateNawak]

Ok they agreed to give the information...
But where does this information come from?
Does the EU also invade passengers privacy?

A warning about "profiling" ala the 47 Samurai

[bigattichouse]

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?

Slowly showing us their faces

[lateralus]

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.

it's not about privacy, it's about discrimination

[g4dget]

You are basically saying "If you parade your black skin around in public, you don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy, and people should be able to just discriminate against you."

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.

Why a retained database of travel violates rights

[geekotourist]

The commissioner's arguments in defense of privacy were written about Canada, but certainly apply here. Because he says it so well (emphasis mine):

" 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:

• It must be demonstrably necessary in order to meet some specific need.
• It must be demonstrably likely to be effective in achieving its intended purpose. In other words, it must be likely to actually make us significantly safer, not just make us feel safer.
• The intrusion on privacy must be proportional to the security benefit to be derived.
• And it must be demonstrable that no other, less privacy-intrusive, measure would suffice to achieve the same purpose..."