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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.
The Homeland Security push that Bush has instigated is really starting get a very Orwellian feel to it. I'm feel extremely sorry for the friends that I have who practice Islam or are of an Arabic descent.
-===- "Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserver neither" -===-
since I'm 100% vegetarian... meaning no pork meal for me... USA = u suk amerika
They're spending $billions on all these countermeasures to stop airline terrorists? They'll find some other way to attack. They probably planned on not using the airlines again if they had an idea for another attack.
The problem is that when you use technology to figure out profiles, it assumes that others are using technology as well.
What are you talking about? When I use technology to figure out the 'profile' of probable weather patterns, am I assuming that the weather is using technology as well? Am I not allowed to use gun "technology" to shoot someone with a knife?
There are patterns in many otherwise mundane details, analyizing those patterns has dick to do with the techological prowness of the details themselves. If that were the case, I couldn't do market studies of food buying patterns because a lot of the people who buy food don't use computers.
Only a person unversed in tactics, military history or serious common sense will confuse a lack of sophisticated weaponry with a lack of planning. There was a load of planning that went into these attacks, including training pilots, getting people into the country, setting time-tables. You make it sound like a group of people just randomly decided to jump up, weild some box cutters and ram airplanes into buildings on the spur of the moment. Surprise and planning, in the sense of a tactical operation, go together, you don't get suprise without careful planning and logisitcal moves.
And planning and logisitcal operations create patterns. Whether we are going to be able to see them in passenger manifests and information of that type is another matter, apparently someone thinks or hopes we are going to be able to. If this is an appropriate use of the information, I leave for others to debate.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.