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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.
whether or not they asked for a meal without pork
So, being an vegetarian makes me a TERRORIST! Damn.
If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving definitely isn't for you.
Ok they agreed to give the information...
But where does this information come from?
Does the EU also invade passengers privacy?
Now, in order to reduce your threat level you'll have to choke down some pork before killing the INFIDELS!!! Just one more toll on the road to paradise...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I'm not sure that airlines serve meals with any sort of meat, nevermind pork!
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
There's a concept of personal privacy called a reasonable expectation of privacy. For instance, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy if you are in public, but you do if you are in your own home. I would say that putting your meal preference in Expedia precludes any reasonable expectation of privacy.
This sounds like the movie _Airplane_, in which the search was on for a passenger who could not only fly a plane and land it, but who also didn't have fish for dinner.
If only *this* were a movie, I might find it funny.
-- Rick
Not to be a nitpick, but I try to correct this whenever I see it--it's an "Arab descent." Arabic only means the language and has no relation to being an Arab (as MANY non-Arabs speak Arabic as their first language).
Why, so it can be in the same database that got hacked by anonymous crackers, to even the field between European and American credit card security!
Seriously though, I'm surprised European governments are allowing such infriction on the privacy of us, its citizens, and by a foreign government no less, who has no business whatsoever sticking its nose into my personal data.
If they want the information, they should go get it on their own soil. Demand all passengers landing in the US to disclose their credit card numbers, for example. That would lead to passenger uproar, you say? So where is the difference between candidly asking a passenger his credit card number, and sneakily procuring it from his airline company behind his back and without his explicit consent or even knowledge?
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
...and those who are moderating them up, nothing was said in the article about meal choice, and at least it seemed to me that the implication was that the credit card numbers just happen to be part of the record; they're not specifically being asked for. (Of course, I do wonder why they need the full record, and can't just extract the necessary information and leave the CC #'s and such out of it.)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Because it might allow them to link up other transactions made with aliases?
Sure, this can be seen as an invasion of privacy. While this is terrible and unfortunate, the fact of the matter is there currently exists some very terrible, murderous people in this world that are willing to do things that have never really been done before, in order to accomplish their task of murder.
I dislike the facts of this modern reality just as much as the next person. Unfortunately, there isn't much that the US Government can do to protect its citizens (which is a big component of government) and preserve the way life has been.
There simply is no other way to rectify this issue. Even if the US pulled out of the Middle East and swore off the oil habit and simply ceased dealing with that part of the world. The minds behind these murderous fundamentalists would not change. They would still plan their assaults and still carry out what they are able to carry out.
Living in this day and age is simple one of those most frustrating of times to live in.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
OK, I can understand the following:
Name
Airport of departure
Airport of destination
and that is IT. The government doesn't need my credit card nuber, and my meal preference is none of their damned business!
Besides, one doesn't have to request "no pork" to eat "no pork." I can just as easily get the meal with pork and not eat it, just the salad or crackers or whatever else I bring on board.
And yes, I agree that we are shooting ourselves in teh foot with all these knee-jerk reactions. At first I always said that this wasn't about being against Muslims/Islam, but our beloved executive branch is making that argument harder and harder every day.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
When will governments understand that Sept 11 was based on the premise of surprise. The nutters on the plane did not even have guns. They had little forks and knifes. They used the element of surprise to carry out their attack.
And when will governments realize that these terrorists DO NOT use technology. The problem is that when you use technology to figure out profiles, it assumes that others are using technology as well.
Of course the current administration cannot be blamed alone, the EU is going along lock stock and barrel.....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Passenger profiling helps terrorists and organized crime.
I swear, this country is tearing itself apart with self-induced paranoia.
You know I've been wondering about this, because that average person that I talk to is much more sane. Well, not as much as would be nice, but certainly not so bent on bombing and policing everything like Bush and the general media seem to be. The paranoia is being spread by from the top down, it certainly isn't grassroots. What bothers me is that so many people seem to just eat it up and don't pause to think about the reality of the situation for a minute.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Does this sort of thing drive the rest of you as nuts as it does me? I'm a 20 year old, white male, who happens to look "punk" (dyed hair, dark clothes, stuff like that). I cant go NEAR an airport, without being stopped by security about a dozen times. I'm always the one singled out to have his luggage checked, and I'm always the one inconvenienced.
I'm _NOT_ a terrorist. Is it just me, or have most airport security guards seen a few too many bad movies? Here's a tip for you guys: the terrorists will PROBABLY not be dressed or otherwise look anything other than ordinary. People who are going to do bad things generally try not to draw attention to themselves.
I think we could all save ourselves a lot of grief if airport security was given a vaguely realistic training session.
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)
Page
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
Last I heard, Pork was "the other white meat". It's beef that's considered RED MEAT. Beef is both Halal and Kosher and thousands of Texas cattlemen would string you up suggesting that god-fearing Americans choose Pork over Beef. You know what happened to Oprah...YOU'RE NEXT, YANKEE!
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
Did everyone forget that the terrorist paid everything with cash when attacked on 9/11? What good would have credit card information have done? They paid cash for flying school, cash for tickets, travel and accomendations. I would be more interest in flagging people who paid in cash.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
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
Second only to frisking little old ladies in bringing your security station up to the state of the art.
The idiotic thing is that I very much doubt Al Quaida will ever again try to use an Airplane as a bomb, or even hijack one. Why? The customers won't sit still for it any more. There have been a number of cases since 9-11 where would-be hijackings etc. have been stopped by the PASSENGERS. The equation is changed. The bottom line is that all the airline security garbage is nothing but a feel-good measure that does little or nothing about the fundamental problem - which is that you've got a lot of medium crazy people who want to kill Americans.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
But there's still another clue. Terrorists have to pray 5 times a day. And as long as nobody mods this up they'll never know that we're onto them.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
None of the posted links suggests that food profiling would be used. Also, the third link to the CAPPS II program is misleading because it hasn't been approved yet.
I am just curious is all. On my last trip home from England, British Airways mistakenly classified me as a vegitarian.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Part of the problem with doing that is that most of the airplane's fuel will be spent by the time they reach their destination. On 9/11 the terrorists picked the flights they did because they were all loaded with fuel, ready to goto the west coast. When they hit the WTC this fuel burned extremely hot and eventually caused the collapse due to heat damage.
Not that a crashing airplane with only a little fuel wouldn't be a problem, though...
Sanity is not statistical.
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
So, THAT's where those 8 million card numbers went!
...does not necessarily imply "journalism".
As a number of folks have mentioned, the article notes nothing about requesting pork. To enlighten our slashdot editors such that they might device not to embellish future stories, let me explain why.
Yes, muslims do not eat pork. And yes, anyone who is sufficiently religious to consider it a good idea to die in a suicide bombing for one's faith is very likely to be sufficiently religious not to eat pork.
That said, nobody cares about pork. There's two reasons. The first is false positives. While it takes a pretty screwed up fanatic to be a suicide bomber, there are many people who actually do follow the peaceful teachings of Islam who aren't screwed up but don't eat pork. [0] Couple that with the fact that Jews also eat no pork, and there's a haystack of people who don't eat pork. A religious extremist mad suicide bomber type would be one hell of a hard needle to find.
The other reason is that religious extremist mad suicide bombers are misguided, not stupid. If somebody knows that porkless meals are a red flag, he's not going to order a porkless meal. When the stewardess shows up, he's simply going to say, "no, thank you. I'm not really hungry today" or he'll hand it to the fifteen year old kid in the next row. If you're planning on going to meet Allah tomorrow, well, he's not going to mind if you're a little hungry when you get there. Besides, I'd bet a guy like Allah's got a heavenly catering service.
Since it doesn't take a hell of a lot of thought to realize that pork's irrelevant, it really makes one's position look weak when one has to make stuff up to bolster it. While journalists have been slanted since journalism began, please do realize that your point is driven home much better when you simply present the facts, and don't feel a need to make them up.
[0] Yes, I know. "Aren't screwed up but don't eat pork." Yes. Even bacon. It sounds insane, doesn't it? But I assure....
mmmmmm.... bacon....
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.
Many of us are getting tired of it as well.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
1) Should U.S. authorities make any attempt to identify potentially dangerous travellers before they enter the U.S.?
2) If so, should they check out every single person? If they are unable for some reason to check out every single person, how should they decide who to check out?
It seems to me that people want to bitch and complain about any attempt identify possible security problems before they occur. I'm curious if these are the same people who criticize the U.S. government for not stopping the 9/11 attacks which, just as a side note, were committed by men who probably would not have eating pork on the way over here.
I was going to leave it at that, but let me throw out an example of why this complaining pisses me off so much: suppose you administered a mail server and wanted to make sure that your machine was not used to send spam. You have noticed in the past a pattern in which accounts were opened with similar information and from a particular IP block, and then those accounts were used to send huge blocks of spam. If one day you see a few new accounts opened following this pattern, is it really that unreasonable to take a few simple steps to check and see if those people start sending spam? Maybe check the logs a few days later, or write a simple script that monitors their port 25 traffic? You haven't kicked them out, you haven't blocked their port; you really haven't done anything other than keep an eye out, based on a known pattern.
The bottom line is, this information is a STARTING POINT. No one is in trouble. No one is prevented from travelling. But you have to start somewhere. Unless, that is, you want to sit back, do nothing, and complain about everything done by those who are actually responsible.
Evil is the money of root.
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.
Comments are due by Monday (Feb. 24) on the Department of Transportation's proposal for a "system of records" tracking massive amounts of information about every air traveler. The proposal is extremely broad and vague, and they are requesting exempt from the requirements of the Privacy Act -- so you would not be allowed to see information is stored about you, or challenge correct incorrect information. Comments must be mailed (not faxed or e-mailed), so get them out quickly to ensure they arrive by Monday.
PrivacyActivism (http://www.privacyactivism.org) has a page (http://www.privacyactivism.org/Items/63) with more information and a sample comment letter.
I hope it is!
The data are supposed...
Thank you for being one of the very, very few people who realize that the word data is in fact plural! I am so tired of seeing "This data is..." and "the data shows..."
datum is singluar.
data is plural.
Data is a Soong-type android.
Thanks.
rooooar
This issue is tricky in respect to treating information as property and involvement of multi-national corporations. The arguments go beyond American constitutional law, specifically the expectation of privacy, into the sale and disclosure of information to third parties. With corporations and government agencies as intermediaries, it easily circumvents the issue of searches conducted without a warrant.
It gets muddy in that travel is not considered an inalienable right and therefore the information disclosure is a voluntary requisite for travel. I sometimes ask corporations for their privacy policies and it drives them insane when I ask them about how long my data will live in their database, if there is a procedure to request purging of such data, and how long my carbon copied forms are kept on record. A somewhat wishy-washy corporate stance regarding exchange of information can foil attempts at protecting database privacy. While it may be against the laws of one country (against the wishes of a corporation or second country) to disclose such information, given the fact that the database data may reside in multitude of countries where an agency is willing to disclose is either a benefit (for the government) or a problem for the privacy sensitive consumer. This problem extends to almost all things that live in a world of wide connectivity and needs to seriously be dealt with through international privacy law.
that Homeland Security Agency is at the present time not able to process the data that is provided... We have ~25 european airlines with each its proprietary system, that are not compatible to the systems that HSA is using...
Millions of records get lost for the moment, until the Windows NT/2000 server machines are able to cope with the data the Unix servers of the european airlines are bombarding them with...
Yeah, there are nasty people out there wanting to kill us.
But I find increased government power far more scary. Remember that more than 90% of all mass killings have been done by governments, including the US federal government.
If that gets out of hand, and anything that has unchecked power will abuse that power, we will long back to the rosy happy innocent days of only fearing a rag tag band of deranged lunatics.
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.
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.
But it's much more useful than that - if they're able to collect all that information, they can correlate it with people who give money to the Green Party or peace groups or environmental groups (some of whom are already on the TSA's not-allowed-to-fly lists because of their political incorrectness.) Also, the increased "information sharing" between the US civilian police agencies, spook agencies, and military, plus the redefinitions of lots of forms of vice as "national security" issues means that they can use those hotel bills from Humboldt County, California to decide to give your luggage a lot of extra attention when you're flying back from Amsterdam, or ask the Internal Revenue Service to check out your tax returns after that trip to Las Vegas just in case you might have been "money laundering" or passing some cash to that suspicious Penn fellow.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
May I please have a Congress without Pork?
--
Suppose I were a member of Congress, and suppose I were an idiot. But I repeat myself. - Mark Twain.
Every precaution against terrorism will strengthen censorship, totalitarism and the destruction of democracy. Every citizen should be fully conscious of this.
For the US, the only sensitive way to fight against terrorism is to force the government to implement a foreign policy which doesn't ask for trouble.
" 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: