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Airlines Ordered To Turn Over Passenger Data
interactive_civilian writes "Wired (among others) is reporting that the Transportation Safety Administration plans 'to order all 72 domestic airlines to turn over the passenger records -- which can include credit card numbers, phone numbers, addresses and health conditions -- in order to stress-test a centralized passenger screening system called "Secure Flight."' They are hoping to reduce the number of "false positives" in the no fly lists. If the information were to be made available, it would be interesting to see how many names that would not have been allowed to fly were allowed to."
Yeah I think it's justified. Better to give over a few details than to have your plane taken over by terrorists. Does anyone think their data is more important than their safety?
-Mike Whitehurst www.mike-whitehurst.co.uk
I, for one, value my privacy more than I value some percieved security. And you have to know that that is all this is, percieved security from a percieved threat...
stuff
From the very first rumors of "leaked" data to the bold and blunt official news that data has been requested/demanded... there is a definite program here.
As a personal rights advocate, all I ask for is transparency in the process. The Bush administration has been criticized for it's misleading statements regarding the purpose of it's initiatives... so Bush, just tell us what's going on so we know what to think about it...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I do. Quite frankly- there is no terrorist threat. It doesn't exist. And like our forefathers who founded this nation, I value my freedom over my life. I would rather take a 1/1,000,000,000 chance in dieing (and yes, it is that small. Thats the proportion of airline travelers who have died of terrorism idue to the flight. That may be overestimating) than give it up.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
When the allies were unable to attack the germans through convential means they used civilians in occupied europe to launch attacks. Freedom fighters or terrorists? Well they won and the germans lost so freedom fighters they are.
Certain groups feel that they have to wage a war against the goverments to achieve their objectives. This is nothing new and sometimes we are sympatetic and sometimes we are not.
There are however three problems in fighting them. The first is that the terrorists don't obey the same set of rules. Lets face it, baskenland/ireland/palestine terrorists could be easily wiped out if spain/england/israel just used the same methods but on a slightly larger scale. But that ain't allowed. Terrorists have no rules, those that fight them can't afford to have no rules.
Second is that crime may not pay but terrorism certainly does. Just check Arafat. The guy has become filthy rich. Some people here complain about how western goverments are only stuffing their own pockets yet the income of a blair or bush pales to the self enrichment that goes on in palestine.
Ireland has the same problem. On both sides the terrorists have established a very nice power base for themselves with criminals empires that may once have been put up to fund their activities but now give their controllers a very nice income.
But the final problem has become clear time and time again. It is easy to track the ringleaders but impossible to take them out without angering all the bleeding hard liberals. The recruits who commit the actual attacks are unknowns. Check the 9/11 attackers. Check the murderer of Theo van Gogh. Check the people who blow themselves up in Israel and Iraq.
But really check them. They are not just clean as in having no previous terrorist connections. They are clean in that they come from "good" backgrounds. Not the poor, family killed, religious lunatics that people like to imagine.
If anything they are poor little rich kids.
You can't track them. The ring leaders stay outside reach and keep themselves just low profile enough that you can't just send a commando team to kill them. The raw recruits are to clean to show up.
Sure there can be arrests and you can spend billions on tracking them all but the terrorists don't care. They have won. Every second we spend on chasing them they have won. Every second we are afraid they have won. We could arrest 99% of their people and if they only manage 1 feeble attack every few years they will still have won.
It is in many ways like the war of drugs. Unless you are willing to go the way of the soviet union or china then their is no way to fight drugs. Stalin was very succesfull at keeping all the populations in the USSR in line. Slaughter everyone. Dead people don't riot. Then again who needed terrorism in the USSR when the state was so ready to hand it out?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Does anyone think their data is more important than their safety?
yes.
Better to give over a few details than to have your plane taken over by terrorists.
Indeed. Please give me your data, and I will protect you. What you don't believe me, a perfect stranger? But you seemed to believe the TSA folks... Aaah, you were lulled by thier shiny badges... I get it, shiny things good.
The era of airliner hijackings is over. Before, everybody knew that if you just kept your head down and acted docile, you would live through a hijacking. You might be stuck on the plane for a while until things worked out, but your chances of survival were very good. Thus everybody stayed quiet and let the hijackers do what they want.
Now, everybody knows that if you don't do anything, you will die. People faced with certain death become very motivated. No hijacking will be able to take place now unless the hijackers have significant numbers compared to the passengers, are very well-armed, and are willing to kill most people on board. That simply isn't going to happen. My best way to stay safe on an airliner is to be on a plane filled with bad motherfuckers who won't be afraid to rush the terrorists when they try to take over. The TSA isn't trying to protect us from hijackings, they're simply trying to expand.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
But they are willing and able to do exactly that.. and it only takes one suitably equipped suicide terrorist to do the job.
Killing everybody onboard is not the realm of hijacking, so it's not part of the subject being discussed. There are many easier ways to kill everybody on board an airliner than getting a bunch of guys inside it with guns.
I don't think they are too concerned that passengers will get frisky and try to stop them.. they will kill any that bother them and then kill the rest after anyway.
That worked three times. The fourth time it mostly failed. (The airliner crashed, but the airliner's target wasn't hit.) The only reason it was "mostly" is because the passengers didn't find out that the calculus of hijacking has changed until the situation was controlled by the hijackers. Now people will make their move as soon as a hijacking attempt becomes apparent.
If they are able to get on the plane, then its all over no matter what.. best that can be hoped for is that less people are killed on the ground as well.
Do you really think that five guys armed with box cutters are going to be able to kill a plane full of people with nothing to lose? Or two guys armed with guns? It's not going to happen. Notice how many successful hijackings there have been in the last three years. Notice how every time somebody tries something weird, he's tackled by his compatriots and tied up. The hijackers will always be significantly outnumbered, and no weapon you can get through security with any degree of reliability will let you win against those odds, especially against people who are backed into a corner.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
but it bears repeating.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Ben Franklin
Limiting freedoms in grotesque ways like this harms America more than any terrorist action ever could. Further, it permits the terrorists to succeed in their mission by admitting that we are going to change the foundational elements of our society simply to accommodate their existence.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.