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American Airlines Information Gathering
matt-fu writes "Cory Doctorow posted a story on boingboing.net this morning describing a recent hassle while flying American Airlines. It seems that since he was traveling from the UK to the US with a Canadian passport, he was actually asked to give out the names and addresses of everyone he would be staying with in the US! He has written an open letter to AA in response. Has anyone else had something like this happen to them?"
This is just another reason in a long list of why I should leave the U.S. and move somewhere more enlightened.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Is why myself and a lot of people in Europe are currently very reluctant to go to the US, be it for business or leisure, even with the favourable exchange rate...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I've flown to the US (from the UK) with several different airlines, and I have to say that American Airlines gave me far more hassle than the others. My favourite bit was when I was travelling with a friend, and they separated us when we checked in to ask us questions like how long we'd known each other, how we met, etc. What did they think I was likely to say? "Well, we met at a terrorists' convention in 1998..."?
I mean, if I fly to the US intending to wander round and find a hotel that looks nice to stay in, but don't know ahead of time where i will, in fact be staying, will I get detained at the airport?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I find that very hard to believe. I'm a Canadian and travel to the U.S. several times per year. It has never happened to me, and I've never heard of it happening to anyone that I know.
I do, however, have a weirder story. A friend of mine (also a Canadian citizen) attended a Muslim wedding in Canada. On his return to his residence in the USA, the border guard asked him about the Muslim wedding that he attended! My friend had not disclosed that information, but the border people new about it and questioned him on it.
Barry Sheen had the same issue with the pins in his legs. Even before the TSA era, he was still setting off metal detectors at airports. He used to have to carry his xrays with him when he was travelling.
... and Cory's being more of a dolt than I would have expected if he really thinks it was.
... after about 40 minutes of this, I insisted on seeing a supervisor, saying "Look, dammit, I'm an American citizen. I was born in the USA. My parents were born in the USA. Hell, I'm a quarter blood Choctaw Indian -- I'm a Native American native american!"
That being said, I had that experience entering the US from Canada on a US passport in about 1996. Missed my flight in Pearson airport (Toronto) while I was going through the interminable questions ---
Q. Where are you going?
A. North Carolina
Q. Why are you going there?
A. I live there.
Q. What do you plan to do there?
A. I'm a computer consultant.
Q. Do you have work when you arrive?
A. Yes. That's why I live there.
Q. How long do you plan to be in the US?
A. Until I leave again. I live there.
Q. Where do you plan to stay?
A. At my home. The one where it says "Home Address." In Durhan NC.
The demand that I speak with a supervisor broke the log jam; they let me through.
My grandfather, many years ago when I was eight or nine --- which is to say many years ago --- asked me this question: "Do you know why a dog will lie on a sunny porch licking his own balls?"
The answer, of course, is "because he can."
Yeah, but: normally, the information is collected by the customs officials of the country you're entering. Usually, the airlines gives you the customs forms near the end of the ride, so you don't waste a lot of time in the airport.
What Doctorow is describing is nothing like that: it sounds as if AA had a goon dressed as a security guard trying to collect marketing information. Since they were doing it in England, and not on U.S. Customs forms, it's pretty hard to believe that U.S. regulations had anything to do with it.
A set of regulations which is more likely to apply is the EU privacy and data retention regulations. If they get that info, they'd better be ready to account for it, as Doctorow points out in his letter. It would be funny to see AA get slapped around a little for lying. In fact, since it's AA, it would be funny to see them get slapped around for nothing at all.
See what I've been reading.
I wish I could find the specific show, but this is documented somewhere in the vast vault of kpftarchive.org. A woman and animal rights activist I know fairly well was stopped in the Houston, Texas airport after returning from overseas with her parents. She was seperated from her parents by armed guards, held for hours, and had to wait for the local FBI / sheriff person to show up. Turns out this person has been attending demonstrations undercover for years. The key detail is that this woman, and everyone else in the Houston animal rights community, is strictly dedicated to non-violence and legal, peaceful, non-sidewalk blocking demonstrations. She's specifically taken on some powerful scum, such as Charles Hurwitz. The FBI agent vaguely threatened her, and mentioned details that according to the woman in question could only have been gained by listening to her private telephone calls. Then, the tactics changed, and the agent began to offer her college tuition or even cash for turning informant (not withstanding the fact that there is actually nothing for her to inform about). She declined. Finally, several hours later she was released. She had committed no crime, was not involved in the investigation of any crime, and was never given good reason as to why she had been held. It seems that just mere connection with a peaceful, unpopular cause is enough to be threatened. In fact, an agent (possibly the same one) once told me that 'you'd be surprised what you can do to someone without ever pressing charges' - a clear threat. She bravely went on the radio the next day to tell everyone what had happened. I imagine most people just keep quiet.
Difference is that this isn't the incoming country collecting the information at customs, but the AA people at the departure country.
Your destination country has the right to refuse you a visa if you don't give them the information they request, but they also probably have privacy laws saying that they won't be selling said information. He asked what AA's data-retention policy was and whose policy it was to collect this information (TSA or AA) and they couldn't answer him sufficiently.
His letter asks AA for the information he's entilted to under UK law: the company's data-retention policies on this information.
On another note, I've found that it's completely normal for airline agents to tell you that anything the company has told them to do is a federal policy, whether it actually is or not. For instance, bags can't be checked through from Love Field in Dallas to airports in non-adjacent states due to a local law meant to send out-of-state traffic through DFW, but if you ask the airline agents they'll adamantly claim it's FAA policy.
Ah, diabetes and airlines after 9/11. Such fun! ;)
;)
I have two stories here.
The first one was when I was checking in for a flight. Diabetic needleheads in my bag (these are sealed thumb-sized packages that you fit onto the end of an insulin pen). The attendant asked, probably for the umpteenth hundredth time, the boilerplate question "Do you have any sharp metal objects, etc, etc?". My nonchalant answer was "yes". After getting a few hundred "no"'s in a row, followed by my calm response of "yes", the look on her face was priceless. After leaving her in a state of confusion for a few moments I explained to her that I was diabetic, what they were for, and gave her a doctors letter confirming it. She seemed strangely relieved.
The not-so-happy second story was on a domestic return trip back home to Adelaide (Australia). After having traveled to a different state, on the way back the jerkoff checking my stuff (which I politely and properly declared), obviously looking for a power trip decided to give me a hard time for having too many needleheads (I had three). Never mind I can't eat food without getting sick without insulin. Sometimes needleheads break and warp, especially when you are trying to jab yourself with a pen between two other passengers on a cramped airline seat. I had a letter from my GP explaining I was diabetic, a medic-alert bracelet, etc, anticipating the whole post-9/11 paranoia. And I wanted to get home. I'm hoping karma comes back and bites that jerk in the ass.
I can't imagine what it would be like with an insulin pump. I put off looking into one for a while because I made too many flights post-9/11 and didn't want someone trying to yank the thing...
This technique is used very effectively by Israeli security officers to flush out security risks - but they receive special training in interrogation technique, and they're not so much comparing your answers as observing you carefully. This technique can be very effective if applied selectively by people who are properly trained and experienced - much more effective than document checks, routine questions, and luggage searches. How many terrorist hijackings and bombings have there been on prime target El Al Airlines in the last 30 years?
Out of all the places I've travelled, including Europe, Africa, South/Central America (w/Cuba), I've never had as much trouble as Canada. I was born and raised in Canada, and have a valid passport. Doesn't seem to matter. I have dual citizenship with the US, and when I go to the States, it's always "Welcome home!" Canada, it's more like "Where are you going? Where do you live? What do you do? How long have you been doing that?" I get red-lined every fucking time.
Haida Manga
The problem comes when they compare the pax list with their databases. In the US even US citizens don't have the right to correct their data, and the FBI has no obligation to ensure their data about you is correct. Already we've seen how good the TSA's system is, putting every Carlos Garcia, John Lewis and David Nelson on theirs Watch-List as it, doing repeated time-consuming checks on all 10 thousand of them each time they fly rather than doing the actual random checks that keep us safer. And now their database is going to have this data for all travel and travelers around the world (because the gov'ts share this info). They'll be so swamped by the millions of false positives that it'll be far more likely that the extraordinarily rare false negative won't be noticed. Makes me feel safer already: cue theme music to Brazil.
Again the "Its a Warning not a Guidebook" Best Essay Ever...on privacy: "The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.
"[Example of typical gov't database, filled with errors] That was only a research database, so its inaccuracies probably would have remained relatively benign even if it had not been dismantled.
"But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences.
"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm."
Two attacks. Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, remember? Fertilizer bomb.
Funny how no U.S. rightist militias were rounded up and sent to "processing" in Cuba for the rest of their lives, just-in-case and to keep-us-safe. No roundups of crew-cut guvmint haters. No searches of all pickup trucks and rental vans until the end of time. No permanent military surveillance of interstate rest stops, which is where McVeigh practically lived. No color coded "alerts". Could it be that they vote? That they're white? Could it be that all this "security" would have been as nonsensical then as it is now? Is it because Americans really, really think they are Christ's army in the war against a false god, or at least against dark people far away, and no torture, no suspension of the constitution is too much if we kill some more?
Sigh. Try finding the BBC Documentary "The Power of Nightmare". Lokitorrent has it at the moment. I've come to agree with the premise: there really was no such organization as "Al Qaeda", that it was the construction of a prosecutor that Bush used as a blueprint, that the attack was the last gasp of a desperate and failing jihadist movement, and that we have been taken to a near-dictatorship on nothing but the power to create a constant state of fear by extremely ruthless and self-deluded men who've methodically eliminated all contention of their assertions in the military, the intelligence community and the media. Even to question the simplest of their premises gets you branded a loon. We need to wake up. But I don't see how. Malignant egophrenia, aka "mad emperor's disease", has taken complete hold of the U.S. We've gone nuts, and we're taking everyone down with us.
Heh, I'd forgotten the exact zipcode. Nods to Jake and Elwood, and my favorite ball team, I've given it out a few times myself. Rates right up there with 567-68-0515 (Nixon's social security number).
Incidentally, *years* ago, an older cousin of mine was drafted for Viet Nam. At his induction (or whatever they call it) he wrote in the address of his favorite bar. Defends himself now by saying 'well, I didn't have a permanent address and I pretty much lived there...' Due to his lingering hangover or whatever, he promptly forgot having done so.
Several years go by. And he's become expert in half a dozen asian languages and is just beginning work as a translator and cultural analyst for the military or CIA or whatever. One day, he's called in for a review of his TS clearance application, but in an odd location that he wasn't familiar with.
He gets there, and is wordlessly escorted into a white interogation chamber, complete with 2-way mirror. Where he sits. Alone. Checks door, it's locked. An hour of waiting, and someone opens the door. In walks a guy wearing the proverbial black suit and mirrored sunglasses. Guy sits. Places a couple folders on the table. Pulls out his application. Asks him to review it and confirm all the facts. He does. Then the guy pulls out the other form: a copy of his induction paperwork, address circled in red. Yeah... 1060 W. Addison (well, for us, it's 626 Lewis St.). Guy points to it. Asks, please explain this.
A blank stare as he digs back into his past, a vague recall, and a hurried 'that was something of a joke, since I didn't have a more permanent address' gets a long pause. Sunglasses come off. Guy's definitely not amused, and asks him asked "Are there any other *jokes* you'd like to come clean about?"
A career later, retired, he usually mutters: ya know, that should have been my first clue that I needed to get the hell outa there... Don't bother keeping your nose clean. You'll be happier if you just know when to blow.
I can relate. I have over a kg of chrome, steel and vanadium in my left femur. All hardware leftover after a serious inline-skating commuting accident 8 years ago. I set off the metal detectors if I have so much as a dime in my pocket near the leg. I'd say that 4 in 5 times I get a serious secondary inspection.
With that in mind, I will simply state that there is no benefit to having a card, X-ray, or note from a physician. If there was, a bad guy would simple get a note too. I don't have to travel with my X-rays, but I do require a pat-down and manual inspection. Depending on the screener, I have even had to show the scars. (Running knee to waist).
As for having your own X-rays, most surgeons and physicians are more than happy to make a copy for a fee, assuming that you are making it clear that you just want a copy for your own personal curiosity. If they suspect that you have an adversarial relationship or may seek an opinion or damages from them, don't be surprised if they do not permit you to have a copy. Relationship management is key here; if you're a gruff cookie you aren't going to get as far as someone who has a genuine rapport with the attending physicion.
Now days, it's even easier. My orthopaedic surgeon offered to e-mail me my latest images, no hassles at all since they were digital from the start.