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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?"
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.
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...
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.