Slashdot Mirror
EU Court Blocks Passenger Data Deal with U.S.
Reinier writes "The BBC reports that the European Court of Justice has ruled the airline data agreement with the United States is illegal. The 'agreement' required airlines to share 34 items of personal data of their passengers with American authorities at least fifteen minutes before take-off of any flight to the US. The Court of Justice examined the agreement after the European Parliament objected. A PDF of the ruling is available online."
For example: "Must have pasta." ... muhahah.
Article 25 of the EU Directive can be found on a number of sites and states that non-member countries may be provided with member data in the case of need. It's quite vague (standard law-talkin' guys strategy) so I could see it being read either way--entirely open ended!
My work here is dung.
If there's a mandate that all the data be erased upon takeoff and no permanent copy is made, it'd be SLIGHTLY more reasonable.
This is what courts standing up for individual privacy rights look like.
Note how the US played the "Terrorism" card, and the courts didn't immediately fold.
You may wish to send this news item to your Attorney General.
Or you may wish to remain asleep.
Whatevers good with you.
I bet THAT makes the UK jealous.
The article appeared on the front page before users were able to post comments.
That'll help all those EU-citizens a lot, that had their data sent to the USA in the past two years to be stored for the rest of eternity is all kind of dubious databases in the USA.
But better late than never. I always though the implementation of the treaty should have been postponed until this ruling.
From TFA, it seems the issue was more that the US doesn't guarantee sufficient protection of passanger data. Given that this data includes things like CC numbers and identifying information, I could see the concern.
Which raises the question as to what specifically the EU courts find lacking in US data security. Perhaps there are too few checks and balances with regard to who gets access to passenger data?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
On the otherhand, it's good to see that the EU is flexing some muscle. Bush I believe will say..."they have some backbone..."
Does anyone think that US will start banning flights or threaten to remove financial aid if the data isn't shared? Would a European country give in to the US or obey the court ruling?
I think this is going to be a sticky mess since the rule of law isn't being respected in the US now and US attitudes towards foreign courts has always been "screw you, mate!"
Hell, this could open the floodgates for any kind of crazed nut-case.
"If we don't supply the information to the United States authorities then we're liable to fines of up to $6,000 per passenger and the loss of landing rights," he said.
"And if we do supply the data, potentially we're breaking the law [on data protection]."
So what are their options? Are the airlines going to have to completely suspend flights to the United States if neither side backs down?
(Not that this possibility isn't intriguing, but I certainly wouldn't want to have to be a manager in one the major European carriers for the next few months).
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
...and the French happier than ever!
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Could the US simply refuse visas to anybody who will not provide them that information?
And could they turn away a plane carrying somebody without a visa?
In general EU citizens get their visas in customs, after having landed in the US, and US citizens get the same treatment in the EU. That's always struck me as odd, actually; what if they refuse you a visa? You've flown all that way for nothing?
I wonder if they need to move the visa procedures back closer to the country of origin. That would probably be a massive regulatory hassle. And it would sure make relations between the US and the EU seem chillier.
Basically, the main problem of the database-war between the USA and the EU is, that the EU guarantee to its citizens certain rights concerning their data, like not having it transferred to third parties, the right to review the data about oneself and some limited rights to have the data erased. To prevent clever corporations to circumvent those regulations by shipping the data outside the EU, there's a directive that personal data can only be shipped to countries, that have similar data-protection rights (so called safe havens). As you can imagine, the USA isn't really too interested in giving its own citizens data protection rights from corporations and the gouvernement and even less on granting those rights to foreigners. Thus, no data transfer of personal data of EU-citizens to the USA.
The UK still has it better; the French have to cross water to get to the UK, but you can walk here from Quebec. They're building the fence along the wrong border.
Nice to know that at least in Europe, they have high court judges to whom referring as "Justice" isn't a laughable irony, unlike in the U.S.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
At least all the relatives still acted surprised when we told them the name.
How to stamp out international tourism in 1 easy step.
What the USA is asking won't stop terrorists from getting on board planes. Not for a second. All it has the potential to do is flag innocent people.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You must be new here. :)
How on Earth those items are obtained by airlines in the first place?
Let us count: SSN, names(3), credit card parameters: (number, expiration, zip code, ok give it 5), altogether hardly more than 20 even if I missed something.
What are those 34 items?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Basically, the main problem of the database-war between the USA and the EU is, that the EU guarantee to its citizens certain rights concerning their data, like not having it transferred to third parties, the right to review the data about oneself and some limited rights to have the data erased. To prevent clever corporations to circumvent those regulations by shipping the data outside the EU, there's a directive that personal data can only be shipped to countries, that have similar data-protection rights (so called safe havens). As you can imagine, the USA isn't really too interested in giving its own citizens data protection rights from corporations and the gouvernement and even less on granting those rights to foreigners. Thus, no data transfer of personal data of EU-citizens to the USA.
You are touching on a fundamental difference in the way the EU and the US deal with data. The EU, by and large, trusts their governments to deal with privacy and controlling it. The US, by and large, trusts the private sector. Europe let's their government track their liscense plates, give them national id cards, etc, etc. In the US, we'd rather give our personal information to 1000 companies individually than give it once to the government.. because we don't trust our government.
As an American, it's incredible, to me, what the UK will not allow private companies to do, but will allow the government to do. There are certain types of data that stores are not allowed to record, but instead, it must be sent to the police station to be stored. That concept, as an American, is so offensive to me. That means all the stores are collecting information on their customers, and sending it to the police station to be kept in a central database... Unfortunately, this is slashdot, so the "US=bad" groupthink generally overlooks the fact that European governments (on average) keep and track their population FAR more than the US. Most of the Euros in this thread are so worried about America's prying eyes, but they'll happily travel to the UK or Spain... two of the worst nations in the free world as far as spying on their own people. However, sanctimous self-righteousness is a topic for a different discussion.
The moral of the story is you need to choose your poison. Either the evil corporations have access to your info, or the government does.
When purchasing an advance (ha ha) ticket for a not-yet-born person the airlines are perfectly capable (I know several people who've gone through this within the last 12 months) of making the reservation for an un-named infant as long as you supply the real name before boarding.
Since you already knew what you were going to name the child you had an extra option, but there are still plenty of mothers out there who don't know ahead of time what they're going to name the baby or sometimes even what gender it will be (suppose your ultrasound had been wrong about gender?)
If the travel agent tried to tell you that you had no other choice when you didn't want to disclose the intended name, then I'm sorry you let yourself be bullied.
I hope the US takes aware their landing rights and restricts access. We have enough crazy foreigners here all ready. And any US citizens who don't like it can move to France. You will love it there.
Phhhhht...
Having worked in the US intel community long ago, I know how parochial all those agencies are. I'd say the international CAPPS program is dead. Maybe it's for good, maybe not.
I'd imagine the US Dept of State may react next (no more instant visas), and that's what I'm afraid of.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"The French backed down from sane free-market reforms in order to improve their high unemployment rate. They backed down due to the protests. No backbone there either."
ZOMG, an elected government listened to unhappy voters!
Let me see if I understand.
Sharing info BAD.
Logging all internet traffic(EU data retention acts) GOOD.
Huh?
His very high user ID is actually lower than your 900K+ user ID.
n00b.
Interested: what financial aid is USA currently giving the EU? .. or does the parent mean trade deals?
Probably a compromise will happen, USA will promise not to sell on the data and keep it really secure, honest guv. I thought we were about to have a trade war anyway about Boeing / Airbus, what happened to that one?
I think you're very badly misinformed here. In the EU and affiliated countries a store (or any other business) may only collect data, which is directly related to the business transaction with the customer and they are prohibited to share such data.
As a matter of fact (depending on the country) not even the various government agencies are permitted to share personal data with anyone. This includes the government
For example: The police is not allowed to tap into the database of the unemployment agency. You seem to have fallen for some bad libertarian propaganda, here.
Personally I find it offensive that the government should be allowed to sell my personal data to any two bit shyster coming along, waving his checkbook.
Also look where this leads: Identity theft seems to be by far less common in European countries.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
But you do realize that none of the security measure put into place at airports have anything to do with catching or detering terrorists?
They were put into place to make people *feel* safer flying. Think about what that means for a moment.
Essentially, all of these rules were put into place to convince people it was safe to fly again, since people were freaked out after 9/11 and wouldn't fly. Please try to think for yourself, as Bush is too stupid to know what to do, and Chaney et al is too corrupt to care.
These rights are more to prevent the gouvernement to sell this data to the next direct marketeer
Those rights are also there to prevent the government from abusing your data. Just look at Italy over the last few years to see what kind of potential for abuse there exists.
First of all, which financial aid do you think the US of A is giving to europe right now ? you`re talking about a confederation which has quite a few permanent members in the G8, the group of the 8 largest and richest states.
:-) or such... and I expect quite some americans to fall
even though small on the map, it is an even match for the US.
Just because people in the US of A do not know foreign politics and economics is no reason to ass-ume that europe is some kind of developing country. after all, a european company owns chrysler, more than half of all cellphone companies (nokia, siemens, the ericsson in sony-ericsson) come from there, and for the sake of statistics, its the third largest arms exporter after the US of A and the former Soviet states.
If the US blocks flights from europe, the reverse is also possible, dealing a major blow to international flights, given that london heathrow and frankfurt and paris are among the worlds 10 premier airports (frankfurt is one of the top freight exchanges and passenger exchanges).
This would also be a major blow for airline industry on both sides of the pond, with european airlines better positioned then the US airlines (lufthansa could e.g. use other airlines of the five-star-alliance to legally correct circumvent this, other european lines have similar agreements).
Since european court has enough power to enforce member states to change their laws (its compareable to american superior courts on US of A level
e.g. forbidding the State of Washington to open an airport named Washington Airport
for this argument trap - look up Washington vs. DC), it is highly unlikely
that anything overturns this rule within the next few years.
It`s sad for the US of A to realize, but they can fold in, or good bye atlantic air travel. most likely its going to be a compromise, which will
in the end secure that no data from european citizens is resold, while
world and dog suffer on.
And one more thing - the rule of the european central court is enough to make for serious diplomatic trouble with the US of A if necessary. If anyone just said "screw you, mate" - it was the european court...
don`t forget that they have a few hundred years more history of fighting tradewars, going back to the british colonial trade emporium and the hanse and others. this is europe, not your next door underdeveloped country.
just for the record, I would not open my mouth that wide if I where living in one of the most freedom hating, 1984 security countries of the world.
bush is to economy and ecology what a.h. was to peace in 1939.
It looks like you only need a crap driver license to prove you're identity in the US, while I have a electronic secured ID card with me. ...And they gonna ask me to cough up the number of my banccard for their database ???
In the US it's easier to buy a gun.
Easier for criminals.
Are they nuts??
I'm not saying they must enact reforms. The French, like everyone else in a functioning democracy, have the right to keep themselves unemployed.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The US doesn't give "financial aid" to Europe. Instead, Europe and Asia are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the US to keep the US economy afloat (it's not called "financial aid", but "loans and investments", but the end result is not that different). They are doing this because the US is an important export market for Europe and Asia and the world economy would collapse if they didn't do this.
So, the US has some credible economic threats against Europe, but withdrawal of "financial aid" isn't it. The US threat is more like "we can commit economic suicide and take you with us"; it's a threat better exercised with great care.
I say stick it.
Whats the problem with security ? look it up in the oxford dict:
the _FEELING_ of beeing secure...
i`m not taking civil liberty piss from a country which until recently handed out machine guns to its citizens legally... I`ld rather take the risk of beeing a bystander when a few pissed of islamists try bombing the people who keep annoying them. As long as I have my rights...
Where`s americans to defend the freedom their so proud of, when america takes its own citizens rights ? Their a bunch of PR-Gods worshipping culture-trash upshots. Probably also the source of the next big war, with their agressive expansion politics. I keep hearing people compare the bushman to the austrian-german brownie hitler that put europe to ashes in 1939-1945.
If you prefer convenience to freedom, you do not deserve the freedom.
And thats exactly what americans are getting right now. spoonfed from el presidente bush.
Most of the people in the EU (like me) admire the United States, the true freedom, business friedly environment, almost no racial discrimination, many competing "same lang" states etc. but again, if you treat us as terrorist nations, tight inspections of our families and still no US visas granted for EU members etc. really, why we should give you those personal information ? U.S. persons can travel all over the Europe freely, cheered everywhere like some uber persons, but sure we can't go to US without big visa hurdles.. then whats the point? We are not your slaves or some kind of lesser-stupid EU peasantry. Give us no visa America, and no more discriminating and insulting deep personal "x-ray" inspections. Better watch the Middle east closely then us, the good old Europe.
[sarcasm] Oh, great! So if I don't want my government to spy on me I can move to the US! That's wonderful.[/sarcasm}
It's the most ridiculous thing I heard all day.
Oh, and another ting: Why do you trust random corporations more than your government?!?! At least with the goverment you have a say in who makes the decisions, and you can punish them if they screw up.
This is of course just a realization that the US isn't as democratic as they like to pretend, as evidenced by the low voter turnouts at elections.
Go ahead and mod me down! But please stop and think if this troll might be making just a little bit of sense before you hit the moderate button.
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
Source please?
Living in the UK I find this notion extremely unlikely.
Yes the Police would be allowed to store records about criminal behaviour, etc, but stores/shops wouldn't send random customer data to the police force - they'd have no need for it, and most likely wouldn't even have the space for it!
Yes, that sums it up quite well. And given the choice, trusting the gouvernement seems more reasonable, as they already have certain monopols (law making, law enforcement, military power). So if your gouvernement becomes corrupt to a point that even basic trust isn't justified any more, your personal data will be your least concern. Another feature of gouvernements is that it keeps the level of corruption rather equal across the branches. So if you still have a few branches you trust, there's a good chance you can trust the other branches as much.
On the other side you have the private sector, where every corporation does as it thinks it can get away with. If one oversteps the boundary, they'll declare bankrupt and the same people start another corporation with a different name and the same game. Self-regulation has been proven many times in the past not to work, a very popular example for this is boiler safety in the UK and US in the late 1800s. If the major concern is the protection of weak individuals against corporations, asking the industry to play fair and nice is naïve, if so much money can be made by not playing nice. Also corporations will have a hard time being more trustworthy than the gouvernement, which can threaten the people working in the corporation. Never underestimate the persuavie power of free roaming death-squads.
To balance things out, the private sector works far better if the goal is effiency to deliver products and services. So if you want cheap and efficient data protection, go to the private sector, if you want trustworthy data protection, stay with the gouvernement.
These rights are more to prevent the gouvernement to sell this data to the next direct marketeer, which will use it to make personalised adds along the road you drive every morning, or to have pharmacies sell your drug purchase history to your employer.
The political weasels would be more much likely to 'make the data available' to their bretheren the corporate weasels in exchange for campaign contributions than to sell it outright. They may have had their sense of morality surgically removed but they are not stupid. For Europeans ther is a bright side to this, at least the EU is finally growing a backbone vis-a-vis the USA. One of GWB's greatest legacies will probably be that with his 'Go it alone and damn what the rest of the world thinks!' policy he has burned through whatever credit the US had with the Europeans over the US saving their bacon durng WWII and he has done so in an amazingly short period of time.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
What a whiner. Just so you know, I fully support abusing the moderation system to marginalize conservatives.
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
Because a lot of terrorists striking the US came through this route lately...
Seriously, this and other measures are totally useless and inefficient to deter terrorists. The 9/11 hijackers had perfectly valid travel papers and would have been most likely granted entry even had these rules been in place. Building fences isn't going to do much, I'd rather suggest solving the problem at the source - US involvement in the Middle East.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Most of the Euros in this thread are so worried about America's prying eyes, but they'll happily travel to the UK or Spain... two of the worst nations in the free world as far as spying on their own people.
I don't have any problems travelling to the said countries or any other within Europe as I know the data collected about me is protected. What worries me a lot more than the data collected is the way that data is stored and who has access to that data.
I think you are misunderstanding the situation: it is perfectly fine to belittle a situation that you find stupid, although it often reflects more on the person making the comment than on the subject. That is one of the rights that my grandfather certainly fought for. He is not belittling France's right to self-determination, only the decision they came to. If that is forbidden ground, then the rest of the world needs to STFU about our Idiot in Chief, as we sadly elected him to a second term, Bob help us.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
All that will happen is that US Immigration will ask you for the same 34 pieces of information, and refuse you entry if you don't supply them.
Well, that is progress already because (1) you know the kind of information that is being collected and (2) you yourself supply it so that you yourself are responsible for any mistakes.
Clearly, since they aren't with us, they are against us. So, according to Bush's rules, we need to deal harshly with these supporters of terrorism.
Yes, since the US was heavily involved in the middle east at the time of 9-11.
500 years ago, folks were 100% less likely to get run over, HIV, an aeroplane driven into their office building. That much is fact. The sort of folks who would once have travelled with an 'entourage' can now travel with 'bodyguards'. We now call 'bandits' 'muggers'. Starvation is still a major cause of death worldwide. There are new diseases, new strains, new cancers, new wars, new weapons, new ways to die.
(a) the data subject has given his consent unambiguously to the proposed transfer; or
Notice that every ennumeration in the regulation is suffixed by "or", not "and". So any one of them would suffice. So the airline just says on the back of its ticket (i.e. the legally enforcable contract for carriage that you agree to when you buy the ticket), "You consent to have your information passed on to whomever we decide to give it". You are free to refuse the terms, like any contract. But if you don't agree to the terms, then they are free to not sell the ticket to you.
Maybe that's exactly why some of us have been refusing to go to the US for the last few years ?
For instance, I had a chance to go to CGDC for free, which normally costs quite a bit of money on fares and entrance fee, and to pad that out into a bit of a holiday. Unfortunately I don't thinking handing over all available information and maybe win the lottery with an extra mugshot, fingerprint and/or full search, is such a great idea.
I'm not sure how many people make the same decisions, but make no mistake, these policies are hurting tourism, business, etc. The US is just not a friendly place to go to anymore.
Now the 99.999% of legitimate travelers will have to deal with substantial inconvenience in order to protect the rights of a few islamist psychos who have already attacked London and Madrid. Enjoy.
Nobody is ever going to hijack an American plane again. The last flight on 9/11 proved that. Richard Reid's attempt to set his shoes on fire proved that. People simply aren't going to stand for it.
You routinely troll slashdot with support for this administration's actions but refuse to explain how anyone is actually any safer off thanks to them. If you've got an explanation for why we're allowed to bring matches on planes, let us know. If you've got an explanation for why ships sailing into our ports are given advance notices of searches, let us know. If you've got an explanation for why the administration is fighting tooth and nail to keep us from stopping terrorists from just walking across our borders, let us know. If you can explain how any of these are making us safer, by all means, please let us know.
So lets start with this case. The US government wants the names and life stories of everyone on the plane 15 minutes before takeoff (having flown internationally several times, I can tell you that such information collection is pretty standard, but usually takes place mid-flight). Why? What will it do with this information? How can it guarantee that the terrorists are stupid enough to put down true information? Can it even process this information in time to... what, again? Shoot down the plane before the terrorist blows it up?
As an aside, I find your insistence that we're somehow being saved from "islamist psychos" especially amusing, given that the most recent case of someone trying to sneak a bomb onto an American plane was a nice white boy from Oklahoma. Good thing we haven't fallen victim to the stupidity that is "profiling" yet.
Given that the London and Madrid bombings took place on trains and on a bus, and we're talking about airline security - isn't this a little off-topic?
Since American companies - airlines, telcos and search engines (except Google, Google rocks ;-) - have been bending over backward to hand over any data the American government as much as suggest they might want, your "fundamental" difference is more like cognitive dissonance. That is, you ignore what you don't want to know.
Anyway, in Europe even the *governments* don't trust *themselves* with collecting personal data. That's why you got those laws to prevent them (as well as the private sector) to do it, and courts that actually enforce them.
Like in this case: the european governments delegated the job to the European Commission (modus operandi: get somebody else to do it, that way we can dodge the blame), which did what governments do, and the court told it to get lost. Same thing always happens when cops want to look into toll road records (for speeding offenses) or cable/satellite TV companies (for TV licenses).
Remember: when the facts don't fit the theory, it's the theory that needs being thrown out.
Yes, just like in 1350 or so - pay the tax or convert. The terror will stop.
Oh, yes. Absolutely. It'd probably take something a little stronger than small print, but you're right. There is a reason that the US wanted it done surreptitiously though.
If you don't tell people what you're doing, fewer people will be able to make the informed decision that they don't trust you with their personal information and decide to head for Spain or Tunisia or New Zealand for their holidays instead.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Well, you seem to forget that you are not the first to have terrorist attacks. In fact you have had only one.
In Europe we had a lot of it, only counting the last 30 years... In Madrid an London only a couple of years ago.
Seems to me that we did'nt asked aything unusual to our tourists, at least to US people.
So, answering your question, yes that happened to us, and no, we do not treat US people as potential criminals..
Another brilliant example of US authism.
Oh please. With attitude like that, terrorists have already won. The point of terrorism is not to cause direct damage, but instead to affect lives of as many people as possible.
In what way, depends on aim of the terrorist, but typically, ironically enough, the purpose is to cause terror.. Couldn't have imagined that from the name, oh no.
In your case, it seems to have worked.
-- pending
Since u.s. public havent shown much activity in that respect, apparently it is left to eu to do the thing.
I dont get what happened to the ordniary aggressive u.s. citizen who would refrain from nothing to protect his/her rights. Adminstration have been taking away all their rights gradually lately.
Some shit is proposed, and it is 'beautified' with the add on word "anti-terrorism", and its a go go. Noone objects.
What is going on ?
Read radical news here
Ungrateful gits. My parents paid many of their hard earned dollars in taxes to finance the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan provided nearly 267 billion postwar dollars in aid to Europe -- which equals over two trillion of today's dollars.
You should get a Troll rating. You may not care about giving up your right to privacy but most people do. Just because you think this helps secure our country doesn't mean it actually does.
Try SECURING THE BORDERS before doing this.
Indeed, I was just hearing from some American veterans how trustworthy the government's data protection is.
People who DO have a problem with this forget that four aircraft were hijacked on Sept. 11th and that thousands in the US (all nationalities) died that day.
And providing this information would not have prevented that from happening.
What bothers me, is that even driving -- in your own car -- untrackably is increasingly difficult. Various automated toll-collection systems (like EZ-Pass on the East Coast) are tied to a vehicle (instead of being anonymous like a calling card) and more and more toll-plazas begin to require them at certain hours or from certain vehicle classes.
A train? Nope, have to give your name too (ID is checked). A bus? Some buses are fine, but some require reservations, which means giving name, phone, and presenting ID.
This to me is the real errosion of freedoms, but since no particular politician/party can be (loudly) blamed for it, our (supposedly -- bipartisan) rights-watchers are silent.
ACLU tried to help someone fight for the right to fly without presenting ID last year (or was it two years ago?), but lost...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
From Amnesty International, in English and French too.
I didn't find the article I was looking for, but I already read about the fact that Russia really doesn't sell that much small arms comparatively to other important weapons-selling countries. They however are selling lots of big equipment like airplanes.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
That was a nice wrap-up for differences between the EU and the US.
Yet I'd like to point out that at least in some countries - my knowledge being about Nordic countries - the data the government has is scattered around branches. For example, the police has no information of your medical history. The doctor you go to see has no information about your financial status unless he asks you. Your medical history can't be transferred from hospital to another unless you approve it (this does not apply to the data on hand, though. Ambulance crew may tell the condition to doctors in the hospital etc). There's strict laws to regulate that you must be able to check what information they have about you. Also, auditing is strict. A medical professional was convicted in a Finnish court just a couple of weeks ago for reading his fellow workers data without need for that data. There's also Data Protection Ombudsman to protect John and Jane Does against illegal uses of the data. The regulation is pretty strict, for example Student Union of Helsinki University of Technology was requested to get rid of the DNS system where an IP maps into the street address and apartment number, because both of them can be used to map individual persons. For example, a net stalker that knows your IP may get your home address or someone who knows where you live might google your IP and find out what personal information he could get about you there.
The private sector in the EU has also fragments of the data, but there's no legislation in the US I'm aware of that would prevent the private sector (or the public sector) from combining different sources into one. And yes, I think I might be as scared as you are for the UK, Spain and Italy.
?SYNTAX ERROR
That's interesting but probably wrong, because in this very month, the EU Data Retention Directive came into effect. You can read up here, they have a link to the directive (pdf).
Quote: "Data retention laws already exist in many EU countries. The UK, Ireland and Italy already have their own national data retention laws, but they are all different in scope and substance. For example, the period for communications traffic data to be stored varies by country from 3 months to 3 years. In the UK, data must be stored for 6 months (internet) or 12 months (telephony). In Ireland, the retention period is 3 years."
Other EU countries have yet to pass legislation to implement the directive - Germany is planning a 1 year retention period.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Hmmm, the /. article incorecctly states 15 minutes before flight departure, the Beeb, have their facts correct.
The APIS message (current message between Canada and the US) must be sent with 15 minutes of actual departure e.g. the plane is moving. I'm not clear if this means DOOR CLOSE,TAXI or what ever the message is from FliteData type of systems).
So, Canada and the US do this now, and have done for a while.
If the EEC court does not like this, stay in the EEC.
For the record, I am a Brit living in Calgary, Canada, who has just started working on an airline IT project.
As I recall (may be mistaken), all the 9/11 hijackers had valid identities, passports, and visas. How would tracking any of this information prevent or reduce terrorism? Do terrorists only use a certain travel agent, or will you filter only those whose billing information is the Al Quaeda corporate address?
"Well, you seem to forget that you are not the first to have terrorist attacks. In fact you have had only one.
In Europe we had a lot of it, only counting the last 30 years..."
Actually, we have had more than one...just one using aircraft. I wonder why that is? Maybe because we here in the US we take security fairly seriously. How exactly are we treating you like a criminal by ensuring our security? You're not going to convince anyone I know of that one. Europe is so concerned about giving everyone the freedom to do whatever the hell they want that when you look at the problems they have experienced with terrorism, I'm not surprised in the least. They don't deal with terrorism and problem individuals swiftly enough...they tollerate extremism and subversion in favor of "diplomatic solutions" which never work with these people. I hope the UK is getting blasted in Europe for kicking our extremists...at least they are taking a stance where the rest of Europe will not.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
OMG!
I remember vaguely reading somewhere that the Qu'ran is not supposed to be translated. In order to be a good Muslim EVERYONE has to learn Arabic and read it in original. The Muslim religion cannot be separated from the Arabic language.
Very different from Christianinty. In order to be a good Christiam you dont have to learn Hebrew, Aramaic, Ancient Greek or Latin. In Christianity vernacular languages are adequate for reading the Bible.
Parent poster is absolutely correct, and also absolutely incorrect.
Any EU citizen wishing to visit the USA always has the option (thank
you, Decider-in-Chief GW Bush) of flying to Canada, and then crossing
our completely unprotected northern border, just like any other tourist
or terrorist with a wad of cash.
Maybe they did. Care to estimate the cost to France of French involvement in the American War of Independence? What about the price the Soviet Union paid in winning World War 2? Historical 'yeah but you owe us more' willy-waving is a dangerous game, especially if your willy isn't as big as you think it is.
To point out the obvious, that's because your government is untrustworthy and just steals the data anyway... not that it's relevant here.
As an American, it's incredible, to me, what the UK will not allow private companies to do, but will allow the government to do.
This may be true in general, but in the context of data protection it is not. You have exactly the same rights regarding data stored by the government that you do for data stored by private corporations. If a company or the government has some data stored on me, then I have a legal right to:
That's what this is all about. UK companies are legally required to guarantee me that these rights will be upheld on any personal data they have about me. That means they may not give my data to foreign entities who don't guarantee these things - even if I didn't prohibit them from using my data for marketing purposes, they still can't give my data to a foreign company unless that company is legally required to let me see and update what they have.
US companies aren't required to do these things (and by and large, most of them are either very hard or impossible to do in the US), so UK companies can't give them any personal data about me. It's got nothing to do with trusting governments or companies.
National security does not excuse these requirements. 'Personal data' is a limited subset of information. I am entitled to demand that MI5 tell me what they think my current address and credit history are, and that they update these records if they are wrong. If the US cannot manage to get these very simple things right, then they may not have my data, regardless of the security implications.
The CAPPS program is a good example. You'd go to the airport, and a few people would be turned away for no apparent reason. If you are on their blacklist, getting off it again is extremely hard. This mess would be completely illegal in the UK; here they would be required to help you sort out the problem. Also, a system that makes purely automated decisions about you in this manner is explicitly illegal here (section 12 of the Data Protection Act 1998). Until the US passes laws to stop this sort of thing from happening, we are not going to trust them with our data.
(The ruling is specifically about the unelected bureaucrats on the EU council trying to waive these requirements, and the EU court overturning the council's most recent attempt, at the request of the elected parliament, on the basis that the council had no right to do that).
What a load of NONSENSE.
People actually waste their time worrying about this crap.
1350? Talk about holding a grudge...
(I'm American)
And I have a problem with this.
Remember, the hijackers in 2001 were all in the country legally. We had all the info on them we needed, either it just didn't add up or we failed to act upon it.
There's no way I'm surrendering my email address (amongst other things) to fly.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
there is not text lameness filter
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
To balance things out, the private sector works far better if the goal is effiency to deliver products and services.
Is this why the US healthcare system is so efficient?
>Ungrateful gits. My parents paid many of their hard earned dollars in taxes to finance the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan
>provided nearly 267 billion postwar dollars in aid to Europe -- which equals over two trillion of today's dollars.
Don't know where you got your figures from, but they're way out. The Marshall plan provided $13 billion dollars to Europe (source: http://usinfo.state.gov/ the equivalent of $90 billion in today's money -- a figure, incidentally, nearly 100 times smaller than the current US national debt. Moreover, the money could only be used "to buy goods from the United States, and they had to be shipped across the Atlantic on American merchant vessels" (source: the US government website again).
Incidentally, you, with your "hard earned tax dollars", now contribute 100 times less to foregn aid (0.34% of GDP, the lowest out of 22 MEDCs in the ODA survey) than to defense (3.4% of GDP) - figures taken from *before* the Iraq war.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Just because the BBC only reports on the US government's attempt to gather personal information, doesn't mean there's nothing similar going on in europe. The UK, for example, seems to be on a quest to video tape everything that goes on in the country. Then there's the fact that european countries already collect all the data that they were sharing with the US government. I don't know what makes you think it's safer in the hands of European governments than in the hands of the US government. I know you'll say something about guantanimo bay, or some stupid shit like that, but the fact is that European countries cooperate with the US on those kind of operations all the time, so it's not like they're "better". Ideologically, most European governments are on the same page as the US when it comes to privacy rights, or combatting terrorism. And lets face it, some stupid pissing contest between the European Union and the United States (which is all this court case really is) hardly counts as "standing up for individual privacy rights" as you say.
I can't tell if you are stating a fact or if you're trying to be sarcastic. Short text blurbs doesn't lend itself to conveying emotions easily.
In case you are being sarcastic, I would like to point out that the USA has been involved in the Middle east for quite some time. If you were just stating fact, I'm expounding on that fact for anyone that doesn't know. US Troops have been continually staged in the middle east since after Kuwait was taken back. Although it wasn't a large deployment, the US has been enforcing the "No Fly Zone" upon Sadaam Husein for quite some time. All through Clinton's Presidency, Irag had been giving the US trouble. Those attacks could have occured during Clinton too, and they did. There was that car bomb in the underground parking lot of the World Trade Center on Friday, February 26, 1993, at approximately 12:18 pm.
Prior to Kuwait, the US was supplying Sadaam and his regime since at least the Iranian Hostage Crisis that cost Jimmy Carter a second term and brought the Reagan and Bush Sr. into office. Sadaam's Iraq was an Ally used to keep the Iranians in line. Those F-16's and Mirage aircraft that Sadaam had were all from the US and its allies. Iraq lost partly because they got the old hand-me-down weapons from the US and its allies.
I'm not justifying the attacks, but those attack on the Twin towers and the Pentagon were in retaliation to the US presence and the superior weapons on the battlefield in the Middle East. They weren't able to beat the superior US and Nato Technology in a "normal" field of battle, so they resorted to other methods. The timing of the attacks in 1993 and in 2001 suggests that they did that to get the attention of the incoming presidents. They second attempt was just more successful for them. Well, it was their second try. I bet they didn't count on an executive cabinet that was borderline psychotic about protecting his "turf".
I believe thats called "the right of self-determination". Your grandfather probably helped fight for it in World War 2, only for you to belittle it.
Yes, my grandfather was in France in WWII, and fought for France's right of self-determination, and he'd be one of the first to belittle some of the things they've chosen to do with that right.
Similarly, I believe deeply in the democratic process, but that doesn't mean that I automatically approve of every action taken by every democratic government.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Downside: sometimes get bad looks from the serving stewardess and once "You don't look Jewish!" I properly chastised her for stereotyping Jews.
Non-kosher foods weren't officially accepted for Christians until after Peter had the vision on a rooftop (it's in Acts 10:9-17) of all the animals, "clean" and "unclean", and was told that they're all okay to eat. Peter saw all kinds of animals, even reptiles, and heard the voice of God saying "Go, kill and eat". Peter then says that he's never eaten anything impure, indicating that before this point the early (very early) Christians still followed Kosher dietary restrictions. This was also seen as a sign from God that Gentiles as well as Jews should be converted.
;)
I wouldn't really call it a Qu'ranic inconsistency, it may be that Muhammed either didn't know or care about the difference, or that the Christians in that part of the world in that time frame still ate kosher for health reasons. Kosher food reduces the chance of trichinosis and other illnesses, especially in a primitive environment.
Don't ask how a shamanistic pagan knows so much about Judeo-Christian theology
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I can drive from, say, Oklahoma City to Dallas, on my own, without being waylaid by bandits along the way. If we could travel only in convoys with armed guards, then the world would be as dangerous as it has been. As it is now, that's only state leaders who need that. Does the mayor have to worry about being assassinated so his sister's son can take the "throne"? No. Safer! You only have to look at the average ages people are living to for proof that the world is much safer now then it was. People keep saying the world is more dangerous; more dangerous compared to what?
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
While there are excemptions for law enforcement agencies and such, you have conveniently forgotten to mention that 'the government' is, by and large, bound by the same data protection laws as private companies.
efficient, effective, cheap
chose any two
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
What financial aid?
you b$ admin screws up everywhere.
this is just one more example.
afaik the whole point is to collect the data before
passengers board, so that when the plane is on its way
the data can be analyzed and the plane (if needed) diverted
or that special passengers getting a grill from US customs.
so collect at arrival is no solution. may be collect on the way
and submitted during the flight -- It would require quite some
worked to put it to work short term.
You MUST be joking. The US view of security and counter terrorism operations is immature and poorly executed. It would still be ridiculously easy to carry out terrorist operations on the US, mostly because your actions have actually made it easier to subvert the systems. Because you won't learn from others and you still go around with this arrogant attitude its a near certainty that another attack will occur (hopefully not with a nuke, but you never know).
The US TSA is horribly offensive to visitors, seeming to think the hordes are just waiting to swarm off the jets and into the land of free. The reality is rather different. Many people, myself included, are actively avoiding going anywhere near the place, to the extent of avoiding contracts with US organisations. It cost you the world's good will, its costing you business and when things really get tough its probably going to mean you are left out in the cold.
You needed friends, you have created indifference at best, enemies at worse.
On the other side you have the private sector, where every corporation does as it thinks it can get away with. If one oversteps the boundary, they'll declare bankrupt and the same people start another corporation with a different name and the same game.
Exactly. The government retains at least some modcom of accountability, however small. Private companies are accountable to no one except their shareholders, and sometimes not even that. They are larger than nation states and they know it. Don't trust them any more than you would trust a third world dictator.
May the Maths Be with you!
Not seriously enough, according to the EU court.
Is US Immigration still fingerprinting everyone entering the US, or was that just media hype?? As an EU citizen in the US, I was fingerprinted twice recently, just to renew my driver's license, once at the Dept of Safety office, then again five minutes later at the Tag Agency. I suppose I could have passed my papers over to a terrorist while crossing the road in front of the adjacent police station in full view of 6 armed officers, so that second print was fully justified...
My whole family also had a full set of prints taken for our Green Card applications, and yet another set or right-index-finger when doing the final paperwork at the INS office. That last set we probably could have used any finger at all, or even a hotdog, given that the INS agent was dopey enough to write down Male for my daughter, who has boobs to match Lara Croft's...
Note that I'm not complaining about being printed for the Green Card, or even for a driver's license, as it works out for *my* security as well as everyone else. It just seems stupid to print everyone coming into the US. And I'll bet they don't pay the $75 per head fee for being printed, as happens for the Green Card app, and *again* for the Naturalisation app...
11. Frequent flyer information (limited to miles flown and address(es))
Haha, allow mne to laugh:
Hey, guys this guys, this (terrorist) guy looks interesting:
25 times to Kabul, to bad he always registered for frequent flyer miles, we got him!
Honestly, how naive can they be...
I believe the planes that hit the towers were domestic flights, and the alleged terrorists had been in the country long before it happened.
They can get your data this way, but only if they themselves obey *the rest* of the data protection directive. I'm thinking here of bits like Article 12, where you can ask for all data held about you, have it corrected, deleted etc. Its not consent to use for any purpose, its consent to use for a limited purpose. The bit of the directive you're referring to is there to allow (eg) a mortgage company to check your credit worthiness with Equifax; this limited purpose is stated in the contract you sign. Asking for unlimited purpose would be unfair as in Article 3 of 93/13/EEC (in US terms, unconscionable as in UCC 2-302) and the contract might end up void.
*That* is the problem with the data going to the states; and ways around it already exist, but apparently costs too much when applied to the kind of scrutiny currently levelled at US citizens.
IANAL. YMMV.
I'd rather be left out in the cold and attempt to have some security than to have another plane fly into a building.
Hey...the system isn't prefect, but it's better than doing nothing. Some people, including Mexico itself are bitching because we want to secure our borders and build a fence. Funny though that Mexico has a fence at its Southern border, and nobody complains to them.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
You know, You are one of the MAIN reasons America is drowning. Why don't you Yell over here, get on a soap box and remind us. The open free VOTE is what makes us different. We stopped voting properly, which includes writing in candidates, to keep money boys at bay..So now with so few voting, you get rulers of garbage..We asked for it (includes YOU) so now drown in it or do something about it here. If you think Europe has any answers, you are blind. .02 makes you made enough to help save Our (YOUR) country.
I hope my
Ever heard of Richard Reid?
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
With all the issues with domestic spying, the NSA, el. al. I am very happy to hear this. At this point I do not trust my government one bit and I am happy to see that the EU is taking a stand as our congress will not. I never thought I would say this but I am looking forward to the 2008 elections so we can be rid of Bush and his crew. Check out my other thoughts at http://www.beastproject.org/
The funny part is that I used to be a Republican. They have scared off all the good people in the party at this point. I want Reagan back!
Yeah! Because corporations can come to your house at gunpoint and throw you into a prison in Cuba while simultaneously stripping you of your unalienable rights.
Not like the government. They never do stuff like that. They would never spy on you without a warrant, or prevent you from talking to an attorney, even if they thought you were a terrorist. Boy, those corporations have way too much power. I mean when I sign up for service and willingly give my money to them, sometimes they give me piss poor service!!!! How can they force me to give up my money like that. Government on the other hand, benevolently "withholds" 22% of my income for the greater good. And the best part is that if I stop paying the government they throw me into prison. If I stop paying the big bad corporation, they try to be nice and make me get their service again! Boy, those dirty corporations.
Troll does not mean "I disagree."
Why do you trust random corporations more than your government?!?!
Because corporations cannot (yet) put me in prison.
Governments are very, very scary institutions. Read up on active vs. passive rights sometime.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
"Hmmm, this passenger specifically ordered pasta, he must be a pastafarian! Let's pray that he does not hijack the plane in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and that His Noodly Appendage will not harm us!"
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
He was not in the US at the time of his terrorist action. He was on a flight from Paris to Miami and was only 90 minutes into the flight. He was only stopped from boarding an earlier flight because he had no checked luggage and was flying Paris -> Miami -> Antigua which appeared suspicious. Having sent his personal information before the plane took off would not have prevented him from attempting his shoe bombing.
Some people are unhappy about the sharing of the 34 pieces of personal information with the US, though they appear to be happy that the airline holds the same database? And these same people would rather fly to the USA w/o the US Gvt running basic security analysis of the data, before the plane takes off? Even though this would could make their flight safer and rather less likely to be hi-jacked. Ergo these objectors would rather take a higher risk of being hijacked and feel happy that only the airline has their info? I also wonder if anyone reads the small print when one buys a ticket, even though one has to "tick" that box saying one agrees with the terms and conditions. The airlines will simply add a few more lines on each ticket noting that the simple personal info will be reviewed for security analysis. That will end that matter legally and everyone will continue to fly and make no fuss and be safer IMHO.
This is actually a good thing.
It means that instead of our government being more intrusive and controlling, it will start having to treat other people as equals and their religious beliefs as coequal with ours, so they won't feel so threatened and vengeful that they have to fly airplanes into our buildings.
Which, some of us think, was the thing we were supposed to be doing as the United States of America, anyway.
Congratulations, you're the first American to have made a funny anti-french post, actually somewhat understanding the whole 'friendly-rivalry' thing. As this shows you may be capable non-crude, slightly intelligent humour I suggest your US citizenship be instantly revoked, since you're setting a dangerous precedent here... Next thing, you want to elect a president that doesn't think 'intelligent' or 'book-reader' are insults. Insanity!
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
You don't need a green card to move from the South to the North.. ;)
"You do realize that deleting the data could jeopardize our national security, right?"
US terror watchlist 80,000 names long: report. aspx?newsid=1312/
"The classified list, which carried just 16 names before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington had grown to 1,000 by the end of 2001, to 40,000 a year later and now stands at 80,000"
8 Dec 2005
http://www.sweden.se/templates/cs/NewsML____12744
The French are a joke. Any group of people who would take to the streets over ... gasp .... empoyers being given the ability to fire bad employees deserve to be laughed at. What a bunch of pussies.
Odd. I'd much rather have the government, who I elect and who is responsible to me (and can be booted out periodically when they need to be reminded) to have my data than a for-profit corporation whose single moral imperative is to make a profit. To each his own though.
That's an awesome analogy!
So you start off just a stupid chump who follows rules because some never-seen mystical power orders you to do so.
Then you realize how silly that is. You don't want to give up the time spent following the religion blindly, so you dig though it for 'good ideas' and logical reasons for the rules.
Finally, you wise up and through the whole steaming pile away as you think for yourself.
Blar.
I think you just said freedom is bad.
I am unable to come up with a better argument against your point than you just made yourself. The fact that they have a "certain monopol" over powers delegated to the government (or more recently here in the U.S. usurped in flagrant disregard of the Constitution) (a) makes the consequences of corruption much more dangerous, and (b) makes trusting the government a much more risky proposition than you set it out to be.
The other thing that bugs me quite a bit about this thread, and not the immediate parent poster particularly, is the concept that somehow government is accountable while corporations are not. If people actually took responsibility for how they spent their money, corporations are easily just as accountable. Corporations don't just stay in existence without customers, and the consumer voice, in those rare instances when we choose to use it, does not have to wait on elections every "X" years (in addition to other factors that make market forces more effective than government).
Distrust of government is what America was founded upon. That we have forgotten this invaluable lesson is much to our detriment.
Happy goldfish bowl to you.
Hmm, the European Court of Justice. Aren't their laws enforced by the Justice Friends? All I'm saying is please don't send Marvin, Wendy and Wonderdog this time. Or Aquaman.
What you don't seem to understand is that the policies of G.W.B. are the logical extension of Reagan's policies. "Greed is good" my ass.
Heh. So that is what your press 'informed' you, I guess. Nice.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-826005992 3762628848
Good point.
But ... who or what keeps corporations (and other crooks) from doing these things to you ?
You trust the government to do that, right ? Because guns might protect you against the occasional burglar, but they are no good against intangible entities like corporations that could probably afford to hire a small army.
Good point, if the government gets really corrupt, the citezens are screwed anyway. You also say corporations will do what they can get away with. Also true, as long as they are making money, they can stay in business and encroach on our privacy... but so can the government! From your post, I conclude that having private companies manage our data is better because we can choose which company to deal with easier than we can choose which government to be governed by. If a company goes belly up personal data probably will be bought on the black market from that company and there is a privacy breach... but if a country goes belly up... like you said, privacy is the least of our concerns... For instance the USSR breakup... today I'm STILL concerned about the enriched uranium getting to the black market! Much scarier than consumer information, I'd say.
I am what I am and thats what I am -Popeye
I'm self-determined... ...that we should have let Germany keep France at the end of WW2....the world would be a much better, cleaner smelling, cleaner, and less hairy, place.
No, didn't think about that... they can just sue you for millions of dollars, deny you the right to get a job for no real reason, and screw you over without any real risk of retribution from the state... but you're right. Can't throw you in prison
Government has supreme power over it's people, even the power to use violence; it's really a completely unstable arrangement. The only thing keeping it in check is the democratic elections.
So, it's always seemed a little paradoxical to me that americans were so afraid of their government, yet choose not to excercise the one thing that's supposed to put it's power in check. Namely democratic elections. The voter turnouts are always dismally low, at least compared to other western countries.
The two party system, and the lack of proportionate representation, really leaves a very large portion of the population without real power - thus making them indifferent to the democracy, leading to a government that's not really kept in check by the people. A goverment that's not kept in check by it people will naturally evolve into somethen that should be feared! It doesn't have any motivation to fix the democratic system either. So I guess it does make sense, but it's a little sad to watch I think.
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
"Maybe because we here in the US take security fairly seriously."
Sorry but I just ruined a monitor in coffeespew... I spent too many years in the Cold War as a defense contractor to think the measures you're touting as serious have ANYTHING to do with real security. They're shams and designed to make some people "feel good" and more ominously, to condition the population into sheeples. Reality interrupt: this administration is incompetent and where they're not incompetent, they're looting the vaults, and where they're not looting the vaults, they're ideologically unsound. But by all means, let the trainwreck continue just to drive the point home completely.
Most of this thread has missed the point.
The U.S. is a soverign nation, not part of the EU. Travel into the U.S. is at the discretion of the U.S.
All this means is increased screening of people travelling from the E.U. and increased cost to them.
It doesn't matter at all what the EU says, they don't control entry to the U.S.
EU: We demand our laws be upheld
US: That's fine, your laws apply to your land, not ours. Give us the details we want to allow entry.
EU: No
US: OK, no entry. Next.
Could anyone point me to positive results on catching would be terrorists entring the states? Specificly using this data?
In reality terrorists would enter the US through Mexico or Canada.
They would buy/catch their weapons in the states itself.
This has nothing to do with real security but everyting with control.
How about refusing to hire someone that sounds too North African? I'd riot for that.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I was part joking and I got the numbers wrong, it was a bad cut and paste job. The numbers should have been about 13 billion and about 90 billion as you show. I just read about how the Marshall Plan worked and it sounds like it was actually a US corporate welfare plan. Yeah, I know, George W and his cronies are running the US economy into the ground, and the US trade deficit sucks. For a guy who claims to be a christian he sure does some evil things. I wouldn't put it past the republicans to count the cost of the war in Iraq as being "foreign aid".
I also refuse to take off my shoes at the bomb-seeking gates. No undue attention from authorities yet, despite all these "red-flags". I'm sure, they have better things to do...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The 9/11 hijackers had perfectly valid travel papers and would have been most likely granted entry even had these rules been in place.
Some of them entered the US with perfectly valid travel papers. As I recall, the 9/11 Commission Report mentioned that two of them entered with obviously-forged passports, but, for some reason, the customs guys at the border decided to let it slide. Others were already known terrorists and should not have been issued visas in the first place.
You're absolutely right that all the new laws since then probably wouldn't have kept these guys out, but everyone seems to overlook the reverse of that argument: The laws already in place on Sept. 10, 2001 would have been sufficient to catch at least half of these guys - and, more likely than not, to prevent the attack entirely - if only they had been properly enforced.
I also agree that US involvement in the mideast (and, specifically, our dogmatic insistence on supporting Israel, no matter what) is the root issue and needs to be addressed if we're ever to get a true resolution to our terrorist problems.
I know what a corp wants, most of the time. A govt changes too fast and I cannot ever tell for sure what they are going to demand. Corps also don't have guns; governments do. I would trust a businessman or random person well before the government.
"Leviticus 18:22 - Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."
:)
Note that while this forbids gay men from having sex with each other, it also (read strictly) excludes heterosexual women from having sex with men! And as for the heterosexual men, well, surely leading the heterosexual women into sin is itself a sin! Thus, the only blessed, bible-certified-and-approved form of sex is lesbian sex!
Och Aye, but the Marshall Plan went to Germany after you bombed the shit out of it (somewhat justifiably so - I may argue about the choice of targets but not the intent). But then you made your allies - the brits - repay every penny of the war loans, plus interest, and gave them AFAIK no help at all.
:)
Shurely there's a moral in there?
no taxation without representation!
>Ungrateful gits. My parents paid many of their hard earned dollars in taxes to finance the Marshall Plan.
;)
Oh yeah. And you're OLD
no taxation without representation!
I have to point out that in 2000 when I was living in California, I could buy dynamite over the counter without presenting ID. I'm pretty obviously not an American. I could also buy handguns, dets and other nasty things that go bang, as provided by your "constitution".
I may well be that you "take security fairly seriously" now, but it didnt surprise me in the least that 9/11 happened - what suprised me was that you didnt have lots of less spectacular bombings all over the US beforehand. The only reason I can see why you didnt was because the average Muslim/Croat/Serb/Venzualan(sp?)/Native American has too high personal ethics to blow away thousands of innocent civilians, just like US troops took such pains not to kill civilians in Somalia, the Balkans, Granada, Afganistan, and now in Iraq.
Terrorists attacking US citizens - maybe 6000 deaths
US Forces attacking other countries civilians - maybe as few as 20000 deaths
"Don't worry, for us, the US is hell, so you yankees don't need to worry about us crossing into the US."
I live in Florida, and I have one word for you: bullshit.
why didn't you have kids? (I worry about their lifetimes too)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
>Actually, we have had more than one...just one using aircraft.
Two serious ones inside your territorry, unless I'm miscounting.
> I wonder why that is? Maybe because we here in the US we take security fairly seriously.
No, you went from stupidly lax pre 9/11 to stupidly paranoid post. That's not taking security seriously, it's just pandering to the popular news.
> Europe is so concerned about giving everyone the freedom to do whatever the hell they want that when you look at the problems they have experienced with terrorism, I'm not surprised in the least.
Do remind me, which part of the world was supposed to be the land of the free and home of the brave, and which the socialist facist backwater? I'm getting all confused.
> They don't deal with terrorism and problem individuals swiftly enough...they tollerate extremism and subversion in favor of "diplomatic solutions" which never work with these people
I do hope Condi consults you daily,,, in the meantime, terrorism breaks down to 1) left wing nutters 2) right wing nutters 3) religious nutters 4) nationalist nutters. 5) General nutters like the Unabomber which we won't address here.
Europe's had a fair few 1), but they seem to have died down largely, and mainly targeted specific individuals The US has had a few 2), and they are either low-level racists or Oklahoma bombers. Both 1) and 2) seem largely under control.
4) has been a big issue in the UK, on the one hand because it's a difficult situation if people keep on looking backwards and not forwards (Shudder - I've just paraphrased Tony Blair), on the other because the IRA used to be generously funded by individuals in the US. Spain and ETA is a different issue - again it's a longstanding problem and some people are just fucking stupid. The Welsh burning English holidsy homes doesn't get past the threshold.
3) has not been a big problem in Europe in general - there were the bombs in London, but while more callous than the IRA they're not dramatically different. Low level stuff - awful, yes, but low-level - goes on, like the stabbing of Theo van Raadt (not sure of the spelling of the name). Not that serious, as a general issue, though.
4) Obviously 9/11. I had friends and family in there, and it was shit. But there's a reason the U.S. was attacked and not Europe, and if you think a bit you'll find it.
> I hope the UK is getting blasted in Europe for kicking our extremists...at least they are taking a stance where the rest of Europe will not.
Actually, I hope not. We've had enough shit because our idiotic prime minister is your stupid president's willing poodle when it comes to foreign policy. "We" aren't taking the stance you think we are - Tony is, and he definitely isn't doing it on our behalf.
Neighbourly yours,
Kraut (en Angleterre)
no taxation without representation!
Never let good facts get in the way of bad policy.
no taxation without representation!
Hey...the system isn't prefect, but it's better than doing nothing.
It doesn't prevent any terrorism, but it does insult people and damage relations.. I really believe that doing nothing would have been a lot better.
The 'it is better to do something then doing nothing' which is often heard in such cases is a way to quell your emotions, doing something makes you feel better, but it is also a way that has a very good chance on doing more damage then good.
The people you see there are not "real" french.
I don't think that any distaster flick has ever been able to show any more utter destruction than the destruction shown in film clips of bombed German cities. I especially remember a film clip showing people salvaging bricks from a sea of rubble and ruin.
I have found that the US gave post war aid to various countries in a number of ways and that unless they are quoting Wikipedia (or whatever Wikipedia is quoting), that the numbers quoted in various articles tend to not totally agree and of them seem to be wild ass guesses.
Wikipedia shows that the United Kingdom received $3,297 million plus $many million other aid and W. Germany received $1,448 million plus $270 million after 1951. An article on www.germany.info says that the GARIOA program and Marshall aid to W. Germany added up to over $3.3 billion.
W. Germany paid back $1,016.9 million (another source says $1,100 million), the last payment was made in June 1971. It appears that the UK did not repay any of the Marshall Plan or any other WW II aid. I think that Norway paid back US aid money.
So if your gouvernement becomes corrupt to a point that even basic trust isn't justified any more, your personal data will be your least concern
/. only to be modded up.
I shouldn't be but I'm constantly amazed by the bravado with which stupid statements are made on
It's precisely when your government becomes corrupt that their access to your private data becomes a critical issue. Without that personal data, the government can't control you. If the Nazi's didn't know who was and wasn't Jewish there could never have been a holocaust. Similarly it's hard to punish dissenters if you don't know who they are.
Give up your right to protect your personal data and you've given up whatever hope you have of turning the government around should corruption take a hold. Sadly few people seem to even understand something that basic anymore. No wonder freedom's become so unfashionable.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
"Article 25 EC" refers to article 25 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community (thats what the EC is an abbreviation for).
x .htm
Text of that treaty is available here: http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/en/treaties/inde
So what's the point of all these new privacy-violating laws and processes, then?
Unfortunately, the US system seems to not even have achieved two of the three. It is arguably effective, but I don't think a good case can be made for either efficient or cheap.
The Marshall Plan was humanitarian aid for the reconstruction of Europe after World War 2, not the war itself.
A more recent example of US Aid to the EU was providing peacekeeping forces in Kosovo.
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
The US has stopped meaningful technological cooperation with its allies 5 years ago.
_ 20060520.asp
Géopolitique
Présentation : Richard Labévière, Emmanuel d'Abzac et Matthieu Vendrely
Réalisation : Olga Samssonov
Invité : Louis Caprioli
écouter 20 min,télécharger
Ancien chef de la lutte anti-terroriste à la DST, Louis Caprioli est aujourd'hui Conseiller Spécial de la société GEOS.
Il vient nous parler du Livre Blanc du gouvernement sur la sécurité intérieure face au Terrorisme (Documentation Française).
http://www.rfi.fr/radiofr/editions/072/edition_26
I'm always tempted to answer that question by calling them simply a way of grabbing near-unlimited power, nothing more, nothing less.
Realistically, though, I think it's much more likely that the folks in government are so worried about not looking "soft" or being seen as not doing anything that they're just rushing out and doing something that looks like it might help without being too concerned about whether it's the right thing to do or even whether it will be truly effective. The sheer number of laws out there that only restrict the law-abiding, have little to no effect on criminals, and thus end up doing nothing about the problems they were claimed to be aimed at solving suggests that this is business as usual for government (at least in the US; I don't know whether other governments behave similarly or not) and the War on Terror only serves to make it play out on a larger scale by increasing the urgency to be seen as doing something about it.
Some of them would have been on such a list if it existed, I suppose. But they wouldn't have been on a "can't drive a U-Haul truck in New York City" list. Not being able to fly here isn't the largest impediment ever. There's other ways to get here.
And also, keeping people out by name is a pretty poor defense anyway. You do end up punishing anyone who actually flies under their own name (like Cat Stevens), but anyone with malacious intent will just fly under a different name. Some of these wanted people already have 3 names, how difficult is it to get another?
This whole thing is an exercise on closing the barn door after the horses are out.
Why protected against such a specific attack when there are other equally effective attacks? The reason I can think of is CYA and PR, not protection.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Oh, and another ting: Why do you trust random corporations more than your government?!?!
Because random corporations only want to swap their things for my money. My government wants to take my money, and then take my liberty.
Maybe your problem is that you've been suckered so far into the Republican party you've forgotten the true meaning of being conservative.
Not true. The Frist/Hastert/McCain Republicans today bent on spiraling federal spending and illegal alien amnesty are a far cry from the Newt Gingrich Republicans of the mid '90's or the Reagan Republicans before that. Once a party passes the 50% mark it tends to entrain moderates who rot it ideologically from the inside.
You certainly have no problem believing that anyone who doesn't preach the Word of Bush as holy gospel must be a stinking liberal
No. President Bush's words are not infallable. (But Rummy and Cheney who have their hands up his ass making his mouth work are :)
but remember this when you're sharing the bus with some psycho wearing a dynamite vest screaming in a language you don't understand: When you're begging for the government to save your life, you're just asking for a handout too.
I don't think I would be begging for help, but I would be miffed that law enforcement didn't spot such a one using the kind of simple profiling this flamewar is all about.
an ill wind that blows no good