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US–EU Flight Talks Collapse
fantomas writes, "The BBC is reporting that the current US-EU talks over data collected from people flying to the USA collapsed last night. US Customs and Border Protection is insisting on access to the airlines' records and 34 pieces of data to be collected from each passenger. This data has been gathered since 2004, but only as a temporary measure. The European Court of Justice threw out the temporary agreement and set a deadline of Sept. 30 to arrive at a new one. Airlines that refuse to hand over information to US authorities may be fined up to $6,000 per passenger, and the passengers themselves held up in immigration for hours. Good for the EU on protecting the privacy of their citizens? Or are they hindering the War on Terror?" An EU official said that the EU wanted to give away less data, while the US wanted more.
Papers please.
It's every bit as nonsensical as the war on drugs.
Neither of them are supply-side problems, and attacking the supply side is utterly ludicrous, and just reduces our civil liberties. You know, those things that make America a great place?
If we really wanted to stop terrorism, we'd work on solving the problem from a social position. You have to understand why people hate you so much in order to fix the problem.
The war on terror isn't about being effective, it's about making people feel like we're doing something. Well, we're doing something alright, we're eroding our liberties until the terrorists have won.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Guys, I'm not saying the EU is perfect, but can you people in the USA please SMARTEN THE FUCK UP and kick out the junta now controlling your government? Yeah, "you" stepped in to europe and saved our asses from the Nazis. But that was OVER HALF A CENTURY AGO now. Things have changed.
Maybe we will be able to return the favour, if things get too bad over there, but I wouldn't count on it. Anyway, you didn't step in in europe until the situation had already degenerated into bloody war, and I suspect if we even tried to step in militarily before that point, all we'd do is make you fight the wrong enemy - i.e. us!
Well, I guess this particular move doesn't matter to me much, because until there's "regime change" in the USA, there's no way in hell I'm going there again anyway!
Land of the "free"? Don't make me laugh.
I'm not sure if this was meant as a joke or not, in either case, it raises an important issue.
If you ever have an opportunity to talk with someone who lived in a soviet country, I highly recommend asking them what tool of oppression featured most highly in their day-to-day lives.
So far, from the opinions I have gathered, being required to show ID and other papers arbitrarily demanded by authorities ranks pretty highly. It is an infringement of privacy and limits your ability to conduct your own business without being scrutinized by your neighbors (or worse your local constabulary).
Every time I have to show my drivers license at the airport I have a chuckle at the inane pointlessness of it. But in truth I should be pissed off. Why does the flight attendant need to know who I am? What difference does it make who I am? They're certainly not protecting me from terrorists because the last batch of terrorists all had perfectly legitimate ID which they used! It is an information grab by Big Brother, plain and simple.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is to keep normal citizens under control and intimidated, not to fight terrorists. And maybe to dissuade those evil freedom-preaching EU nationals from visiting the USA and spreading their ever so cancerous "be skeptical of authority figures" memes.
The only really major terrorists in the world right now are the USA's three letter agencies (yeah, the WTC attacks were impressive-looking and very big-media-friendly (see recent Hollywood self-pitying wank-fest of a film.). But more people are killed in traffic accidents in a month. Where's the War on Dangerous Driving, eh?). Most other terrorists are _somebody's_ freedom fighters, for fuck's sake, the only "people" that the USA's terrorists seem to be fighting for the freedom of are those artificial legal entities called "corporations" that are apparently considered people in the USA.
Neither of them are supply-side problems, and attacking the supply side is utterly ludicrous, and just reduces our civil liberties. You know, those things that make America a great place?
Pardon? Have you that little background of our nation's history? "Civil rights" is hardly something that America has gotten right.
Take slavery, for instance. The first 80 to 100 or so years of American history were about completely denying certain racial groups any significant rights in large portions of the nation. Even after the Civil War started to change the status quo, things took many decades to improve. It wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s, nearly 200 years after the founding of America, that such groups started to get the rights they deserved from the very onset.
Women weren't in much better of a situation. They weren't allowed to vote from the early 1800s until 1920. South Carolina didn't ratify the 19th Amendment until 1969!
Of course, we can't forget the Japanese-American internment camps run by the US during WWII. I'll let you do your own research on those camps, since the whole subject is far too massive to describe adequately here.
Today we still see much antagonism directed towards homosexuals.
What we're seeing now just follows with the trends we have witnessed over all of America's history. A lot of people brag about how great their civil liberties are, but a quick analysis of the situation shows that what they say just isn't the case. Again and again over the entire history of the US, various groups have had their civil liberties stripped or not even granted.
Sure, America is far better than many nations. But it's very naive to think that America's history with respect to civil liberties is special in any way. More often than not we find that other nations offered various civil liberties far before America did, and often in a manner that was far more inclusive.
If you have not done anything wrong you have nothing to worry about
Ok you convinced me, I won't fly to the USA. I don't see any reason why a goverment should be allowed snoop in my private life "just to make sure I'm not a terrorist". Do they think terrorists are dumb enough to say "No, please only one way tickets and I don't need a method of leaving the airport. And please only a light meal, I don't want to blow myself up with a full stomach. But first I'll clear out my account and donate everything to a well-know extremist organistion." *sigh*
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
my point is not that halal meals should be indicated to the americans (pretty f'n far from that, actually). my point is simply that america would profile muslims, but this particular item (food choice) only allows them to profile 16 year old girls and rastas (please accept my hyperbole). outside of a mad powergrab, what is the point of this?
i cannot begin to imagine the thought process that lead to this filtering.
once again, a great example of regulations that will have no positive effect on terrorism, which can only cause great discomfort for the majority, and further weaken any notions of individual liberty.
and before any of you go on about how an airplane (or shopping mall, or street corner, or toilet, or your front lawn, etc.) is not private space, let me simply point out that at least without the collection of this data, my being there is not the grounds for the wet dream of some analyst. but now it is, thanks to the greatest democracy the world has ever known.
The EU has data protection laws and should stick to them. The US shouldn't be able bully the rest of the world to ignoring its laws. If this shuts down transatlantic travel, so be it. EU should go a WTO tribunal and demand compensation over the any US fines or loss of revenue to its airlines. The Bush administration has given the finger to international standards and international law and will continue to do so until the other nations of world stand up for themselves
Only if they continue to fly to the US.
Look at the mass disruption and consequent political fall-out recently caused in the UK just by inconveniencing passengers with over-zealous security checks. Those lasted a few weeks before the policy was softened back to almost its original level, and the government is now being sued, or likely to be sued imminently, left, right and centre. On this experience, I imagine the US administration would cave in about three seconds if every major European airline refused go fly there until their information-hording policy was backed down to more reasonable levels. The damage to the US, for which the administration will inevitably be held responsible by the electorate, would be far greater than the damage to most airline companies.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I live in a popular tourist destination in America and one thing I've learned is that most of my counrtymen are complete morons. Wait. That's an insult to morons. People ask me, and I'm not making this up, "Do you'all take American money?" Or say assinine things like "You'all speak really good English!" No shit, asshole. This is the USA!
Now, imagine these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers scared out of their puny, defective little minds and you have some idea of the average American. Too scared and stupid to think straight.
Makes me want to vomit.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Good, finally we have started to stand up to the insanity of frivolous data collection. There are just to many unknown factors here. How long is the data stored (probably forever), who will have access to it once it reaches US Shores (TIA?), what will they do with it, how will it be processed and cross referenced. A near endless line of question could really follow here.
How come it appears to be a very one sided transfer of data, after all we don't get the same information about americans travelling to Europe as we are expected to send over, do we?. Which is odd since we have had way more terrorist attacks on european soil then have ever taken place in the USA.
Since this is all carried out in the cause of preventing terrorism I do wonder if this will really stop any terrorist? Doubtful, if anything they have just given them a list of things to stay clear off if you want to slide under the digital radar. I'll eat porkchops or fish, buy a return ticket (even thou there will be no return), i'll pay via creditcard and generally provide the system with non suspicious information.
But if it stopped just one terrorist wouldn't it be worth it? When the violation of millions is justified for a single success I don't wanna play no more. I haven't been to America since pre 9-11 and quite frankly I don't feel any great urgency to return either, not for biz or pleasure.
If the EU can just stand firm and hold its ground I think we'll be the winner here, after all we'll loose far less economically then the USA will when others realise the same.
We won't miss privacy until its gone and then its to late cause it's just to easy to take away but very hard (if not impossible) to reclaim.
I've seen pot be a disaster for some people. But most of the time, for most of the people, drug problems are self-limiting. I've worked in the computer biz for long enough to see "work hard play hard" types that use hard drugs to party and get up the next morning for solid work. Eventually, for most people, the party doesn't last forever. We need balance. We need sleep. We can't go crank speed for too long. We get older. We find balance. We stop on our own. Herion, cocaine, nicotine, even pot can be addictive. All these drugs can also be cast aside by most people when they really see they are not working for them. For most people NO drugs are hard drugs and most self-limit. For some people, ANYTHING can become a train wreck. I don't see ANY drugs as bad, X and pot have terrible outcomes from some individuals, but they should be legal. Behaviour and outcome should direct where the state gets involved with the individuals who use drugs. The molecules themselves have little to do with outcomes. I suspect you may be just as wrong about the muslim religion. I don't know enough about it, but I can say that from my personal and close group experience that there are no "good or bad" drug molecules or "hard of soft" drugs. Only individual outcomes with the majority being benign.
I'm sure they would gladly give up data for U.S. passengers. Does the EU want it? No.
A very interesting piece about security on airports can be found here
i on.billofrights.html and I wonder which ones still are working amendments.
So when are the people stand up and make some more tea in Boston? Or do you believe that the second amendment was just so you go squirrel hunting?
Looking at http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitut
1. Sort of
2. Sort of
3. Yes
4. Nope
5. Nope
6. Sorry, no
7. Not sure
8. No
9. Not sure
10. Well, they say "or", so I would say yes on a technicality.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Along those lines... what are they going to do if you say you don't have one?
You know, besides pull you out of line, stick you in room 101....
I've heard time and again about ubiquitous cameras in Britain... I don't know about the rest of Europe, but if they act in any similar manner, then any praise for their protection of their citizens' privacy rights in this seems pretty silly to me. Perhaps I'm wrong?
How about a rational one? Terrorists are not an army-they are an international organized crime syndicate. Those have been, and would be, handled perfectly well through good intelligence and police work. Just like always.
Oh, and (mod away!) I don't particularly care that they blew up the WTC's. 3000 people? Look at the annual death toll from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or auto accidents sometime. Where would all that money really be better spent?
Finally, not everyone who hates the Republicans loves the Democrats. We'd not have political parties at all if I had my way.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
So far, from the opinions I have gathered, being required to show ID and other papers arbitrarily demanded by authorities ranks pretty highly.
This is why the flap about illegal immigration in the U.S. is so insidious. The only way to "secure the border" is to require all people on U.S. soil to carry ID all the time. Otherwise the border becomes a single point of failure, and once you're in you can get away with anything because in a free country everything that is not forbidden is permitted.
In the old Soviet Union everything that was not permited was forbidden, leaving people in a situation where they had to ask permission to do almost anything. I worked with a Soviet Georgian in the early '90's whom at first didn't understand that there was no form you had to fill out to make a long distance phone call. In the Soviet lab he'd worked in previously the procedure for making a long distance call was to file for permission, specifying who you were going to call and why, and then you were allowed access to the phone when (if) permission was granted.
This kind of routine intervention and restriction of citizen's lives is the eyes of some the only way to keep the country "safe". But others might ask: is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be bought at the price of chains and slavery?.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Were talking about tourists and business travellers not immigrants. If they were coming to live in the US sure - but going on a holiday? Europeans flying to the US are not that big on emigrating to the US. We usually have far better lives back home than the US can offer (income/benefits/democracy).
Who do you think the police will be stopping more often?
a. Fat, ugly, old women
b. Attractive young women
Your point is good (and also creepy), but I think there's a more general case. It's probably this way in other places too, but in the US, law enforcement generally falls hardest on the lower classes.
For example, who's more likely to get convicted of drug offenses: an inner-city black man, or a rich white kid?
>1. What would have been a better response to Middle East Terrorists destroying the 2 tallest building in the world, right in NYC?
well, considering the WTC hasn't been the tallest building in the world (or even the us) since 1973.
I would consider spending billions more on education a better start.
for the price of the war in Iraq we could have built to World trade centers in every single state (well maybe not hawaii, with their earth conditions) and still had resources left over to kill the actuall terorists.
The "War on Terror" is mythological propganda. The real war is religious fundamentalists vs. religious fundamentalists. *snarky*
> That's pretty much all the rights you have at someone else's border: to go home.
Agreed, as an individual that's all the rights you have.
What's irritating is that governments don't have the guts to insist on reciprocity with the US.
Brazil did - and started fingerprinting Americans coming in.
Britain, on the other hand, instead enforced a law that let's you be extradited to the US for 'crimes' that were committed in the UK and aren't even crimes here.... reciprocity?
no taxation without representation!
It's a shame that, so many times, politics make people or businesses play piggie in the middle.
The two legal systems have a stand off, and in the process airlines, which were previously
able to do business without fear of fines, now risk $6000 per passenger fines.
Now, I imagine that this would be a hollow threat, as the airline industry would have
a powerful enough lobby to make sure the correct phone calls are made. However, so many
other industries would be hung out to dry in a situation like this.
The thing is, what is going to be the net gain for the US, besides gathering lots of
data about other people.
From the perspective out an outsider, I have seen the US go from being flavour of the
month (in the early 90's) to being somewhere people are fairly indifferent to, to a place
some people are openly dispising.
In my next incarnation, I hope to come back as a code monkey.
Oh?
You're walking down the street, just heading to the nearest Quik-E Mart. A cop car rolls by, turns around, and pulls up next to you. They ask you to stop. If you got your hands in your pockets, you can be sure they'll want you to pull 'em out slowly. Afterall, people have been shot pulling out wallets.
They ask who are you and what are you doing here. It's just a regular street. Sure, there's a few crummy neighbors around here but it's not like there's drive-bys every other day. Oh, you'll do as they say in a calm and orderly fashion. It could be cold and rainy or you were in a hurry. It doesn't matter. They got questions and they'll get answers. I mean, you're not a criminal, are you?
Terrorist: Yes/No?
No wonder things are so fucked up. All this innuendo and inference. Just ask the damn question. Here's an example: "Do you believe in killing people for the glory of your God?" If the answer is, "yes", that person goes in the terrorist category, and we put "Yes" in the Terrorist data field.
<napoleon>Well, Duh.</napoleon>
I think this is more about paranoia and the desire of, in some cases, rather ignorant (but well meaning?) people to show who is the boss.
Pushing innocent people around does not phase a terrorist. I doubt a layman threatening a lawyer with a law suit has much of an effect on the lawyer either. I'm sure some measures are effective and will serve to protect the public. However the question is with regard to the measures that are clearly not effective and serve only to harm innocent bystanders.
Every time I have come from overseas, through an airport here in Canada, I feel like I am treated like a cow. Frankly I find it an insult. Frankly for international traffic between Canada and the USA I feel an open boarder is appropriate. How is it that 300+ million Americans can travel within the USA without this bullshit and 30+ million Canadians can travel within Canada without this bullshit, yet if a Canadian happens to visit the USA we are threatened by our boarder guards? And it happens on BOTH sides? The answer is very simple. This has almost NOTHING to do with security. Its all about collecting taxes... customes taxes.
Canadian customs officials are far more interested in asserting their authority over Canadians than they are over Americans. I'm sure Americans will say the same thing.
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The desire to control and assert "authority" reminds me of many years ago when I did programming in a small company of about 40 employees. We had 3 departments who used the computer. There was a terribly under-employed operator who felt it was his job to guard the printer. Well - he didn't call it that... he called it distributing the printouts. To put this into context... the company owned one (1) 300 line per minute printer and ran a mini computer with some terminals hooked up and did a daily backup. Who here would think this would require a staff of three (3) people? A systems programmer and two (2) operators? Anyone? Lord - what a joke!
Any well managed company would have fired the bloke and told the systems programmer to do the backups... because there was NO NEED for a systems programmer... Besides the guy didn't know how to program, and there was no systems programming required anyways. He was a glorified and over paid systems administrator and not a very good one at that... but I digress.
Our computer operator guarded the printer. Programmers had to routinely wait for hours for him to get off his ass and put a printout in the tray. User's had to wait also, but not as long. Once the printout was retrived from the tray we could confer with the user's if necessary and user's could confer with us. But we all had to wait while this guy took his sweet time. And of course for "security" reasons, programmers were not allowed to touch the printer. Programmers could write the code that ran all of the company's business interests... but we couldn't touch the printer.
I did take over the administration of that mess. I got rid of the systems programmer and the operators and promoted the secretary and she did a fine job. Programers got their own printouts and were more than happy to put user's printouts in the proper bin! Wow! over $100,000 per year in salvaged salaries and no complaints after that.
Just like the under-employed systems programmer and the two subordinate operators, customs officials will also strive to create a justification for their jobs. But does it really stand up to scrutiny?
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Analogy to the boarder guards? Once you are in the USA you can travel without being treated like a cow. Once Americans are in Canada they can travel without being treated like a cow. But from one stockyard to the other... we get treated like cows.
The thing is that if we try to gain select country priviledges with regard to boarder travel then we get accused of things that boarder on racizm. This simply leads to a police state. Frankly I do not think a "war on TERROR" justifies our authorities terrorizing innocent travelers to the extent that they do. Very little of what they have done in the past can be justified and its getting worse.
Actually, the only thing separating us here in western Europe from the terrorists is the Atlantic Ocean.
Call me a Troll, but I feel safer going for a vacation in Turkey than I do visiting a conference in the US.
-- Your Friendly Euro-trash neighbour
It is an information grab by Big Brother, plain and simple.
Yes. I transitted through a US airport recently. I was not going to or from a US destination. It was the same flight number before and after the transit stop and I didn even know we were stopping there until the day before the flight.
I assumed we (the passengers) would be put in a transit lounge and board our on-going flight when ready. No. What happened was we had to collect our luggage, exit customs, visit the airport carpark for a few minutes, check in, go through all the security checks again and then continue on. Hours of crap.
All passengers were finger printed and photographed.
Fuck the USA. I'm never going near there again.
Not that long ago this post would have read as a sarcastic piece instead of a true event. It would have been the equivalent of "I took a plane from Siberia to Florida and boy was it cold when I landed". Sad state of affairs.
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)