Slashdot Mirror
E.U. Preps for Fight over Passenger Data
narramissic writes "Following last week's signing of a new temporary agreement to pass over airline passenger data to American authorities last week, European Union parliamentarians are gearing up for a fight over data privacy. Sylvia Kaufmann, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), commented that 'The fact that the CIA, an agency whose activities, torturing and kidnapping, this house is investigating in a special committee, will have access to passenger data is the real scandal, especially when one considers that the right of redress held by U.S. citizens is not extended to E.U. citizens.'"
...which might make this data thing seem like childs play.
Theres an article currently on the BBC about possibly tagging passengers during flights and around the airport.
Come in number 5, your time is up.
liqbase
Sylvia Kaufmann, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), commented that 'The fact that the CIA, an agency whose activities, torturing and kidnapping ...
I'm struggling to understand her opening position on this matter (or why such a blatantly pointed statement is considered "news for nerds").
especially when one considers that the right of redress held by U.S. citizens is not extended to E.U. citizens.
Oh well, in that case there's no problem, since the Republicans are taking that right away from US Citizens. Now all the DoD has to do is declare you an enemy combatant and there is no proof, no trial, no appeals, and no redress.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Who cares about Maher Arar, or any one particular person? He's an ay-rab, for God's sake, he would suffer even worse in his home country!
So a few people have to suffer for the good of all. I'd rather be safe than free!
(Come on, you know that's what the ignorant rabid right's going to say in response to this, lol!)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
What right of redress held by U.S. citizens? If there is any such thing, most US citizens don't know anything about it. The CIA, along with the NSA and a whole lot of other **A's, do as they please. I think somebody may have fallen for an advertizing blurb.
This is all rather ironic, given that a security expert in the UK has finally stood up and stated the forbidden-but-obvious: all the added security doesn't really help, it just creates different (but equally damaging, if not worse) targets.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The European Parliament doesn't have as much power in Europe as it should. This kind of issues are decided, at the end of the day, by the states foreign ministers and they will not piss USA off.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
I for one will never travel even close to the new Nazi state USA.
The unholy war on terrorism is all but lost already since it's obviously used as a pretext to cut civil liberties and privacy by a corrupt government.
Bush and his entire government of corporate whores need a serious kick in the nuts if they should have any at all!
I wonder how long it will take until even the last moron understands that this system is flawed.
Don't get me wrong, I do not approve of terrorism and killing random people.
Things are getting really ugly and it's not Ben Laden's fault. There has always been terrorism, but it has never been used in such a malicious way to suppress civil rights. And don't think it'll get any better, even if (by pure chance) they ever get ahold of Ben Laden.
Incompetence and greed rule the USA and it even starts to taint other countries. I wish I had but 5 minutes alone with Dubya, he'd never forget them...
Looking at the scandals in the past decade, most of the EU ministers are either paedophiles or otherwise blackmailed by the CIA for control. Europe is losing it's independence to CIA spies. The paedophile scandals in all the major EU states (Portugal, France, Britain, Belgium, UK at least) indicate that there is either a lot of them among politicians, or a concerted effort to entrap politicians, media people, police and powerful businessmen around the world for leverage and coercion purposes. All investigation is stymied into the upper echelons of the paedophile rings, which is easily achievable if you have the right people under your thumb.
In addition at least Chile, Australia and Mexico have had rings exposed leading straight to organized paedophile rings used by the people and parties in power. This sounds like a bad conspiracy theory, until you read the hundred or so articles easily found via google from paedophile rings. Articles from the past years with a common theme: People who've been exposed, with indications of larger connections, well organized, well financed paedophiles who've managed to stymie the investigations. An intelligence organization is behind this sort of organized activity. And intelligence organization wanting to exert it's influence and control over other countries and the resources to pull this kind of thing off.
You bring up a good point, and it's not brought up very often.
The success of these measures in passing both Congress and the American public in general, lie in that they're perceived as only being applicable to non-citizens.
The Administration tried for a while to assert that it had the authority to detain citizens as "enemy combatants," as in the case of Jose Padilla, but it pretty much has given up this angle. (They more or less threw in the towel and transferred him to Federal prison on conventional charges on the eve of when the USSC might have ruled against it.) They could certainly try doing it again, since no precendent was really set as a result of Padilla, but I suspect that there would be significant public outcry and the opinion of the courts would be rather dim.
Although you make fun of the "strange contradiction" of applying the Constitution only to citizens, I think that's a more popular interpretation than you think. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that it's not the correct one; I think the Constitution is pretty clear in outlining a relationship between citizens of the United States and their government. The relationship between foreigners and the USG should be goverened by the relationship between the foreign government and the U.S. government, hopefully in some sort of friendly, reciprocal fashion (e.g. 'protect our citizens when on your soil, and we'll protect your citizens while they're here'). If the foreign government doesn't like it, they can always bar their citizens from traveling to the United States, or declare war, or do any of the other things that soverign states do for relief against each other. At any rate, that interpretation of the Constitution isn't quite as outlandish as you make it seem -- it wouldn't surprise me if there were at least some Federal judges who espouse it, however quietly or academically.
Understanding this and taking it into account, I think helps make the response of the American public to the jurisprudential wranglings of the Bush administration more understandable. (Whether you agree with them or not is none of my business, but even if you disagree, understanding can be constructive.) So long as the new rules don't apply to U.S. citizens, the public outcry is limited. The electorate, while not particularly bright, is not quite so stupid as pundits on both the right and the left often make it out to be; they are basically self-interested, more than a trifle xenophobic, and there have been precious few arguments so far showing exactly how the new rules will negatively impact a basic white, middle-class, English-speaking, law-abiding, Christian family. Therefore, why should they care?
Talking about the Constitutional rights of foreigners -- or even making moral appeals about not torturing foreigners -- is not going to and has not impressed a great many Americans, and this is why I think there is not more widespread opposition to the policies of the Bush administration. Show, clearly and unequivocally, how these policies could be used against a typical red-state ethnic and religious majority, and you'd probably spark a change in government overnight.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So, IIUC, EU citizens have no right to hold a red dress, while US citizens do. What does this have to do with data about passenger fights ? Are US and EU citizens going to fight over a red dress on a plane ? IDQU.
http://www.itworld.com/Man/2688/061012eudatavote/i ndex.html
Franco Frattini, the European Commissioner in charge of justice issues, criticized Parliamentarians for being anti-American. "It's terrorism that is the problem, not the United States of America," he said.
The 9/11 terrorists used stolen passports. Passenger data, credit card reports as well as any secret no-fly lists would have been useless in stopping the terrorist attacks.
Breaking EU privacy laws and giving EU passenger data, credit card histories, Credit Card numbers and credit histories to CIA against the wishes of passengers and EU parliamentarians shows extreme contempt for the EU law and the European court's decision, our legal system and values.
If the EU laws are not respected and enforced by our own government, and respected by the companies who should abide by them, then what good are they?
Why should American law supercede EU law? We are not a part of United States. If USA fines European airlines, EU can fine American airlines double the amount.
Why should CIA's excuses for right-to-spy on EU citizens supercede our right to privacy that is stipulated in EU law?
Why is an EU commissioner advocating for the rights of CIA spies at the cost of EU citizens rights?
AJAX driven too? ;)
If you want our data, then we want yours... after all, if you've nothing to hide... then you've nothing to fear by having ex-communist countries and others having the goodies on Americans coming to visit them... and think of our children... and it's all in the fight against terrorists...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"The Saudi passports the hijackers carried were genuine, and so were the visas to the U.S. But investigators believe the hijackers obtained fresh passports after telling Saudi authorities they had "lost" their old ones, presumably to cover up trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Then, knowing that spanking-new passports would raise questions, the hijackers artificially aged them and forged entry and exit stamps -- probably with old-fashioned rubber stamps and ink pads -- to innocuous countries in the Middle East." 9/11 Hijackers: The Passport Scam: A new look at how the terrorists forged documents
Principles and ideals like liberty and freedom get sold out all the time in the name of the almighty dollar, or in this case, euro. It's been that way for a while now. Given the choice of retain your privacy and lose a few airlines to bankruptcy, or sell out your principles and keep those airlines in business, which wins? We see it time and again.
I don't see an end any time soon to the controversy between those who want to preserve their own rights and those who want to take those rights away in the name of "protection". I don't see any modern defenders of liberty and freedom anywhere. None who will put their money where their mouths are.
It's up to everyone of us. I try to do just that. I always wanted to take a vacation to visit the US, but I'm afraid I never will. For fear of being arrested, imprisonned, tortured, without an attorney and even without being told why, I prefer to stay here, or visit some other countries less hostile to foreigners. My data would probably not pose the faintest problem, but I refuse to take that risk: Errors can happen, so little the chance may be. I hope I'll manage to avoid any bussiness travel to te US.
In relation to what we could call "the Patriot(TM) climate", we have some people coming from London to our office sometimes. They used to come by plane : No more. For fear of bombs, but also of boring and long security checks, they now come via the Eurotunnel. So while some bussinesses benefit from all that climate, others will probably feel the damage.
One of those Europeans...
Some of the passports were stolen, as reported by the FBI earlier: http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,1120 9,601550,00.html
http://miami.indymedia.org/news/2006/09/5892.php