Flying To the US? Pay In Cash

pin_gween writes to point us to a report in the Telegraph that British travelers using a credit card to purchase their ticket may now have their credit card and email accounts inspected by US authorities. This has been true since October, when the US and the EU agreed about what information the US could demand from airlines and how this information would be handled. But details of the agreement only recently came to light following a Freedom of Information request. The US says it will "encourage" US carriers to reciprocate to any requests by European governments. From the article: "[T]he Americans are entitled to 34 separate pieces of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data... Initially, such material could be inspected for seven days but a reduced number of US officials could view it for three and a half years. Should any record be inspected during this period, the file could remain open for eight years...'It is pretty horrendous, particularly when you couple it with our one-sided extradition arrangements with the US,' said [a human rights activist]. 'It is making the act of buying a ticket a gateway to a host of personal email and financial information. While there are safeguards, it appears you would have to go to a US court to assert your rights.'"

Comments

TO our european friends

[kimvette]

I would like to apologise on behalf of our idiotic politicians. Remember not all of us are Dubya-worshipping sheep, and that many of us think that American foreign policy is every bit as stupid as you think it is. Perhaps instead of visiting America and spending your tourist dollars here, you might decide to visit South America or Asia first, or perhaps Canada, and when you do write letters to politicians at the Federal and local levels here explaining that you really wanted to visit America, but cannot in good conscience spend your vacation dollars on a nation which is going backwards rather than forwards where civil and privacy rights are concerned, and you might want to voice your opinion on American-made goods as well. Dollars speak louder than anything else.

Re:TO our european friends

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The funny thing is - when you KNOW someone is trying to drop your airplanes out of the air - and this isn't being paranoid - that big hole in the ground in New York supports the claim, then taking precautions to try and identify problem passengers BEFORE the plane takes off seems only prudent doesn't it?

Knee-jerkers like you always leave off the most important qualifier when talking about "taking precautions" - namely that of effectiveness. All the data-mining in the world won't stop terrorism because the characteristics that you can mine for produce way too many false positives to be effective.

Then realize that airplanes aren't the only possible target and that if you really want to apply these useless data-mining techniques to protecting all possible targets, we will have to go way past that dictionary definition of fascism to pull it off.

Places to avoid

[geoff lane]

I try hard not to travel to countries such as North Korea and USA where there is a basic assumption that I am a criminal and not to be trusted.

The UK

[Brandybuck]

Isn't the UK the nation that has video cameras monitoring the streets? Given it's pervasive CCTV surveillance of citizens, this news would seem like a breath of fresh enlightenment.

p.s. For all you knuckleheads out there, I am not agreeing with this move! I'm only commenting on the irony of the UK bitching about it.

Re:Better yet

[VJ42]

I decided not to go to the US ever since they started wanting my finger prints, and told me they'd smash locks on my suitcase in order to inspect it, so I shouldn't use them(If you want to look inside it, ask me and I'll unlock it, however I'm not going to let thieves have it easy). With Paris, Berlin, Rome, Prague etc. all under an hour away, and tickets from as little as 99p why should I spend my money in the US, when it's cheaper to fly to mainland Europe? Throw in the extra "Romance", History and Culture* of the major Europian cities what does the US have to draw my tourist £££s any more?

*No offence meant, the US has it's merits and is unique in it's own way, but American culture is very different from European culture; When some one says "American culture", my first thought is of McDonalds if some one talks about "European culture" I think of the Renaissance. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just a very different one. As for History, this link sums up my thoughts: http://www.fatbadgers.co.uk/Britain/old.htm ;)

Midwest votes, not dollars.

[SuperBanana]

Dollars speak louder than anything else.

No they don't. Votes do. And more specifically, votes in the middle of the country.

• Ever been to the midwest? They have the nicest highways, "community centers", police and fire departments.
• Farmers are paid to grow crops people will never eat; food is thrown away by the ton, or bought by the government to rot in warehouses (powdered milk is a great example. Google that one.)
• Corn syrup/high fructose corn syrup has largely replaced sugar in much of America's "prepared" foods. It's horribly bad for you: because it's a slightly different sugar, your body's mechanisms for "I feel full" aren't triggered, and you over-eat.
• 10% of every drop of gasoline you put in your car's tank is ethanol that is produced by the most wasteful, expensive method: corn. Brazil is producing huge amounts of ethanol off of sugar cane, which produces eight times more energy. You can't import Brazilian ethanol, though. US won't allow it, because it endangers corn-based ethanol.
• Defense Department bases with little or no strategic value keep barely-educated young people "employed".
• You have the midwest to thank for SUV emissions exceptions: it was originally intended for farm vehicles. Had midwestern senators voted for emissions standards that would force ma+pa kettle to dump $1k into their tractor so it doesn't spew nitrous oxide and unburned hydrocarbons- they would find themselves unemployed next election.
• Midwesterners get hail that destroys their crops, and Uncle Sam is there to hand them a big fat check. Hail damages my house or destroys the car I need to use to get to work in the northeast, and Uncle Sam says "gee, sorry to hear that."

Whoever brings home the most bacon and has "good old American [Christian] [family] values", gets votes. In the midwest, the government works for you. Everywhere else, you work for the government. The south is much of the same- the Tennessee Valley Authority? West and Northeast tax dollars giving southerners cheap electricity. Air conditioning is a luxury: heat in the wintertime in the northeast IS NOT. Guess what happened last year? Republicans drastically cut fuel assistance programs in the northeast.

The majority of midwestern voters are ignorant and uneducated (especially in civics issues). Come election time, they don't give a damn about anything outside their town, or anyone except themselves and their family. Most of the reason they're all pissed off about the Iraq war now is because their sons and daughters are coming home in body bags. It has nothing to do with the fact that we arrogantly invaded a sovereign nation plunging it into a civil war...

Re:Midwest votes, not dollars.

[AHumbleOpinion]

"Dollars speak louder than anything else."

No they don't. Votes do. ...

You are absolutely correct. ...And more specifically, votes in the middle of the country. [snipped long winded nonsensical attacks on midwesterners]

Now you go off the deep end. As someone who has lived in dense urban areas of the east coast and the west coast I can testify that there is no shortage of dumb-ass sheep showing up at the polls, there is no shortage of pork projects (civil and military), etc. You merely seem to prefer your sheep of one political orientation over the other. Secondly, you seem woefully ignorant when discussing strategic military issues. Your suggestion that putting military assets in the middle of the country has no strategic value is nonsensical. The center of a nation *is* a strategic point, coastal assets are far more vulnerable. Finally, while pork projects certainly do exists bases in the midwest are not inherently pork. Coastal land has always been far more expensive to acquire, and selling such expensive land and relocating to inexpensive land makes financial sense. I'd say some local bases have stayed in coastal states as pork. In short, I think the pork is fairly evenly distributed across the nation.

Re:Better yet

[wass]

No offence meant, the US has it's merits and is unique in it's own way, but American culture is very different from European culture; When some one says "American culture", my first thought is of McDonalds if some one talks about "European culture" I think of the Renaissance.

This is a very common misconception amongst Europeans, that American culture doesn't exist beyond Walmart, McDonalds, and the Simpsons. Your statement is highly misleading because it looks at current American consumer companies while contrasting that to one of European history. For American culture in comparison to your European Renaissance comment, for example, you could consider the allure of the Wild West ("Cowboys & Indians", Dodge City and Boot Hill, railroads in the great westward expansion, etc).

If you really want to consider American culture, how about American music (jazz, blues, country/western, bluegrass, soul, rap, hip-hop). And of course important American influences on rock&roll. How about American dance forms, which deviated from the formal ballroom dances of Europe with 'street dancing' (eg Swing in NYC in the 20's). And also American contributions (eg in Miami, NYC, and Puerto Rico) to Salsa and other Latin dance and musical styles. How about American contributions to literature, considering these American Nobel Laureates in literature.

And of course there's a whole world of culture in the conflicts in American history. For example, with slavery and the Civil War, and the continuing struggle for Civil Rights including Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the whole associated musical/dance/literary/art culture with this (eg, I'd highly recomend seeing Sweet Honey in the Rock if you get a chance).

I could go on and on. But long story short, anybody claiming that American culture doesn't exist is exhibiting an unfortunate ignorance which ironically is a common stereotype of how unworldly Americans are these days.

Europeans: Come to Canada instead

[whitehatlurker]

We have much friendlier people, better scenery and fewer hurricanes.

Re:sounds good

[Captain Splendid]

I concur on the immigration officers. I'm all for doing your job to a high degree of competency, but smile fucker, you're the welcome wagon, remember?