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EU Wants Air Passenger Data Collected
An anonymous reader sends news of the EU following in the footsteps of the US in that they are contemplating requiring all 27 member states to collect data on airline passengers and to retain it for up to 13 years. No centralized database would be created; instead states would be encouraged to store and to share their own data as needed. All states would have to pass enabling laws before the measure could come into effect. The rules would not apply to flights entirely within the EU. The proposal is part of an anti-terrorism package that also includes tighter laws to control hate speech and bomb-making instructions.
Damnit! Now we EUers can't feel smug anymore and belittle our less free friends in the US ;-))
...at least they'll never be able to take away from us the fact we never elected George Bush.
;)
Well, at least unless there's a major change in international politics sometime soon I hope not
[Sarcasm mode on]
Heck, let's just cut to the chase and have an international law that everything and anything has to be logged and stored for all eternity. That should save a few decades of protesting against dumb legislature that will eventually get in through the back door anyway.
Presumably if storage capacity where unlimited we'd be seeing calls to log the position of every atom in the world!
[Sarcasm mode off]
I spent some time in Italy this summer. It is a very lovely country with amazing food. One thing that struck me as strange was the extremely lax security at the airport. Me and my party literally walked through without anyone checking anything at any time. They didn't even LOOK at our passports. I wanted them to stamp mine so I would have the Italy stamp, but the man just waved us on past. I did notice though that all the people the men with machine guns where searching all where Arabic looking men.
I had a stop over in Germany on my way back to the states. Every single person gets a pat-down and a metal detector wand treatment... serveral times. The passport guy in Germany in fact gave us a hard time because we didn't have the Italy stamp. We explained that they wouldn't even look at our passports and he just shook his head and made some comment about the way things are run down there.
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
New Spanish security rules likely to cause airport delays
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OK! Let'em choke on all that data! There's no way that they could keep it all straight - and that's assuming there's no errors!
The genie is out of the bottle, let's give them what they want to the 666 power!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Say what you want about the U.S., but we don't outlaw 'hate speech' here. We have outlawed bomb-making instructions since 1997 (Thanks, Diane Feinstein!), but only those with that give instructions for the purposes of violating federal law. You can still read about the basic chemistry, and for that you just need to go to your local library or read any of a number of articles publicly available on the Internet.
My blog
How exactly does one define 'hate speech', and separate it from freedom of speech (one man's free speech is another's hate speech), and how exactly does one separate home chemistry sets from bomb making equipment, and mere discussions on bombs and explosives (they're not exactly secrets) from people who are actually going to use them?
I'm also not sure how collecting data on all passengers will help them with the small minority they want to track.
I seriously think the Soviets covertly won the Cold War after the end was declared every time I hear crap like this. What's next? Are we all going to celebrate the October Revolution and call each other "Comrade" while the Secret Police read our mail and make people disappear?
The game.
Shit that doesn't work here.
ACK
I know it's Europe where the ideas of freedom of speech are a little different than on this side of the pond, but still every time I hear or read hate speech I shudder. Who gets to define what "hate speech" is?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Terrorism is really begining to be an excuse for everything... What frighten me is to see that in France, the president talks about terrorism like an imminent threat against our country that nearly requiere martial law, while our last terrorism attemps go back 10 years ago and we have been livin peacefully since.
Also I don't understand the priorities. How many people were killed by terrorist actions last year in the EU? 100? 1000? And how many traffic deaths were there? How many died from obesity or diseases related to smoking?
If they are concerned about protecting lives they should track how much candy or tobacco/alcohol people buy and use. If they monitor/forbid overconsumption of that it would probably save more lives.
Yes, it would really suck to be blown up buy some nutter but the fact remains that I'm so much more likely to get killed in a car accident that the "terror threat" hardly deserves mentioning.
I just don't get it. Why are people so dumb that they fall for these tricks.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Is there ANY evidence at all that if this stuff (privacy violations, ID checks, data collection, profiling etc) was in place in the US before 9/11 that it would have had any effect in stopping the attacks? Or would it have stopped the London Underground bombings? Or the Spanish train bombs? Or the Bali bombs? Or any of the other terrorist attacks of the past 50 years?
Measures like reinforced cockpit doors are good. As are measures to make passports harder to forge (including measures requiring that the information on the passport be stored electronically as well as physically and that said information be digitally signed against tampering such that only the governments have the private keys to digitally sign the information) And the measures designed to stop bombs from being taken onto aircraft disguised as otherwise harmless looking objects.
Unfortunatly, the world has turned into a mass of sheeple who only care about their bread (i.e. mass-produced consumer goods made by the lowest bidder and full of hidden unwanted stuff like lead paint and illicit drugs) and their circuses (i.e. mass-produced media content made by big corporations designed to keep you distracted whilst other big corporations ruin the planet in the name of the almighty Dollar/Euro/Pound/Yen/etc) and are unlikely to stand up to the crap the governments of the world want to inflict on them (especially since the few people who DO care enough to stand up to the governments end up in secret jails that make Auschwitz look like Club Med)
This is just another of the knee jerk reactions that we have seen during the last 6 years. Politicians make a show of "competence" in order to protect the safety of the people. Classic "cover your ass" reaction.
And you are right. The amount of people killed by terror in EU is minimal compared to traffic accidents, workplace accidents, domestic violence, pollution related deaths etc. But we are used to the above, but *terror* is new and unpredictable, hence it *seems* more scary.
Sadly, the governments (and mainstream media) are helping the terrorists, by fueling the fear for terror, by constantly talking about it and making senseless measures against it.
----
An annoyed European
Get it here! How To Make A Bomb .
(My personal reaction after reading earlier comments by Mr. Frattini, who's not only the EU's anti-terrorism muppet but is also responsible for "Fundamental Rights and citizenship", hahaha.)
This proposal seems odd for the same reasons. If you want to blow up an airplane, you find people with clean records and get them on board. Once the plane goes down, 13 years of archived records won't do you a bit of good. On the other hand, if you are trying to conduct espionage for other political or economic reasons, then this kind of data makes sense.
Have gnu, will travel.