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Canada's Airlines Face a Privacy Dilemma
Interoperable writes "Canada's airlines are caught between a rock and a hard place in the face of new US regulations that require them to collect and hand over personal information about passengers. Handing over information regarding a passenger's name, gender and birth-date may violate Canadian privacy laws but merely flying over American airspace is conditional on doing exactly that. It seems that the long arms of the TSA are eager to grope at Canadians taking a shortcut to Toronto; no doubt to prevent any terrorist attacks on Lake Huron."
.. to do exactly what they say, or suffer?
Now I didn't see this one coming.
So I say ever other country starts finger-printing and frisking Americans just as a matter of policy.
See how long before the state departments starts whining about that.
This is precisely why I won't fly into a US airport. Fuck 'em, you country no longer interests me.
Flying around US airspace between Canadian cities isn't as bad as it looks on a flat 2d projection map. They should probably just avoid any issues and stick to Canadian airspace.
It's just not worth the hassle. There are places in America I'd still quite like to visit, but I'm not going to bother. Being made to endure the insanity of US airport "security" processes is not acceptable to me, and I'm not alone: Aside from all the other people who have decided a US vacation isn't worth the effort, go ask American tourism operators how they feel about it all.
It "MAY" be in reference to flights from the western parts of Canada that frequently fly the west->east part mostly over the northern midwest states (something about winds I believe)
The flights east -> west usually do fly over lake Huron though.
Since we are not allowed to know if even one, single, lone, terrorist attack in the US has been thwarted by these information lists just what can a citizen do? Sending mail to a congressman or voting according to a position on more of this information collection is absurd as we simply are not allowed to have a clue as to whether this tactic works at all. For all I know perhaps this nonsense simply creates jobs that fat cat politicians hand out to their buddies.
Ask any Chinese person in the USA how they got to the US, and they will say thru-Toronto.
Ask any Celebrity how they managed to visit Cuba, they will say thru-Toronto.>
Watching Toronto Airports seems prudent.
Handing over information regarding a passenger's name, gender and birth-date may violate Canadian privacy laws
What's worse is that the TSA can't even get any of those three facts right in many cases.
Last Name: "Alphabetic, no numeric or special characters, except dash ( - ) and single quote ( ' ). Do not include suffixes (e.g., jr.). Truncate names longer than 35 characters to 35 characters".
First Name: "Secure Flight allows first initial only;" otherwise, same as last name. Honorifics are not to be placed in the name.
Middle Name: same as first name.
So if any of your three names doesn't perfectly fit this convention, you will be hit with a $100 Change fee, including if you don't have a middle name. This is particularily problematic for asian, greek, or many other nationalities whose names include special characters or when translated to english result in a name longer than 35 characters.
Gender: Once again, the TSA fails to account for any manner of diversity in the human population. Anyone who doesn't conform to the gender stereotype fixed to your official documents will be subject to additional (unwanted) attention. I wonder if they'll be offering sensitivity training for the crossdressers, transgendered, butch lesbians, and intersexed amongst us. And god help you if the Driver's Bureau screws up, or you live in a state that won't alter birth records after surgery, or one of a dozen other very real problems.
Birthdate: Did you know a lot of people who immigrate to this country don't know when they were born? In fact, in developing countries, it's quite common for people not to know their actual age. People assume a person's date of birth is a fixed thing -- how could you screw that up? And if you live in this country, you don't have to worry about this anyway. Well, remember that until the mid-90s the Social Security Administration wasn't so on about immediately registering newborns -- and did you know some people choose to have their kids at home? Some people don't get a birth certificate until they're five years old because parents just plain forget -- and for a variety of reasons, sometimes they fudge the actual date. Try getting this changed later -- it's fun.
In short, there's no real security being added here. All of it can be defeated quite easily in any event by putting a gun to the head of your wife, kid, or anything else you don't feel like losing. And as we make these security restrictions increasingly ethnocentric, the terrorists will adapt their strategies accordingly, because the payoff is so damn good! They sucked the US economy of trillions of dollars and all they had to do was crash four passenger planes. We offer the best "bang for the buck", literally and figuratively. It doesn't matter if they make it ten thousand times more difficult and expensive to pull another 9/11 job -- it's still an amazingly good deal for the terrorists.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Canada started using U.S. data a couple of years ago. Sadly Canada this is the downside of our arrangement with you. You don't get just the good part of this arrangement.
Depending on where you live, you already are. I don't see it as a problem, unless the majority (or larger minorities) start into the racism that they blame the "white" man for. Honestly, it's really weird to be one of the few white people in the area. Not for the sake of being the minority, but the racism that can accompany it. For the most part though, people are people, and treat you equally. It's the exceptions that are the problems, and the GP post is one of them.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Speaking as a Canadian...I think we should tell those paranoid xenophobes to go fuck themselves.
Jean Chrétien had a lot of flaws, but at least he had the balls to tell the Americans to stop pushing us around.
If they are concerned about passenger security then they can damn well set up more of those "you're guilty until proven innocent" security-theatre checkpoints on their own soil and search people getting off the plane. Hell, they can even build special security airports at the borders to inspect people's shoes and water bottles.
(Sad to think that would probably be a better use of their funding than most of the stupid crap they've wasted their money on in the last 9 years)
Go ahead and mod me down American nationalist zealots ... I have karma to burn and I'm tired of putting up with America's bullshit.
[/rant]
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
Thanks God, the war on terrorism works so well.
Unfortunately, the terrorists are indeed doing spectactularly well: our nations are perpetually living in fear, our governments appear to be running around in a blind panic trying to ensure an impossible level of security, and worst of all, the bad guys hardly have to lift a finger to achieve this because our own governments and the media are doing all the legwork for them.
I still don't understand why we use terms like "terrorist" that somehow seem to elevate what they do, instead of just calling them what they are—murderers, attempted murderers, inciters of violent crime—and throwing them into the justice system with the same contempt we would treat any other criminal who had committed the same acts, with no big speeches, no over-dramatised security theatre, no grandiose gestures. If our political leaders had shown any spine after the 9/11 attacks and the high profile bombings in Europe, then the term "War on Terror" would be nothing more than a footnote under "Streisand Effect" on Wikipedia, and hundreds of millions of people would be leading happier lives.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.