Slashdot Mirror
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.
This is precisely why I won't fly into a US airport. Fuck 'em, you country no longer interests me. I admire you attitude. If you want to overfly Rome, you better do as the Romans demand, otherwise, go somewhere else.
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.
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.
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!
The US isn't the world's superpower?
Name another state that can project tens to hundreds of thousands of troops across the planet and fight for eight years.
Name another state that has more than three aircraft carriers.
Name another state that has more than ten aircraft carrier battlegroups.
Name another state with more than half of the top 500 super computers - http://www.top500.org/stats/list/34/countries
The United States has a list of strengths no other nation or union of nations possesses. Russia has the natural resources, military technology and nukes but not the industrial base and ability to project power. While the US got involved with Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan while bolstering South Korea, Israel and Kuwait, Russia was bogged down in Chechnya.
The EU has the industrial might and military technology and a good number of nukes, but little ability to project power and no political will to do so. Only the UK and France regularly use offensive military operations, but their militaries are a fraction of the US. The UK has maybe 3 division equivalents while France has 2.
China has older industrial might, older military technology and some nukes, but like Russia and the EU and everyone else can't project power. Going across the Straights of Taiwan will be the biggest thing China could do and even in the next 20 years, thats iffy.
That sort of attitude is exactly why the US is not a superpower any more, but hasn't noticed it yet. You assume that a big military is what matters. How stereotypically egotistical!
Where has US military power got it in recent years? It has toppled a government in a far away land, at a vast cost to its economy, not to mention losing hundreds of military personnel and posting hundreds of thousands away from their families for extended periods.
Meanwhile, the US remains the world's biggest polluter and US citizens are more addicted to cars than anyone else. And yet, the US has relatively limited natural resources, and is obviously not immune to any negative effects on the environment.
The US used to be a centre of serious scientific research a few years ago, with a brain drain effect on other leading nations. Now the brain drain is reversing: people who went over to the US a few years ago are coming back home, and we're grabbing some of the top people from the US instead.
The US has a population where more people believe in divine creation than evolution, and US politics is heavily influenced by the religious right.
At a more basic level of education, while the CIA World Factbook may claim a literacy rate of 99% for the US, other studies question the effective reading skills of as much as half of the adult population. Likewise, the US increasingly lags the best nations in surveys of basic mathematical skills.
I have had many discussions on Slashdot with American citizens proud of their nation's economic power, and confident of how much better the US economy was doing because of things like lower holiday allowances and fewer safeguards for employees. I think we can pretty much see that particular house of cards for what it always was at this point, and everything from US stock and housing markets to the value of the US dollar are being punished by just about everyone else in the world accordingly.
Looking at more elementary economic factors, what does the US actually make any more? Fundamentally, quality of life in a healthy economy depends on being able to produce useful products and provide useful services. You don't get points in the long run if all you do is "manage" things and provide "financial services" and other secondary details.
So if you're from the US and you still think you're a superpower, knock yourself out. Just please don't then complain in 20 years, when you don't have the resources to run your military any more, and it wouldn't matter if you did because you couldn't afford to pay the soldiers and sailors and airmen, and it wouldn't matter if you could because you wouldn't have enough skilled and educated people to keep the equipment up-to-date and operational.
Meanwhile, more enlightened nations, having educated their populations to increasingly high standards, advanced their understanding of science and engineering to design newer, better products, used their practical skills and natural resources to manufacture those products, paid attention to the world around them, developed mutually beneficial agreements with other nations to further all of these goals, and built their economies around these values, will be too polite to laugh (too much) at what's left of the US and the ignorance and blind faith that brought them down.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Some factual errors there kiddo
What does the United States make anymore?
Software
BZZTT! Wrong! Well, kinda wrong. If we're talking about commercial software, then you kinda have this one right - Apple for example. But Microsoft has its pony everywhere right now, especially in india (don't believe me? check out the last names in the 'about' box. How many of those are american?)
And then we have open-source, which again is all over the place.
Even games are made almost equally or less in the US than they used to be. MMO's are koreas pony. Ubisoft Montreal, DICE (Sweden).
Aircraft
Will skip this one, since i don't have the sufficient knowledge
Microprocessors
BZZZT! Wrong again!
Sure, intel is US-based. But the best fabs they have is Jerusalem based as far as i know. AMD/ATi is fabless and uses TSMC. Pretty much anyone who isn't intel is using TSMC or something in the likes of those, because making or mainatining a fab in the US is too expensive. Check it out - pretty much all of the components of this computer are made in Asia (CPU - Malaysia, RAM - China, LCD - china, and so on..). The only US thing about is the "Design by Apple in California" text..
Automobiles
Hahahah! Maybe from the perspective from a US consumer, since you all drive hummers and SUVs there. And is GM even still making cars? Like, NORMAL cars? Right now Daewoo is making cars with Chevy brand. How low is that? The rest of the world enjoys the comfort, safety and economy of japanese (toyota, honda) and european (renault, volksvagen, audi..) cars.
Food
If your country cannot even provide food for its own populace, its in for some deep shit. Take a look at some african nations right now for an example. This is NOT a saving grace of ANY kind.
Btw, this was not meant as a flame, but i guess it went the rant-way. Whatever, i got karma to burn, and some Americans here are overdue for their wake up.