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."

Comments

US bullying and demanding other countries..

[sopssa]

.. to do exactly what they say, or suffer?

Now I didn't see this one coming.

Re:US bullying and demanding other countries..

[Anonymous Coward]

... and then they wonder why they're fast becoming a 3rd world country when nobody else wants to deal with them any more.

It's strange to watch, in modern times, an empire committing suicide through paranoia.

Re:US bullying and demanding other countries..

[QuoteMstr]

Isn't that exactly what we used to criticize the Soviet Union for doing? We stared into the abyss all right, but the abyss stared right back into us.

Re:US bullying and demanding other countries..

[couchslug]

We used to criticize the Soviets for everything, be it rational or not. :)

BTW we criticized them for not letting people LEAVE their borders, not for controlling their own airspace and controlling border ingress.

A country belongs to its people, not other people. Not its neighbors.

Those not liking how it runs its internal affairs or controls access to its territory are free to express their discontent by boycott and routing around the problem.

Re:US bullying and demanding other countries..

[Wyatt Earp]

Do you understand what a Third World country is?

"The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned or neutral with either capitalism and NATO." When the US pulls out of NATO and becomes neutral, then it will be a Third World country.

As for empire, the US is not imperial, it is a hegemony.

Re:US bullying and demanding other countries..

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Someone hijacks a flight passing through US airspace but not landing in it to pull off an attack similar to the attack on the World Trade Center.

To be honest with you, I just don't care anymore. If someone crashes a plane and kills a few thousand Americans, I no longer see that as adequate justification for the nonsense millions of air travellers have to put up with every single day. Sure have your minutes silence at the UN. Have a few for all those victims of starvation and genocide while you're at it.

But please, let me get a flight my country to another country and back without having to take off my shoes and belt, step through a perv machine, give up all my data to third party TSAs, and sit for an hour without a book, drink, mp3 player, laptop or the right to take a piss, just because you think you're so important that I might just hijack the plane, fly it across the Atlantic and crash it into your local Wal-mart.

Doesn't this violate...

[msauve]

Chaper 2, article 5 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation? I believe both the US and Canada are signatories. (actual document can be found here.

Each contracting State agrees that all aircraft of the other contracting States, being aircraft not engaged in scheduled international air services shall have the right, subject to the observance of the terms of this Convention, to make flights into or in transit non-stop across its territory and to make stops for non-traffic purposes without the necessity of obtaining prior permission, and subject to the right of the State flown over to require landing. Each contracting State nevertheless reserves the right, for reasons of safety of flight, to require aircraft desiring to proceed over regions which are inaccessible or without adequate air navigation facilities to follow prescribed routes, or to obtain special permission for such flights.

Now, I suppose the US could legitimately demand that any flights crossing its territory make a landing, hence subjecting passengers to inspection per Article 9(b-c), but that's only supposed to be available on a temporary basis.

What about Alaska?

[jjh37997]

If we block them they block us and soon we'll be traveling to Alaska via Russia (which I've heard you can see via some of the houses on the coast)

I have a solution.

[Xeno man]

I think I have a solution. We as Canadians should just reclassify all flights over American air space as Cargo Flights. No passengers to report. It's not like the plane is going to land in the States or they are going to pull over an aircraft for an inspection. Of course in an emergency situation where one does need to land in the states, it will be an unfortunate clerical error that lead the incorrect information to be given to the US.

Fork it over, and it changes... nothing.

[girlintraining]

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.

Just say NO

[sukotto]

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]