Slashdot Mirror
European Parliament Considers Sharing Passenger Information By Default
An anonymous reader writes The EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) proposal which was defeated in April of last year has returned to consideration in the European Parliament today. The law would require that airlines provide extensive personal details of anyone flying into or out of Europe. The information would include name, address, phone numbers, credit card information and travel itinerary. Director of Europol Rob Wainwright says that PNR is within the bounds of "reasonable measures" in the struggle against terrorism, and that possible threats against Europe have increased in the more than 12 months since the law was last rejected. Dutch MEP Sophie In't Veld is arguing that the Data Protection Directive should be put into place before any such systematized disclosure be ratified. "They want unlimited powers," she said. "they don't want to be bound by rules or data protection authorities and that's the reality."
I would allow this with one condition.
For each single case of an individual's data being stolen, the current director of Europol and the one in place at the moment of the steal spend a year in prison and Europol pays to the individual $1M plus whatever is stolen from his accounts.
While not a justification of this information collection, when ever you check into a hotel in Europe you have to provide all of this information. This is almost real time uploaded to interpol. This is far more invasive and complete then the flight information.
My guess is that the biggest threat top europes citizens are europes politicians and the law enforcement / terror prevention organizations
The sum of intelligence on a planet is constant. Nowadays we have more people. When classic goes away, so do I. Copy
And the reason for this all: fear. Fear for terrorists, fear for being held responsible, fear for the unknown. We live in a world in which we no longer accept any kind of risk. No matter how low that risk. Well, at least risks we are aware of. We fear terrorists, we fear ebola, we fear being robbed in the streets while at the same time we smoke, eat unhealthy food, practice dangerous sports and get in the car. Every day we do things that are more dangerous than the things we fear most.
Yes, terrorists should be stopped, but not at all cost. And there is no way to make 100% sure no terrorist will ever hit us. So, stop pretending we can! Stop wasting our time, money and privacy to give us false security! And if a terrorists hits us and kills 20 people, is say: that's bad but it isn't the end of the world. Life goes on. In the same time more people are killed for other reasons and we don't even hear about them!
Look at Boston. Despite all the anti-terrorist measures in America, it was still possible to do this kind of attack. And what happened to Boston? Nothing, they moved on. And that's how it should be done. Yes, it's easy for me to say because I haven't lost any family or friends in that attack. But that is the right way to look at it for politicians. Respond to it with logic and common sense and not with fear and emotion. Because that only makes it worse!
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Only terrorists are the members of your government.
Lock up all those drivers! They cause thousands of deaths every years! Won't somebody please think of the pedestrians?
Oh right we're talking about a manufactured threat. Terrorists! Pedos! Immigrants! Commies! Muslims! Atheists! Never mind. Carry on.
We're exactly where we were 15 years ago, except the lie's been told enough times that very many people have started to believe it. How very disheartening.
While one might at first worry, there are no avenues of attack of any kind, including identity theft, thanks to the powerful restrictions and securities placed on...
Aw who am I kidding every way this can and will/would go horribly wrong is exactly why it's being pushed for.
you really think that amassing BILLIONS OF GIGABYTES OF USELESS DATA will NOT deter a white - or any other race, gender, shape, height - lunatic from trying to blow up/infect/sabotage/piss on ANYTHING that symbolises the "west" ?
IT IS DEMENTED to think that reading HUMONGOUS data from HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS PEOPLE would work...
when you got terrorists laughing their asses of at their post 911 win. I don't think any of them could have wished for a better win.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Try again. And if that fails, just push it through anyway. We've seen that before, including overriding referenda. These guys just do whatever the fsck they like and they're clearly not there for you.
Pay attention to what Theresa May (UK home secretary) said recently on a similar matter.
The proposal was to permit roaming of mobile phones across UK networks, so your phone could connect to the nearest tower, regardless of the network you were on. She said it would break police ability to track terrorists. To her it seemed the primary purpose of a phone is not for people to communicate with each other, but for tracking and surveillance.
But there was a more interesting angle to this. She would not claim this, unless it broke an existing system that has this limit. Otherwise she would be hypothesizes some imagined limit in a system not yet built. So we know that tracking per network is what they do now.
If they were tracking one person, or only a few, then it would easy to arrange that with several networks, a simple telephone call to Vodafone to look out for a particular O2 number would be enough. So it suggests they're MASS tracking people using the UK phone system, and Theresa May is worried that this system will break.
Now of course if it was legal, they could get a budget and centralized system could be built, but it seems to be a backdoor thing, with each operator doing it and selling the data on to the government as business data. Hence the per-operator limit.
Like "Mastering the Internet" was the money for mass surveillance of UK internet, the laws to make it legal were rejected, yet the budget was spent and the mass surveillance done anyway, as we found out from Snowden.
So here we have passenger tracking, and it seems likely that they're already doing this, again, given what we've found out courtesy of Snowden, and are simply trying to find a way to make it legal. Ramping up the scaremongering is just cover for what they're up to.
Show ONE example where extensive data exchange has ever prevented a "terrorist attack".
The only reason could be to aim for full insight in peoples where-abouts. I would imagine this does not have any effect on terrorist or criminal's activity. They have other ways of remaining undetected.
We don't need no fucking rules. We're the POLICE!
Just like the current director of FBI does? Did you even know US already does this?
You know, Dan Brown novels != reality.
A lot of that information seems reasonable if you want to know who is crossing into and out of your border. But why credit cards?
If you want to fight terrorism, quit treating other people like pieces of shit.
You don't keep mice out of your house with mousetraps. You keep them out by sweeping up all the crumbs on your floor so they have no reason to come in anyway.
If they don't vote the right way the first time, they're made to vote again and again until they do. Of course, as soon as they vote right once, they don't get another one.
'Director of Europol Rob Wainwright contends that PNR constitutes “reasonable measures” in the fight against terrorism'
and how soon after will such data be used to compile a no-fly list, to be used to harass anyone who criticizes the state security apparatus.
'The U.S. government is blacklisting people as terrorism suspects based on secret standards and secret evidence. People on government watchlists are questioned, harassed, detained, and even barred indefinitely from flying — and the government denies them any meaningful way to correct errors and clear their names' ref