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EU Preparing Vast Air Passenger Database
jfruh writes: Despite privacy concerns and doubts over its usefulness, a plan to track passengers entering or leaving the European Union in a series of national databases is likely to become reality by the end of the year. Legislation working its way through the European Parliament will authorize European nations to set up databases of the sort already in use in the UK, and to share information with each other. All the EU parties except the Greens are in favor.
...of Vast Air Passengers? You mean Americans?
I'd never have thought to really contemplate this as a real option, but now going by ship doesn't seem an antiquated only as it was before.
Government officials in favor of expanding the business of government -- for the people, not themselves and their fortunes.
All the EU parties except the Greens are in favor
In fact, the greens are against any form of transportation in the first place.
So before that was done unofficially. Next, that will be official. The difference is that little by little people tend to get used to be traced everywhere (and this time again, the move is probably granted thanks to the terrorist attacks in Paris a monh ago)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
All one of them ,eh? Just goes to show there is wide spread unity amongst the authoritarians, no matter what their particular political affiliation. And the Americans needn't bother looking for a 'third party' if they're going to let it do just like the other one does.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
swap my eyes
Terrorists win. Teams being scrambled.
Perhaps we are entering another species failure mode that we will have to solve for. Computers and the internet are great gifts to humanity, but it seems lately to have taken a bad turn. Instead of uplifting the human race, it's starting to look more like a trap.
I've spent my whole life involved with computers and networking. Now at times I wonder if I will eventually regret my contributions to building this better mouse trap.
I personally find that the risk of a dark totalitarian period that lasts for hundreds or thousands of years to be more threatening than any terrorist threat these dark systems purport to protect us from.
Humanity needs to figure out how we want to use these new tools. All this surveillance mode machinery is not good. It just takes one evil dictator to get control of this to trap us in ten thousand years of darkness.
It's a sad fearful reality we are marching towards these days.
and its large enough to have rain forests, deserts and cold so that I never had to visit oppressed parts of the world like the US and Europe. Now I will get to exploring Canada after I get out from my 1 year mandatory sentence for growing 6 cannbis plants.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Oh, they've already decided they're going to do it. Fast tracked behind closed doors because of what happened in France, no doubt.
EU: this word "Democracy" - I don't think it means what you think it means.
How is that different from showing your passport? You mean it's a card with your name and photo on it instead of a booklet with a bigger piece of plastic sewn in with your name and photo? To me, you really shouldn't be required to show anything or even tell your name. Just show a valid boarding pass as proof of payment, and get waved through. Of course, boarding passes are required to show your name and then you must show some form of ID with that name on it, so the concept of boarding pass is broken already. You, though, are equally broken by making an irrelevant distinction between "just some form of ID" and "passport", and failing to note what really matters, namely that you should not even be required to as much as mention a name at all, nevermind back it with any form of ID at all.
And yes, we need to make clear choices what we want the technology to do, for failure to choose means that petty bureaucrats will choose to barter our freedom away for careerist bureaucrat willy waving and politicians will likewise horse trade our freedom away for political conveniences.
We really should not allow technology to be the strings that makes us string puppets for whichever overlord this week, be it government, commercial, or perhaps something else again. Many of us have seen this coming for years and years, but apparently humanity insists on learning this lesson the hard way. So be it, then. Too bad the few of us that already know better get to knowingly suffer amidst the wilfully ignorant masses.
The consensus view was that Fascism wasn't such a hot idea, why do they keep trying to re-implement it?
You can seemingly put ANY old crap into the "heads" of someone else and have it accepted as truth, as long as you call them "greens".
What alchemical process in the moronic depths of humanity creates this weird transformation of common stupidity into the gold of Informative comment?
Especially the idea that they all have the same idea as any single poster you might be able to dredge up from the depths of trollistan in the interwebs?
Robbing homes and identity theft just got a whole lot easier.
All the EU parties except the Greens are in favor.
If that's true, then "WTF, Pirate Party?"
I thought this already happened. I guess you learn something every day.
GUE-NGL (left wing) also had 100% of its MEP voting against the resolution, according to votewatch.eu.
And still they wonder why the turn-out for EU elections is so low.
I don't get it. They already scan passports of anyone entering or leaving the external border of the Schengen Zone and the borders of the non-Schengen countries against Interpol and other databases, don't they? What is different about this?