U.S. Will Collect Extremely Personal Information from Millions of European Travelers
July 23rd, 2007I can’t believe that anyone would submit to this.
Via: Guardian:
Highly sensitive information about the religious beliefs, political opinions and even the sex life of Britons travelling to the United States is to be made available to US authorities when the European Commission agrees to a new system of checking passengers.
The EC is in the final stages of agreeing a new Passenger Name Record system with the US which will allow American officials to access detailed biographical information about passengers entering international airports.
The information sharing system with the US Department of Homeland Security, which updates the previous three-year-old system, is designed to tackle terrorism but civil liberty groups warn it will have serious consequences for European passengers. And it has emerged that both the European parliament and the European data protection supervisor are alarmed at the plan.
In a strongly worded document drawn up in response to the plan that will affect the 4 million-plus Britons who travel to the US every year, the EU parliament said it ‘notes with concern that sensitive data (ie personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and data concerning the health or sex life of individuals) will be made available to the DHS and that these data may be used by the DHS in exceptional cases’.
Under the new agreement, which goes live at the end of this month, the US will be able to hold the records of European passengers for 15 years compared with the current three year limit. The EU parliament said it was concerned the data would lead to ‘a significant risk of massive profiling and data mining, which is incompatible with basic European principles and is a practice still under discussion in the US congress.’
Without knowing your political opinions, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, sex lives, and group affiliations, how is the government going to know how to use the “war on terror” to allocate all the good jobs and benefits to the “right” people?
Nothing surprising in that. The UK has already signed a wonderful one-sided treaty with the USA that compels Britain to extradite anyone America requests, without even having to provide the British authorities with evidence as to the person’s alleged guilt. The UK government scandalously affords no protection to its citizens any time the USA comes calling, so this latest outrage comes as no shock.
hermesten,
That reply sounded very tongue in cheek but it is a quite perfect idea. But it will require Intelligence to work IT properly.
ManfromMars, it was, sort of. I think what the system is clearly intended to do is create a generalized fear that saying and doing certain things might be a personal economic disaster. Like where I used to work there were people who were afraid it would affect their employment if they didn’t contribute to the United Way. I didn’t matter whether or not this fear was specifically true for these people, just that they behaved as if it was.
And as the system “works” whether it is specifically true for any of these people, will it be destroyed by its very own systems controls before they can be linked to its control.And it should actually morph into something much better and much more efficient in a benign rather than malicious form.
The control will be a genuine reward system rather than an artificial sycophantic one….. for the fear of having no money or employment is greatest for those who have never known either….. for they are as children in a world which is alien and antagonistic towards them because of what they have been/have done with no regard for what they have done.
It will save them rather than destroy them but whether they have the Smarts for IT ie start the ball rolling themselves by financing it, is the hurdle they face. All one can do is advise them that that is the very simple answer, to invest in their own protection with the release of funding to those who will fix it with IT for them.
It also keeps them firmly in Control of the Great Game, rather than having to hide away from IT….. which is bound to be a comfort for them and those that they leave behind to follow in their footsteps….. the NeXXXXt Generation of Great Game Players.