And a Happy New Year to You…

January 1, 2007 Civil Liberties, General News, General Rants 6

The Telegraph leads with another story of paranoia driven snooping:

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington.

By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

Excuse me? Ex-fucking-scuse me?! Just what the fuck? Where does Brussels get off striking a deal like this? The correct and appropriate response to such a request is “fuck off and mind your own business run along and don’t be so cheeky”. But no, Brussels (and just who the fuck do these people think they are?) hands our private details over like a whipped puppy fawning before a cruel master. The “bureaucratic hurdles” they decided to sweep aside were there for a good reason; to protect our privacy. Privacy that the apparatchiks in Brussels value as worthless.

Not only will such material be available when combating terrorism but the Americans have asserted the right to the same information when dealing with other serious crimes.

Oh, spare me the bollocks, please. Of the millions who travel, just what percentage are going to be guilty of criminal or terrorist activity? Yet, all will be treated as suspects in Uncle Sam’s paranoid world. Not me. Never. If that is how the USA is going to treat its visitors, I will simply refrain from going there. I am not guilty of criminal or terrorist activity and I am damned if I will bare my soul to prove it. What goes on in my financial affairs is between my bank and I, my emails are… er… private… Yes, I know, emails aren’t that private, but PGP is looking more and more attractive.

Shami Chakrabarti is once more the lone voice stating what should be the obvious:

Sham Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, expressed horror at the extent of the information made available. “It is a complete handover of the rights of people travelling to the United States,” she said.

Hers should be the voice of the masses. Why isn’t it? Why do people just lie back and take it?

What else do the Americans what to know?

Much of it is routine but some elements will prove more contentious, such as a passenger’s email address, whether they have a previous history of not turning up for flights and any religious dietary requirements.

And why, exactly should that be any of their business? Still, they reassure us:

The US government has given undertakings on how this data will be used and who will see it.

Really? So why am I not in the least reassured by this? Nope, the USA is off my travel list. Pity, I always wanted to hire a bike and ride around the old west…

6 Comments

  1. Like many, I’ve sometimes endured the shambolic and grossly authoritarian entry procedures to the USA. America no longer welcomes visitors or foreign businesses.

    Why would anyone wish to travel to the USA? What does it really have to offer? Most business can be done electronically and China is becoming a real source of quality products – many of which are shipped to America and repackaged there. Frankly these items can be purchased just as easily direct from China and at much lower cost.

    American industry is in a state approaching collapse, with jobs being exported to China, Mexico, India and even Eastern Europe. American companies understand that their labour costs are staggeringly high compared with these other countries. When energy costs rise – as they are certain to do – there will be further collapse of the American economy.

    Oil prices are already rising, partly because of Middle Eastern instability which is not going to be resolved for the forseable future. Electricity supply is being rapidly outstripped by demand – driven to a great extent by the insatiable demand for air-conditioning in homes, which means that summer ‘peak’ now regularly exceeds winter ‘peak’. One can expect to see yet more summer brown-outs.

    With a two Dollar Pound do we need any other evidence of the trouble America is in?

    My advice is stay clear of America, both for business and leisure.

  2. I wouldn’t want to visit the States. Canada? Possibly. But America just doesn’t appeal any more. They seem to want to do a good job of pissing off any libertarian-minded travellers to their country. A sovereign state that treats its visitors as criminals is not worthy of being visited.

  4. You ask Of the millions who travel, just what percentage are going to be guilty of criminal or terrorist activity?

    I am delighted to be able to assist you in this.   AP reported, at the end of November, on how

    Without notifying the public, federal agents for the past four years have assigned millions of international travelers, including Americans, computer-generated scores rating the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals. […]

    The program’s existence was quietly disclosed earlier in November when the government put an announcement detailing the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, for the first time in the Federal Register, a fine-print compendium of federal rules. Privacy and civil liberties lawyers, congressional aides and even law enforcement officers said they thought this system had been applied only to cargo. […]

    Government officials could not say whether ATS has apprehended any terrorists. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Bill Anthony said agents refuse entry to about 45 foreign criminals every day based on all the information they have. He could not say how many were spotted by ATS.

    That’s criminals (including, I rather think, suspected or alleged criminals) and we aren’t told what their crimes might be.   Out of how many people arriving?  I, or rather AP, can help with that, too:

    The department says that 87 million people a year enter the country by air and 309 million enter by land or sea. The government gets advance passenger and crew lists for all flights and ships entering and leaving and all those names are entered into the system for an ATS analysis, [Jayson P. Ahern, an assistant commissioner of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection agency,] said. He also said the names of vehicle drivers and passengers are entered when they cross the border and Amtrak is voluntarily supplying passenger data for trains to and from Canada.

    Ahern said that border agents concentrate on arrivals more than on departures because their resources are limited.

    So that’s 396,000,000 people arriving a year, and having these detailed records compiled and kept on them, of whom 16,425, or 1 in 24,000, are turned back. Not arrested for anything or hauled off to Guantanamo Bay, so they be too dangerous, but turned back. Nevertheless, and you can check the AP report if think I’ve invented this quote:

    “If this catches one potential terrorist, this is a success,” Ahern said.

  6. If you want to visit the American West, why not fly to Vancouver and cross the US border by road into Washington State. :mrgreen:

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