53 Stitch-Up

Air travellers are to be bullied into giving up 53 items of private information if they wish to fly:

European data protection authorities are choking on their baguettes after seeing the detail of the data-sharing agreement the EU signed with the US on Friday. The passenger name record (PNR) agreement was presented as a formality that had been passed by the respective administrations without so much as a hiccup. But it’s proving hard to swallow.

One has to ask; why the fuck did they sign up to this? Why are we allowing politicians to use the excuse of terrorism to terrify and subdue the population into acquiescing to such blatant data rape?

The type of information these arseholes want:

For every journey, security officials will want credit card details, holiday contact numbers, travel plans, email addresses, car numbers and even any previous missed flights.

None of these things is any of their damned business. I’ll be damned if I will hand over such private and sensitive information to a bunch of goons using over inflated threats of global terrorism to extort from me that to which they have absolutely no entitlement. If giving in to them is the price of flying, then I will not fly. It’s a minor inconvenience compared with giving into these bullies. I will not, absolutely not give these people this type of information. It is private and I fully intend to keep it that way. After all, what guarantee do we have that the US authorities will protect such sensitive data?

European data protection law prevents data being sent to another country that doesn’t have equivalent protections. That’s made the old PNR agreement (which was scrapped on a technicality in June by the European Court of Justice) a bone of contention in Brussels, because the US has no equivalent protection.

That would be none whatsofuckingever, then.

The new agreement was supposed to have guaranteed the same level of protection, which was in effect a gentleman’s agreement, in which the US promised to play ball. The EC said it “trusted” the US would honour the deal.

I don’t. There is only one way to prevent sensitive private information falling into the wrong hands – and it doesn’t involve giving it to government agencies.