CDC Wants to Track Travelers

gearspring writes "According to Government Health IT the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants your email address, your mobile phone number, names of your traveling companions, your name, your address, and your emergency contacts name, address, and phone number. This information would be gathered by airlines, travel agents, and online reservation systems for all travelers. Their goal is to protect us in the event of a pandemic. The SARS crisis showed them the difficulty of notifying people that they may have been exposed to a disease. It is a noble goal, but couldn't they do this anonymously?"

Re:Huh?

[tsa]

Exactly. Here in Europe, if you come to a big city you often automatically get an SMS on your mobile phone with info about the sights, where to find a hotel, and how to listen to your voicemail. So they know you're there, and they have your phone number. TGhis can aslo be used to warn you for scary deseases you might have been exposed to, even after you left the city/country, because they have your phone number and the data you were in the danger zone.

read the article!

[penguin-collective]

It is not the CDC that "wants" your address, they want the airline to keep that information on file so that they can get it if they need it:

The regulations will require airlines to collect and maintain in an electronic database the following passenger information:

Almost all airlines keep that information already in some form (for marketing, frequent flyer programs, etc.), they just may be too disorganized to be able to respond to CDC requests. This would require them to be able to do that. I don't see a problem with that. This kind of mandate would even be compatible with a strict data retention and privacy standard that requires deletion of all customer data after, say, a couple of weeks.

Re:read the article!

[penguin-collective]

You are missing the point, which is that the airline, not the CDC, is keeping the information. So, the story is misleading: the CDC does NOT want to track you.

And we don't have to guess whether this "exceeds" what airlines already keep because the information they want is right in the article. I don't know about you, but my airline has all that information on file already, plus dietary preferences and a lot of other information.

As for the time limit, there is no time limit at all right now anyway. I'm just saying that you can have a CDC-like requirement with a strict time limit if you wanted to.

Re:I don't buy this

[EiZei]

We are not talking about personal security here. We are talking about things that have killed more people than dictators and famines.

Yes, on a bus

[michaelmalak]

I believe Greyhound/Trailways are still completely anonymous. And I believe Amtrak was anonymous until just a few months ago. I can understand the desire for requiring ID for airline travel, but I don't like it (and would vote against it given the opportunity, which, of course, we never are). But requiring ID for train travel definitely crosses the line, as it is much more difficult (nothing is impossible :-) to turn a train into a missile capable of broad destruction beyond the train itself.

(Trivia digression: when did ID for airlines start? Answer: after the 1996 TWA "non-terrorism" crash. Wow, that ID stuff was really effective, wasn't it?)

TFA/CDC may have mentioned only airlines, but of course it would be extended to all forms of travel. Pretty clever, actually -- it's easier to sell the idea of ID'ing on buses for the bird flu than it is for terrorism.

And I didn't see a link for it in any of the +5 comments, so here is Gilmore v. Gonzales [papersplease.org], John Gilmore's attempt to challenge the practice of ID'ing at airports.

Re:Huh?

[Ariane 6]

Vigilant hand washing is actually MUCH more effective than wearing a facemask, according to Scientific American.

It's also much harder to enforce.

Just FYI.