EU Wants Air Passenger Data Collected 151
An anonymous reader sends news of the EU following in the footsteps of the US in that they are contemplating requiring all 27 member states to collect data on airline passengers and to retain it for up to 13 years. No centralized database would be created; instead states would be encouraged to store and to share their own data as needed. All states would have to pass enabling laws before the measure could come into effect. The rules would not apply to flights entirely within the EU. The proposal is part of an anti-terrorism package that also includes tighter laws to control hate speech and bomb-making instructions.
Damnit! (Score:5, Funny)
Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least unless there's a major change in international politics sometime soon I hope not
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Yes but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Godwin's Law. You lose.
Goodwin Shmoodwin.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Wow. I was just making a dumb joke.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't blame us for Chirac and Schröder...they were all you. I wouldn't be too proud of that if I were you.
(To your credit, you finally kicked them to the curb where they belong. Hillary (or whoever the Democrats end up nominating...but she's most likely) needs to join them there.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
But, paper to paper, and coin to coin, I liked the Japanese curre
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Last time i was in NY (pre 2001, though), it was "US citizens and greencard holders first, europeans last". Maybe we should have something similar at EU airports, to make us EU citizens feel smug and let US citizens stand around for long hours for a change...
All in the name of "security", 'couse, naturally, non-EU-citizens will have to fill in pointless imigration forms, a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You don't have to wish for it, that already exists. At every European airport I've been to I had to stand in a longer, slower moving line because I'm not an EU citizen.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like my last pass through Dublin. Of course it was the day after a bomb scare. Still not as bad as Heathrow though.
Many don't want to admit it, but it's just as bad i
Re: (Score:1)
Actually, to be honest... I also said I wouldn't go to the US anymore. I've been there pre and post 9/11, and was always treated as a criminal. However, my wife want to go to the US and I think I'll give in. Why? Because with the USD to EUR conversion, it might turn out to be a damned cheap vacation.
Also have to think of my wallet, you know ;-)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The way you get treated at airports these days is simply amazing, you are considered a criminal just because you are boarding an airplane. What possible other reason except terrorism could one possibly have for flying?
In the near future I will have to travel between Belgium and the UK quite frequently and I've already decided to take the Eurostar. Sitting on th
Re: (Score:2)
+1, I also do not fly primarily because of stupid security measures. Whereever there are stupid security measures, I vote with my euros
Re: (Score:2)
That's about the only nice thing I can say about O'Hare, though.
Re:Damnit! (Score:4, Informative)
Last time i was in NY (pre 2001, though), it was "US citizens and greencard holders first, europeans last".
Watch where you're throwing those stones, buddy :-)
I travel to Europe regularly on business. At EVERY European airport I've been too, there's an "EU passport holders" line (and Switzerland, usually) and an "everyone else" line.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, having a common currency made inner-european travel quite a bit cheaper, cause it did get rid of that exchange rates. As an Austrian visiting for example the Netherlands, you had to change Austrian Schillings
Re: (Score:1)
I've been to the EU from the US. There's a short line for citizens of EU countries and a long line for everybody else. Still, the process really wasn't that bad.
I have to laugh at the rest of your description though, since the conveniences that you are describing are the things that come from having a bunch of (member) states that are united in some way... sorta like the United States. Our immigration may be (probably is, these days) more of a pain, but once you're in, you can drive around without chan
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I *do* think we're heading that way anyway. There isn't much we can do about it, right? The purpose of my original post was to be funny, with exactly the bitter aftertaste that we aren't any better off. I thought everyone would get that.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The odd thing with this law is this. What about trains? I recently visited Italy, Czech Republic, Hungry and Slovakia all on the train. I can get a train to any major city in the EU and most are within the overnight train distance from central
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cut to the chase (Score:4, Insightful)
Heck, let's just cut to the chase and have an international law that everything and anything has to be logged and stored for all eternity. That should save a few decades of protesting against dumb legislature that will eventually get in through the back door anyway.
Presumably if storage capacity where unlimited we'd be seeing calls to log the position of every atom in the world!
[Sarcasm mode off]
OK. (Score:3, Funny)
OK! Let'em choke on all that data! There's no way that they could keep it all straight - and that's assuming there's no errors!
The genie is out of the bottle, let's give them what they want to the 666 power!
Re: (Score:1)
The atoms hate our freedoms!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Well... If you're also going to store the direction of each atom's magnetic field, your unlimited storage capacity isn't going to be sufficient. We need to fund research into off-universe storage.
Re: (Score:1)
EU needs more security (Score:2, Interesting)
I had
Re: (Score:2)
I flew back from Dublin once to Stanstead airport and in order to get through the barrier without going to customs you had to show your boarding card. Unfortunately I'd thrown mine away but the guy let me through on the strength of a reciept from a Burger King in Dublin which he reckoned proved I'd just come from Ireland right enough.
French security are always nice, happy
Re: (Score:1)
Germans and Austrians however still think they've won the war and can treat anybody as lesser than them. Especially their police and border forces but also the average tourist in Spain or wherever you go
Re: (Score:2)
But anyway. We're being terrorized by our own governments right now. In the EU it's forbidden to take a normal bottle of water on board.
Terrorism 2, Freedom 0
Papua New Guinea does it right. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why not?
When has airport security ever stopped a real threat?
All the 9/11 terrorists had valid ID and passed all criteria that raised no flags. Even the "do not fly list" would not have stopped them. Its just a waste of time and better methods of security are needed other than the current
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Funnily enough, I was on holiday in Italy earlier this year, too. When we arrived, we too were waved right through passport control, and the only visible security in evidence was a guy with a sniffer dog as people came off the plane. We collected our baggage and headed right out into the sunshine. Welcome to Italy!
When we got back to Stansted, we stopped at passport control. Didn't have much choice, actually, since the queues were half an hour long. Everyone had to wait behind a line while the person at t
Spain is already doing this (Score:3, Informative)
Hate speech and bomb-making instructions? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Alright I will. In the US, you outlaw chemical formulae, but allow people to call for "infidels" to be burned at the stake. Do you regard this as a laudable state of affairs?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Good job cutting off the rest of the quote, which changes the meaning of the sentence: "We have outlawed bomb-making instructions since 1997 (Thanks, Diane Feinstein!), but only those with that give instructions for the purposes of violating federal law." Even the butchered quote wouldn't have banned chemical formulae, by the way.
Terror
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The US might not have a law to limit free speech, but in reality it seems the free speech of journalists is more limited than in europe. If you use a law to limit it, or just use patrio
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm no expert about how free speech works in practice in the US, but I refer to an index of the freedom of press. As I'm no expert I can't judge the index, but the way the index is compiled seems fair enough.
about the US they said:
"There were slightly fewer press freedom violations in the United States [than last year] (48th) and blogger Josh Wolf was freed after 224 days in prison. But the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I Can See This Leading to Trouble (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also not sure how collecting data on all passengers will help them with the small minority they want to track.
Home chemistry sets? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:I Can See This Leading to Trouble (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't you get the memo? It's not about laws making sense, or actually helping prevent terrorism. For a lot of these politicians and bureaucrats it's all about *looking* like you're doing something so you can get reelected and/or be perceived as somebody who's "doing something about it." Bonus points if you can work something in there that empowers the bureaucracy a little bit, extra bonus if you can limit any kind of pesky individualism or unmonitored behavior.
</cynical bastard>
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that Googling for any kind of terms throws up various right-wing blogs, instead of a working definition. Close as I can tell from the daily practice around me is that judges interpret actual criminal hate speech as outright incitement to acts of violence against population groups. Now, as incitement to violence is a crime in and of itself, hate speech laws are merely a way of more precisely defining what counts as incitement. I'd love to leave that d
Welcome to the USSR (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems to be true. Red or Blue -- they both screw you.
Fair enough (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I cringe at the though of hate speech (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I cringe at the though of hate speech (Score:4, Insightful)
In answer to your question: They have laws made by parliaments in Europe which define protected or forbidden speech. Just like in America they have laws made by Congress which define protected or forbidden speech. It's just that in response to horrors of WWII, several European countries have enacted 'Don't make the same mistake twice' laws. Which forbid denial of the events or glorification of perpetrators in public events.
I think you will find that the US has civil laws which can be used just as effectively end hate speech.
Re: (Score:1)
I am not familiar with this EU law details but to fight against restrict
Re: (Score:1)
The banning of international sites in Germany generally ended around the year 2000, but it seems to crop up there still.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The government, thankfully. They always know what's best for us. You'd have to be insane to say something negative about the government, because loosely defined enough hate speech laws might allow the government to jail opposition voices because they "could be seeking to disrupt public order or incite riots." We can't have riots, that would be double-plus ungood.
Re: (Score:1)
Depends on the country. Either a jury of your peers or whatever means the appropriate country chooses to determine the exact meaning of the law.
Re: (Score:2)
In the final reckoning, its judges that define hate speech. And they have tended to come down on the side of free expression. Outright Nazism has problems, but it's a bit hard to maintainn that an ideology that basically says 'gas all undesirables' is not inciting violence. Those that manage to cloak their Neo-Nazi sympathies a little better tend to get off though, even though judges may decide that calling them Neo-Nazis is not defamatory.
It still sounds a slight bit better than 'Free Speech Zones' to thi
An convenient excuse? (Score:2, Insightful)
it was 8 years between WTC1 and WTC2 (Score:2)
With the outfits like the GIA and the AZF floating around in france, you should be thankful for a greater than 10 year lull in attack on the paris metro...
If you read the propaganda from the other side of the pond, one wonders if it is because of this tightening of the law, france has been able to live "peacefully since"
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,176139,00.html [time.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's really fairly simple (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.teslamotors.com/ [teslamotors.com]
http://www.venturi.fr/ [venturi.fr]
It is retaliation... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Indeed, it is a "retaliation" where in both cases, we end up losing, and the Governments gain.
hmm. (Score:2)
and so it begins.....
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Bread and circuses people.
This isn't the beginning, this is the end (Score:2)
and so it begins.....
It begins?!
My country (the UK) isn't at the top of the slippery slope, it's falling over at the bottom. We have the legal basis right now for detention without trial, suppression of peaceful protest, arbitrary restrictions on movement (under several different laws now, actually), criminalisation based on what books you read or Internet sites you visit, arbitrary stop and search by the police, and a database state with mandatory ID cards to help enforce it all.
The only way they get away with it is beca
I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Also I don't understand the priorities. How many people were killed by terrorist actions last year in the EU? 100? 1000? And how many traffic deaths were there? How many died from obesity or diseases related to smoking?
If they are concerned about protecting lives they should track how much candy or tobacco/alcohol people buy and use. If they monitor/forbid overconsumption of that it would probably save more lives.
Yes, it would really suck to be blown up buy some nutter but the fact remains that I'm so much more likely to get killed in a car accident that the "terror threat" hardly deserves mentioning.
I just don't get it. Why are people so dumb that they fall for these tricks.
Re: (Score:1)
You are not getting it because (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just another of the knee jerk reactions that we have seen during the last 6 years. Politicians make a show of "competence" in order to protect the safety of the people. Classic "cover your ass" reaction.
And you are right. The amount of people killed by terror in EU is minimal compared to traffic accidents, workplace accidents, domestic violence, pollution related deaths etc. But we are used to the above, but *terror* is new and unpredictable, hence it *seems* more scary.
Sadly, the governments (and mainstream media) are helping the terrorists, by fueling the fear for terror, by constantly talking about it and making senseless measures against it.
----
An annoyed European
Re: (Score:2)
There fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:2)
"also I don't understand the priorities. How many people were killed by terrorist actions last year in the EU? 100? 1000? And how many traffic deaths were there? How many died from obesity or diseases related to smoking?"
Car accidents are seldom performed intentionally and with the intention of establishing a theocracy over your people. Terrorism as a movement is about
Re: (Score:2)
So then you're denying that many extremest terrorist groups are about trying to make people follow their religion?
"If I meet these whores (Madonna and Brittney) I will have the honor - I repeat, I will have the honor - to be the first one to cut the heads off Madonna and Britney Spears if they will keep spreading their satanic culture against Islam," -- Muhammad Abdel-Al, spokesman and senior leader of the Popular Resistanc
Is there ANY evidence that all this crap works? (Score:3, Interesting)
Measures like reinforced cockpit doors are good. As are measures to make passports harder to forge (including measures requiring that the information on the passport be stored electronically as well as physically and that said information be digitally signed against tampering such that only the governments have the private keys to digitally sign the information) And the measures designed to stop bombs from being taken onto aircraft disguised as otherwise harmless looking objects.
Unfortunatly, the world has turned into a mass of sheeple who only care about their bread (i.e. mass-produced consumer goods made by the lowest bidder and full of hidden unwanted stuff like lead paint and illicit drugs) and their circuses (i.e. mass-produced media content made by big corporations designed to keep you distracted whilst other big corporations ruin the planet in the name of the almighty Dollar/Euro/Pound/Yen/etc) and are unlikely to stand up to the crap the governments of the world want to inflict on them (especially since the few people who DO care enough to stand up to the governments end up in secret jails that make Auschwitz look like Club Med)
Re: (Score:2)
Religious beliefs? Sexual orientation? (Score:1)
Sensitive information such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership as well as health and sexual orientation should not be revealed.
Oh well that's something. To be honest, it scares me that anyone would even consider including that. Sexual o
But in the end... (Score:1)
Ha ha ha (Score:2)
Does anyone else find it ironic that local legislation is required to implement data gathering and storage, yet the EU can ramrod a CONSTITUTION down people's throats (this would be a constitution that a couple of countries have already rejected) without any similar requirement?
Congratulations Europe, you now have a massive overweening Federal government that sucks as hard as ours. Sorry that you didn't get the constit
Your #1 EU Bomb-Making Info-Site! (Score:3, Informative)
Get it here! How To Make A Bomb [how-to-make-a-bomb.eu] .
(My personal reaction after reading earlier comments by Mr. Frattini, who's not only the EU's anti-terrorism muppet but is also responsible for "Fundamental Rights and citizenship", hahaha.)
Link to Scary Original Document (Score:2)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
This proposal seems odd for the same reasons. If you want to blow up an airplane, you find people with clean records and get them on board. Once the plane goes down, 13 years of archived records won't do you a bit of good. On the other hand, if you are trying to conduct espionage for other political or economic reasons, then this kind of data makes sense.