Canada's Airlines Face a Privacy Dilemma 457
Interoperable writes "Canada's airlines are caught between a rock and a hard place in the face of new US regulations that require them to collect and hand over personal information about passengers. Handing over information regarding a passenger's name, gender and birth-date may violate Canadian privacy laws but merely flying over American airspace is conditional on doing exactly that. It seems that the long arms of the TSA are eager to grope at Canadians taking a shortcut to Toronto; no doubt to prevent any terrorist attacks on Lake Huron."
Re:Great circles? (Score:1, Informative)
The issue is mainly about flying from Canadian cities to destinations in e.g. South America, not domestic Canada flights.
Re:Fuck you America ... (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't this violate... (Score:5, Informative)
Now, I suppose the US could legitimately demand that any flights crossing its territory make a landing, hence subjecting passengers to inspection per Article 9(b-c), but that's only supposed to be available on a temporary basis.
What privacy? (Score:5, Informative)
My country has a bill that puts limits on handling of my personal data. It was passed because the EU demands that. But it also demands that my bank passes info about my money transactions to USA [slashdot.org]. It would be pretty difficult to live without bank account and legally impossible to run a business without bank account. My privacy is screwed and I can't even vote to change that - short of convincing EU to challenge US.
We had stories about US demanding [slashdot.org]data [slashdot.org] about air travelers before [slashdot.org]. Well, you don't have to travel by air. You can use cash and not wire transfers. You can live without internet if you don't want ISP to log who/when you talk to. You can have your privacy - if you live back in the woods. Thanks God, the war on terrorism works so well.
Re:US bullying and demanding other countries.. (Score:5, Informative)
Do you understand what a Third World country is?
"The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned or neutral with either capitalism and NATO." When the US pulls out of NATO and becomes neutral, then it will be a Third World country.
As for empire, the US is not imperial, it is a hegemony.
Re:US bullying and demanding other countries.. (Score:5, Informative)
And it isn't that long ago in historical terms since the British Empire as a superpower fell apart.
Re:Fuck you America ... (Score:4, Informative)
Being a writer you don't even need a work permit as long as you don't intend to do work outside of your field. http://www.skillclear.co.uk/permitfree.asp [skillclear.co.uk]
I would have said the other places are probably the same but to be honest some countries are getting tired of their people being treated like shit when going to the US so they're returning the favour and I don't blame them to be honest.
Re:US bullying and demanding other countries.. (Score:4, Informative)
We used to criticize the Soviets for everything, be it rational or not. :)
BTW we criticized them for not letting people LEAVE their borders, not for controlling their own airspace and controlling border ingress.
Interestingly, we're already at that point: U.S. readies plan to ID departing visitors [washingtonpost.com], Nov. 8. 2009.
Now, granted, it doesn't say that people will be prevented from leaving, but I suggest you think about it for a moment. What is the purpose of identifying people who leave, other than to control who leaves?
Re:mnb Re:Fuck you America ... (Score:1, Informative)
Let's add up the players:
Canadian through and through:
Canadian Natural ~16 BN.
Husky ~13 BN.
EnCana ~30 BN.
Petro-Canada ~19 BN.
SunCor ~30 BN
Top six = ~110 BN last year in Canada.
American through and through:
Chevron's Canada operations? ~60 BN.
Conoco's Canada operations? ~60 BN.
Joint Ventures:
ConocoPhillips Canada? ~40 BN.
Shell Canada? ~20 BN.
Re:Just say NO (Score:3, Informative)
Jean Chrétien had a lot of flaws, but at least he had the balls to tell the Americans to stop pushing us around.
When he did so, he was mostly trying to make Paul Martin's job harder.
Canada is not exactly an open arms place either... (Score:2, Informative)
A person with a DUI is not allowed into Canada unless you get a waver. Yeah DUIs are not good things but to be denied access to a country based on that fact?
The US needs to fix a lot of things but Canada is not perfect either.
Re:US bullying and demanding other countries.. (Score:2, Informative)
That's not to say the gp was right -- the US as a superpower is far from done for.
And isn't hegemony the new empire? I think I read that in a magazine or a Chomsky book or something.
This is becoming a real clusterf*ck (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, our elected leaders don't see the insanity. They don't see that they're doing the terrorist's job more effectively than the terrorists ever imagined. They don't see how many airline and TSA employees are using this as an excuse to lie and steal. They have the right to go through your baggage - but you don't have the right to keep your personal property if they want to take it. Do they have rules and regulations to follow? Don't ask - it's none of your business, citizen. Do these people know how foolish they look? No.
I've taken every opportunity to vote for people who said they would not perpetuate this nonsense - but there doesn't seem to be any way for a simple American citizen to stop this lunacy. I know that I do NOT want to travel on any airline these days - and if I have to, I know not to take a laptop or IPod along - or anything else that the watchers may find suspicious or desirable.
What I'd really like to tell them: Hey, I'm an American citizen - who gave you the right to harass the citizens of this country? But they won't answer and it seems that our so-called representative government is more concerned with preserving and improving the status quo than doing the job they were elected to do.
Sheesh; Bush was a disaster and Obama promised to undo the extremes and provide more transparency. Yeah, right - so Obama lied to us and is following the Bush plan. As a citizen, I'd like to apologize to those in other countries for the behavior of our government. We didn't ask them to act this way and we can't seem to find a way to get them to stop.
Re:What about Alaska? (Score:3, Informative)
Are there any flights between Europe and the US which don't pass through Canadian airspace? At least in the Westbond direction.
A lot of flights to and from the US go over Canada right now and going round is impractical and expensive.
Including many flights out of Detroit Metro. The most notable, so far, having been an American Airlines flight on the 12 June 1972
Re:US bullying and demanding other countries.. (Score:3, Informative)
You're missing the point. You log when they enter and log when they leave. Anyone who isn't logged leaving is counted as still being in the country. This lets you know how many people are still there and how many have overstayed. You can circulate the details of people who have overstayed to law enforcement and pick them up when they use a credit card or similar.
As you point out in your subsequent anecdote, we already log I-94 forms when visitors leave. We have been doing this for many years. The additional ID checks do nothing to help log when people leave.
Also, perhaps you haven't noticed, but as of January 18, 2009, even permanent residents, who by definition are not capable of overstaying their visa, are also fingerprinted at the border [cnet.com].
Re:Fuck you America ... (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, that includes also corruption.
In the UK, we have a government endorsed by only 22% of the population at the last general election (and only around 1/3 of those who actually voted). They didn't even win the popular vote in England. And then there's the West Lothian question.
We currently have a Prime Minister who was never approved by the electorate. (Please everyone, spare us any comments about voting for a party instead of a PM; the party in question explicitly and repeatedly stated before the last general election that Tony Blair would serve a full third term, after explicit and repeated questions over whether Gordon Brown would be taking over mid-term.)
We have prospective law like the Digital Economy Bill being pushed through by a man who has resigned from government under dubious circumstances not once but twice and who was never re-elected, who suddenly started acting in favour of Big Media after a friendly chat hosted by... Big Media. That particular unelected, repeatedly failed politician is currently the #2 man in the British government, by the way.
We have police (and, worse, judges) who seem to think it is acceptable to imprison hundreds of people (and kill the odd one or two) who just want to protest peacefully (or walk home from work). We give the police other sweeping powers, which are known to be widely abused, yet we impose little effective regulation on how those powers are used, nor are we very good at holding to account police officers of any rank who are responsible for the abuses. All we get are excuses like "systemic failure" or "institutional failure", i.e., "we won't single out any individual so everyone gets away with it".
One could go on and on, but I think it's pretty clear that we can do corruption as well as anyone.