Officials seek broader access to airline data

U.S. and European authorities want to dig deep into a vast repository of airline itineraries and personal information.
The New York Times

The story "Officials seek broader access to airline data" published August 22, 2006 at 5:26 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[Zymurgist]

Fine, but...

All that information is worth quite a bit of
money. If they are going to take it, should I
not be compensated?

What to do when they mistakenly loose the
information and identity thieves start using my
credit card, dupe my passport, etc.? I presume
they are prepared to compensate me and clean up
afterwards.

They lack basic oversight, so it's not really a
matter of when DHS will screw up, but when and
how, and what they'll do in response. The
government isn't exactly known for being able to
handle sensitive information.

[R Me]

simple solution

The solution is not to fly international for a vacation. Stay within the US. Visit Yellowstone, the Grand CAnyon, some other national park, visit DC and tell the legislators how stupid they are, go anywhere inside the US. And drive there.

The EU has their heads as far up georges butt as he has up theirs. Its hard to know who is the more idiototical.

But be sure to tell franko frattini to check your records and wonder why you are not going to euorpe for a vacation this year.

I was going to paste the URL here but it seems that cut&paste is disabled. Did old georgie boy request that feature and cnet rolled over. So just use the link in the story.

[Stating]

Private Planes, Trains, Buses

Michael Shirtoff's example reflects the world as it was 5 years ago. What if the bad people simply fly via private charter and pay with cash or cashier check? What if they take trains and buses across borders? That info is not going to go into a PNR database. What about non-European countries? Does Russia data mine reservation data? Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? Once again, proposals for yet more tracking from frat boy government officials reflects high school thinking by people who did not grow up on the mean streets and never really had to work for a living. This kind of simplistic Western thinking will doom us. It simply gives the illusion of security and provides a CYA if something does go wrong.

[candlerella]

Tit for tat

What price will we pay for safety and security?