America will plead with MEPs to allow passengers' detailed personal information to be handed over to help prevent terror attacks. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says that data gathered about airline passengers arriving in the U.S. can be crucial to prevent feared terrorist strikes. Chertoff is pushing a new deal with the European Union that would give American law enforcement agencies continued access to information gathered about European passengers on U.S.-bound flights. The current interim deal expires in July, and the European Parliament wants a new agreement with better data protection standards. Chertoff will address the EU assembly's civil liberties committee.
America will plead with MEPs to allow passengers' detailed personal information to be handed over to help prevent terror attacks.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says that data gathered about airline passengers arriving in the U.S. can be crucial to prevent feared terrorist strikes.
Chertoff is pushing a new deal with the European Union that would give American law enforcement agencies continued access to information gathered about European passengers on U.S.-bound flights.
The current interim deal expires in July, and the European Parliament wants a new agreement with better data protection standards.
Chertoff will address the EU assembly's civil liberties committee.
American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.
Migeru: Didn't we (the EU 15), in the last 6 years: change our passports agree for our airlines to give the US government our personal data agree that the new EU member states don't get visa waivers in order to preserve the visa waiver? Colman: Oh, I'm just going to love hearing the rationale for allowing our dear, dear partners in the US stigmatise and discriminate against hundreds of thousands of EU citizens on the basis of their origin. ... The waiver programme needs to go at this point: once they start choosing classes of EU citizens on the basis of their ethnic origin it becomes completely unacceptable.
Colman: Oh, I'm just going to love hearing the rationale for allowing our dear, dear partners in the US stigmatise and discriminate against hundreds of thousands of EU citizens on the basis of their origin. ... The waiver programme needs to go at this point: once they start choosing classes of EU citizens on the basis of their ethnic origin it becomes completely unacceptable.
Oh, crap, this already happened:
Jurist: Chertoff presses airline data-sharing in EU meeting (Monday, May 14, 2007)
US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff met with the European Parliament Civil Liberties Committee [official website; meeting materials (Agenda No 3)] Monday in his latest bid to convince the EU to allow the transfer of detailed information regarding passengers on US-bound flights to all relevant US government agencies. The current interim deal, which expires in July, allows up to 34 pieces of data, including names, addresses, travel itineraries, and credit card information, to be transferred to the US Customs and Border Protection Agency within 15 minutes of a flight's departure from an EU member state. The information may only be disseminated to other law enforcement agencies if the agencies have data security standards as stringent as those of the EU. Chertoff argued that information gathered from passengers must be available to agencies that do not meet data security standards if the need arises.
Chertoff argued that information gathered from passengers must be available to agencies that do not meet data security standards if the need arises.
And thus it will happen because "needs" are not fickle creatures when in uncontrolled bureaucrats' hands. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The transatlantic deal would have limited the amount of data that the US can collect from European airlines, and only allowed the US to store the information to fight terrorism and other serious crimes for three and a half years. US officials have threatened to fine European airlines up to $6,000 per passenger if it does not disclose the passenger data, potentially causing European airlines to lose customers to US airlines who will continue to hand over passenger information to US officials. European airlines will still hand over the passenger information until September, while the European Commission determines whether another legal basis exists for its finding that US protection of the data is adequate.
The alternative everyonr forgets to mention is to give up the visa waiver program. You want to go to the US? Get a visa. Bush is a symptom, not the disease.
Exactly what have the yanks ever demanded, however unreasonable that we have denied them ? Even the war in Iraq was supported with unreasonable rendition and torture.
It's just unusual to hear about it until after our rights and freedoms have been signed, sealed and delivered in a gift-wrapped box to the Pentagon where they can be locked away for ever. keep to the Fen Causeway
It's somewhat analogous to the Washington situation, where a majority of the population would effectively be classed as 'leftist extremists' in terms of political discourse, there's a group of left-leaning lawmakers who are willing to push some elements of a populist agenda as long as the boat isn't rocked too far, and there's a solid core of centre-right and far-right exceptionalists who work very hard to own the terms of discourse, and are in turn owned by special interests whose main goal is to minimise populist influence.
So the Parliament is better than nothing, and does offer some checks and balances. But it's mostly defensive play.
And the unelected Commission owns most of the board.
