Only the UK, Japan and Taiwan are significantly down on numbers. Almost every other country has increased the number of visiting travellers - including those from the rest of Europe, and especially including Eastern Europe.

People either don't know about data collection, or don't care.

My guess is the former, but with quite a bit of the latter.

Two questions for those who know better than I:

• From the Guardian article ("Cracked it!") I found Fidis which has a "Budapest Declaration on Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTDs)"
  I cannot figure Fidis out. Are they astroturf or just apparently naive university people?


• If I don't travel to the USA, am I "safe"? I'm not going anywhere fingerprints are standard procedure, but aren't biometrics being phased in everywhere (new passports/ID cards across Europe)?

Disturbing States

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/9/10/74741/9759


Half the population is under the age of 18. Tanzania's future is NOW...join the 50% campaign!

The Department of Homeland Security is breaking privacy laws by failing to tell the public all the ways it uses personal information to target passengers boarding flights entering or leaving the United States, according to a draft government report.

The Government Accountability Office, in a report to be released tomorrow, says DHS's Customs and Border Protection agency has never publicly disclosed all the sources of data such as name, credit card number and travel history that it uses to detect passengers who may pose a security risk.

"CBP's current disclosures do not fully inform the public about all of its systems for prescreening aviation passenger information, nor do they explain how CBP combines data in the prescreening process, as required by law," the report says. "As a result, passengers are not assured that their privacy is protected during the international prescreening process."