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Does Bush Admin. See Union Membership as Sign of Terrorism? |
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If a passenger flying from Europe to the United States is a member of a union, is gay or a Buddhist, will knowing that information help Homeland Security fight terrorism? The Bush administration thinks so. Starting in August, airlines flying from Europe to the United States will be required to provide sensitive personal passenger data about a person’s race, sexual orientation, health, religion and more if it’s in the airline reservation system.
The Washington Post reported last week that under a new agreement, approved by the European Union (EU) Parliament and signed by the United States, background information on travelers includes:
“racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership” and data about an individual’s health, traveling partners and sexual orientation.
The information will be retained for 15 years by the Department of Homeland Security and can be shared with other government agencies and nations. Airlines do not routinely keep such information in their systems, and the Post reports the personal details could end up in a passenger’s file because of requests for special services or routine questioning by airlines or travel agents about emergency contacts, traveling companions, next of kin and lodging. The Post adds:
Even a request for a king-size bed at a hotel could be noted in the database.
The agreement, which expands on a previous program, has privacy and civil libertarians on both sides of the Atlantic alarmed. When European officials balked at the breadth of the program earlier this summer, the Post reported the Bush administration threatened to turn back flights from Europe if the deal was not approved.
In a letter to EU officials in June, Peter Hustnix, EU data protection supervisor, wrote that the plan is
without significant legal precedent…Data on EU citizens will be readily available to a broad range of U.S. agencies, and there is no limitation to what U.S. authorities are allowed to do with the data….I have serious doubts whether the outcome of these negotiations will be fully compatible with European fundamental rights.
Jim Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the Post:
What Americans should be concerned about is it is now here in black and white: The government will maintain a database of all travelers–including travelers of U.S. citizenship, including people who are believed to be no risk or threat…the government will maintain that and data mine it.
News of the new program drew quite a few comments when the folks at AMERICAblog posted a story Saturday, including these two:
So, if aperson is a gay, Buddhist union member, what does that say about anything?
Did I miss something, or is it that if a plumber is a union member, he’ll make a better pipe bomb? The logic escapes me.
4 Comments
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This is an ourtrage!! They are trying to turn our country into some sort of neo-fascist communist state! Don’t they remember that isolationist policies contributed to tragic attack at Pearl Harbor. Why don’t they take some of the billions they are spending in Iraq and let the dang U.S. Intelligence agencies do the job they are supposed to be doin, instead of putting the burden on the damn civilian airlines. They got enough trouble staying in business as it is!!! The U.S. government needs to stop harrassing everybody trying to visit our country. By the time Bush is done everybody in the whole world is gonna hate americans and it won’t be safe for any of us to travel anywhere!!!!!!!Not only that,if they keep this stuff up, we will be prisoners in our own country with no freedom to travel anywhere. Talk about legislative discrimination against humanity!!!!!!!!!!!!OUTRAGEOUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Usual government stupidity. Unions build free nations as we see in Poland by representing the working families.
Before union members are investigated, they should find out why trays served to our troops overseas by Haliburton costs $27.00 per tray. The troops have cooks. a truck driver amkes $100,000 per year. The troops have truck drivers. These private contractors are making billions while the troops work for pennies.
Like it or not, the union question is valid because of the ubiquitousness of organized crime in some EU and former eastern bloc countries (Poland for example). With the recent expansion of the Visa Waiver Program, which allows travel to the US without security or background checks, to 35 countries, this will be the only security measure in place to screen travelers from these countries.
This policy clearly shows the Fascist tendencies of the Bush Administration. Union membership has zero to do with terrorism!
Only a crazy Right Wing fanatic would even attempt to make such an insane connection! The current Bush Administration is full of these kind of crazies. They are digging deep into our federal government…
We should demand this policy be abandoned immediately. Why did the Europeans go along with this stupidity? We need a anti-Fascist purge in all western democracies. These Fascists are a much more serious threat to Western Civilization than any other.