Posted on 05/16/2011 6:41:12 AM PDT by La Lydia
It’s 1776 all over again, as former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker quips. This time, however, we are not talking about unjust taxes or the right to a trial by jury, and no one is dumping tea into Boston Harbor. Instead, the issue is U.S. ability to preserve its own security. Earlier this month, the European Parliament announced its plan to postpone a vote on sharing Passenger Name Records (PNR) with the United States. Essentially, the parliament is reneging on years of negotiations and a standing agreement to share information with the U.S.
Data-sharing agreements like the PNR are essential to helping the United States identify potential terrorists and stop them in their tracks. In fact, officials have said that the PNR aided in capturing the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shazad, and the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab. Information sharing between the United States and Europe was also instrumental in thwarting the liquid explosives plot of 2006.
Apparently, the EU decided it wanted to add in more terms: American “use of PNR data for law enforcement and security purposes must be in line with European data protection standards, in particular regarding purpose limitation, proportionality, legal redress, limitation of the amount of data to be collected and of the length of storage periods.”
In response to this challenge to U.S.—and EU—security, ranking members in both the House and Senate Homeland Security committees filed resolutions urging the Department of Homeland Security to take a strong stance in negotiations with the European Union. It’s a good thing the resolution “urges the Department of Homeland Security not to enter into any agreement that would impose European oversight structures on the United States.”
That sounds awfully familiar. Does the EU really want to pick a fight after 10 years of cooperation? It’s time to work together.
‘.........stand in line and acquire a visa...’. Sounds good on the surface, but as I recall, Mohammed Atta had a visa. All the security measures on earth will not stop a determined terrorist. It may hamper them, albeit.
Good idea, but it would still depend on European security and gate officials to enforce limiting boarding unless we put our own officials at every system access point in Europe. We could also deny landing rights unless there is an acceptable agreement. This is the type of mud fight that both sides should avoid.
I suppose your solution is better, but I was going to propose pulling all our troops out of Europe and just bringing them home. If Europe doesn’t want to cooperate on security matters, we can spend our money here.
I think we should do that too, and let them pay for their own security. But the quick fix is suspending the (stupid anyway) visa waiver program and let them stew in it.
I think you missed my point. The sheer inconvenience of making everyone from the EU have to apply for a visa to travel here would put pressure on the EU to shape up and cooperate. I wasn’t proposing this as a security measure, per se, although the visa procedures have been tightened up to a certain extent since Atta got his.
This debate has been going on for years, 15 to my personal knowledge. It is, ultimately, the airlines that have to enforce this. If they allow people to board their flights to the US without authentic visas, those passengers will be stopped at OUR passport control when they get here and the airlines will be responsible for returning them to Europe. They wouldn’t be admitted. The airlines fought tooth and nail to prevent this reg, but after 9/11 they lost. Of course it is the kind of mud fight both sides should avoid. But being turned back at our passport control happens all the time, anyway.
I actually agree with the Europeans on this one. Europeans must have travel visas to come to the US. If the US wants lots of data from them, this is the time to get it, on our dime, instead of demanding the Europeans give us that data at their cost.
Instead, in a desperate attempt to do anything, *anything* but sensibly profile passengers, the US seems to want to develop dossiers on every single European citizen.
This is what the Europeans are objecting to. Here is their complaint from the article:
“use of PNR data for law enforcement and security purposes must be in line with European data protection standards, in particular regarding purpose limitation, proportionality, legal redress, limitation of the amount of data to be collected and of the length of storage periods.”
If a *foreign* government wanted to collect that kind of data on US citizens, for permanent storage, wouldn’t you be a tad concerned?
Say you took a trip to Greece. You commit a minor traffic offense and are arrested. In the police headquarters, they sit you down, and after looking at your driver’s license, they look at “your” file, that has several documents in it, though this is the first time you have been to Greece.
“So, Mr. Bob Jones, age 39, height 5’10”, weight 180, Married to Nancy Jones, nee Smith, age 37. You have three children, Michael, 8 years, Sally, 5 years, and Irving, 2 years.
“I see that you were once arrested for marijuana, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence, and you have an unpaid traffic fine, back in your home country. So, you are a repeat traffic offender?
“I also see that you are a Baptist. In Greece, Christians are Greek Orthodox, Mr. Jones, and there are very few Baptists. We Greeks do not take kindly to foreigners with different religions coming to Greece to break our laws.”
Your premise and your conclusions are faulty because Europeans DO NOT NEED TRAVEL VISAS to come to the US. We have a program in place for those who hold European passports that allows them to travel here WITHOUT VISAS. That is why I suggested that we suspend the visa waiver program and make them stand in line like everyone else.
I think we’re both right, but your point goes to philosophy.
Something on the order of, “Because being cleared by a security guard is a hassle, everyone will have to get chips implanted in their bodies—for your convenience.”
The bottom line is that by requiring visas, we get *some* information, but we also need to have profiling, to police up the obvious problems that don’t evidence themselves in written information, only personal inspection.
No, I don’t know what you are talking about, but that is certainly not what I meant. Of course we would still have to have security at airports. I didn’t say anything about chips, and we are talking about foreigners here, not Americans. I am not being philosophic, I am being realistic. If the EU won’t cooperate, why should we continue to extend them the courtesy of the visa waiver privilege? Make them get visas. We need the information about people before we let them on planes headed to the United States, and there are several ways to get it.
I think you’re reading to much into this.
My argument was for profiling. If we profiled, like they do in Europe, things could be much easier. And yes, we do need travel visas restored, so we would have at least some information to deal with.
But demanding huge amounts of information on European citizens instead of profiling and visas is pretty obnoxious. We would object if they demanded huge amounts of information about our citizens. Or at least I hope we would.
For their part, while they are at least willing to give us this information, they want reasonable controls on what we do with it. They don’t want us to keep it forever, or to use it for non-security related things, or integrate it with other, even more intrusive human intel databases.
And that is not unreasonable.
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