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Monday, February 11, 2008

Soon you'll be able to roll a bowling ball down Broadway without hitting anything
Posted by Jill | 10:05 AM
Go into midtown Manhattan on any nice spring day, or stroll over to Fifth Avenue. Good luck getting through the mobs of tourists, many of them European. And if you have a business that caters to these tourists, enjoy it while you can. Because who on earth would want to travel to a country that does this:

The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines.

The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration that officials in Brussels described as "blackmail" and "troublesome", and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington's requirements.

According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said.

And within months the US department of homeland security is to impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travellers to apply online for permission to enter the country before booking or buying a ticket, a procedure that will take several days.

The data from the US's new electronic transport authorisation system is to be combined with extensive personal passenger details already being provided by EU countries to the US for the "profiling" of potential terrorists and assessment of other security risks.

Washington is also asking European airlines to provide personal data on non-travellers - for example family members - who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly, young or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, a demand the airlines reject as "absurd".


As it stands now, the crap you have to go through when traveling even inside the United States as an American citizen has stripped away just about anything that was ever pleasant about travel. Even going to Jamaica isn't as much fun as it used to be because of the hassle of just getting there. If I had to go through what the Bush Administration is asking Europeans to go through in order to travel here I wouldn't even bother -- and I suspect that many Europeans will decide exactly that.

It isn't just every American who's assumed to be a Muslim terrorist until proven otherwise. It's now everyone in the world.

(h/t)

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6 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
That's certainly not going to help the ailing US economy. I live in London now & the strong pound makes shopping in US a treat. But who's going to go if it's such a hassle.

On the positive side, maybe that'll mean less flights & less pollution. Is that Bush's idea of fighting climate change? ;-)
2/11/08, 11:42 PM  
Blogger Scorpio said...
11 months to go.

Then maybe this harebrained crap will stop.

One can hope.
2/12/08, 3:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I work at a hotel with a lot of foriegn business travelers. I've had people check in totally pissed at their treatment. A lot say they will never come back.
2/12/08, 6:49 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Our Homeland Security Agency is learning - but what it's learning is anyone's guess.

Actually, I have a pretty good idea, and I guess everyone else has, too.
2/12/08, 7:58 AM  
Blogger The Minstrel Boy said...
one lesson most of the conservatives never understood was one of the first things i said to my trainees in the small arms class i taught.

i would have them strap on the big miltary issue colts (i'm dating myself here) and let them feel the weight, not only of the pistol but the spare magazines on the other side of the web belt. then, i would fix them with a baleful stare and say

gentlemen, the first and main thing you have accomplished by putting on that pistol is that you have increased the chances of your being in a gunfight by 100%.

there will be shots fired in the sky, for the mere reason that we have sent guns up there.
2/12/08, 11:19 AM  
Blogger fallenmonk said...
While the whole concept is stupid it becomes even more so when you consider how incompetent the Homeland people have demonstrated themselves to be. Test agents are still walking on the plane with fake bombs. Perfectly innocent people are being restricted from traveling and even toddlers are being prevented from boarding because they have the same name as someone on the "no fly list". And who the hell is going to all the screening and handling of the mountains of data this process is going to generate. Seriously, the FBI still can't make their email system work and we are talking some serious data when you start trying to analyze every potential passenger coming to or flying over the U.S.
2/12/08, 4:27 PM  
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