Johanna Boogerd-Quaak
It is crucial that civil liberties be protected; otherwise we risk becoming indistinguishable from the jihadists, who would subjugate non-Muslims and women under Sharia. But unfortunately many use calls to protect civil liberties simply as political cover for quite different motives (often involving craven dhimmitude and an unwillingness to confront the realities of jihadist irredentism and expansionism), and it has all become very difficult to sort out. From BreakingNews.ie, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
The European Parliament overruled member governments today and refused to reconsider its opposition to a contentious transatlantic anti-terrorist deal on sharing airline passenger data.The parliament in Strasbourg voted 343 to 301 against the request to offer an opinion on the deal.
Eighteen MEPs abstained.
The decision not to vote on the deal, negotiated last December between the commission and the United States, is a setback for EU governments keen to boost anti-terrorist cooperation with Washington.
But in practical terms it may have little effect, since interim measures are already in place that provide Washington with even more passenger information than the proposed permanent agreement.
The proposed final accord – intended to provide legal certainty for European airlines caught in the middle – will stay on hold until the court rules on the issue, which could take several months.
Many in the Parliament fear the deal violates civil liberties.
“We still have no guarantees that European passenger data transferred to the US is not passed on to third parties,” said Dutch liberal Johanna Boogerd-Quaak, the leading opponent of the deal.
Conservatives, who supported the deal in last month’s vote, argued it was urgently needed to prevent terrorist attacks on transatlantic flights.
Every plane that goes down will violate the civil liberties of those on board. Not to mention those who come to be under those planes. But hey, when you have 450 million people under your government, what's a few thousand here and there?
Simple solution: revoke the landing rights of all Euro carriers to US airports until the passenger manifests are made available to Homeland Security. No exceptions, INCLUDING UN personnel.
(Gee, do you think that the US economy could withstand the loss of all of those "allies' " citizens' tourist spending?
/sarcasm off)
Ditto to what Earl said. No passenger information, no landing on U.S. soil.
Does this really matter? The US can deny landing rights and the right to US air space to any plane, no exceptions. A few Europeans tossed out of work and spending time in the unemployment line
with cause these politicians to change their toon.
Has anybody heard from the EU`s terrorist czar lately? I know he needs to get up to speed, but where does his power, and influence stand with this vote ?
Ironically the EU~S Anti Terrorist Czar Gijs De Vries is also a former member of the Dutch parliament, as is the leading Dutch liberal Johanna Boogerd-Quaak who was against this vote.
If it were Irish, Italian, Swedes, or any other ethnic group doing the work of terrorists, we'd be looking at them too. However, Arabs and African Muslims are the ones doing the plotting, raping, stealing, lying, and killing, so by all means, we SHOULD be looking at them. I know I do.
Who cares whether they like it or not? I don't remember asking their opinions. If they don't like it, they should stay out of the United States. I also don't remember inviting them here.
Mackie:
Are you referring to...... do you mean.....
"Mr. Terrorism"??????
Ooooh, I feel soooo much safer now that HE's on the job.
LOL
Earl: Yes I did notice that error immediatly, yes I meant to say Anti-terrorist Czar.
Thanks
Tell it to the people who died on flight 93.
You have no rights if you are dead, these people need a brain enima. They need their drugs cause they can't handel real life. There has always been people like this, ones who did not fight for freedom in the 1700s or take a side in the civial war or people who did not stand up in ww1 or ww2 not to worry there have always been many others who will, and are not Chickens.
Don't let them land on our soil they will come around like they did when we told them to put armed Police or they could not land
Mackie:
I was being facetious. One of the idiotic Eurocrats actually was quoted as referring to this newly-appointed anti-terrorism twit as "Mr. Terrorism". Kinda like Captain America, I guess, but without the balls.
No, you can't make up this kind of thing...
I'm looking at the positives -- if the US already has more extensive passenger information from the member countries than it would've gotten under EU sanction, what's the harm?
OK guys, lets try a little thought experiment here.
You want to go to a mall and spend money on Clothes, Consumer Electronics and other neat stuff.
You turn up and the security guard asks you for a name, a finger print, address, photo, retina scan, DNA sample and what it is you are buying today. You say OK, give him all that information and shop happily.
The next day a detective turns up on your door and asks you a few questions about the man who walked into the store at the same time. Turns out this guy in the queue was a shoplifter. You're a bit annoyed, but give whatever info you remember and proceed to enjoy your natty threads and neat-o laptop.
Years go by and you decide to take your money to another store that you never went to before. You need some new threads and your laptop is won't handle Windows Shorthorn. The security guard says hello Mr Earl sir, I've been alerted to your arrival by the bus conductor and would like for you to come with me.
Consistently co-operative, you of course go along with the nice man. He proceeds to hold you prisoner for several days, search you in intimate ways and when you complain you get beaten with a stick, stripped naked and there are photos of you in the news.
Turns out that the Security guard in the first mall shared the data with the other guards and your name was listed on a timesheet submitted by the detective to the stores HR department. You have been consistently helpful all along, spent money in their stores and did nothing wrong but because you were "linked" to a shoplifter in an investigation its YOU who ended up with the suspicions on YOU.
Afterwards you find you phone has been tapped and there's a court order preventing you from approaching a part of the store you never went into. Your phone is tapped and your marriage is over.
The shoplifter probably stole some CDs with no trouble at all and is listening to them quietly at home while you suffer, because actually the store detective is pretty rubbish at his job and never caught anyone.
He's also not very good at filling in forms.
This is what us stupid dead-meat Europeans mean by privacy and the right to inspect and correct data.
This is a basic civil liberties issue, and if you think you are above this kind of mistake you, sir, are wrong. In any event, without the right to confidentiality we can't be sure that your allies won't make similar mistakes on your behalf.
I speak as someone who works with personal data all day, most recently on fraud detection systems. Before leaving work I got 30 false positives, 100 low priority alerts that turned out to be nothing, and so far no fraud that I can see.
The system is working according to correct mathematics, and has a reasonable degree of flexibility, by the end of tomorrow I'll have pressed a few buttons and the false positives will slow down a bit (I know this because I understand the maths and the problems with it) but this is in a simple telephone usage scenario. I sure as hell don't want to be part of someone else's trial and error in a complex terrorism detection program, but I'd quite like some cheap American clothes and a cut price laptop, thanks.