US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]
digit.so36.net
digit.so36.net
It's worth noting that almost all of this is still the output of the 9/11, where US and Saudi systems did not communicate and resulted in known terrorists in Saudi Arabia being able to travel at will into the USA.
I don't like biometrics, but the hyperbole needs to be tuned down a bit here.
They don’t spy on their own citizens but they exchange info with the other spy agencies, so…
They sure do; whatever gave you the impression they don’t?
PS I see that you have edited your comment to add a link, https://www.aclu.org/other/nsa-spying-americans-illegal. That link shows that the government illegally spys on citizens, which is the opposite of what you meant to show.
In other words, the NSA can only spy where it is explicitly granted permission to do so by statute. Citizens concerned about surveillance do not have to answer the question, "what law restricts the NSA's spying?" Rather, the government is required to supply an answer to the question "what law permits the NSA to spy?"
In the off chance that you’re not, remember that Gitmo exists so they can do things that their mandates wouldn’t allow.
No, Gitmo exists so they can do things openly and shamelessly that their mandates wouldn't allow.
Otherwise they can use black sites, or just lie about it.
Let me tell you about this new crypto investment I have...
Because the EU is not part of either?
Note for those in the thread who haven't heard of ECHELON until now (just like me) - it is the exact same list of countries as for the Five Eyes.
> [...] Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, also known as the Five Eyes. [0]
Correct, that would be illegal.
When NSA need to spy on an american, they ask GCHQ to do it for them and buy the data. Or buy it off a private company.
-----
edit: How would you code "terrorism through public demonstrations of driving while female" or "terrorism through being Yemen?"
"Terrorism though applying for a marriage license after being mildly critical in the WaPo."
I’m sorry what? Is this the predominant/common belief among other atheists? Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken with is more likely to think you just turn off, everything goes black, back to the void of unlife.
Where does the speed go when the car stops?
All these PEP, sanction lists, ofac monitoring, financial sanction lists already exist and every company with a worthwile monetary turnover ever facing an audit runs these background checks.
The laws are there, they are called the aml directives, the lists are there.
And most of the entries there are provided by eitjer uk or us entities, youll usually find foreign military personells data there, dob, rank, id number, name but not much else.
It is bit of a joke as many muslim people have similar names and joe shmoes get flagged for nothing very often.
Meanwhile, the people on these lists are very high up within their own government hierarchy, they probably have 5 differe t passports.
Btw, these lists are csv files often...some sophistication.
Yea, monitor peps, fugitives and terrorists, but find a way without combing through the whole worlds innocent citizens.
And surely this critically sensitive data is not left on a shared location with loose permissions, or sent around as an email attachment, right? ...right?
I'm worried about the ability of this data to enable authoritarianism and I'm also worried about it being handled by those with the competence of the average government official.
"Never blame on malice what you can blame on stupidity", however the problem is government has both of those in spades.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-sanctio...
Just from my own research on surveillance, I got back a bunch of records in a FOIA lawsuit that included the the query results of a bunch of license plate scans. Large XML blobs. For whatever reason, they didn't redact a few thousand pages of those query results.
A lot more info was in those query responses than you'd imagine. For example, SSNs of people whose license plates matched the first three digits of a "person of interest"'s car.
Mind you, this was after them arguing for months, with affidavits, that they don't have audit logs. So, yeah.
SELECT * FROM Person JOIN Biometric_Datum ON Person.id = Biometric_Datum.person_id;
It’s worse for Arabs because until modern times they didn’t have “conventional” surnames. Their name was a composition of a given name plus that of their forefathers’, often appended with “Abu” (meaning father in Arabic), and sometimes the addition of a clan name. In my ancestral home of Egypt, the government often standardized everyone about 100-150 years ago with whatever names they were carrying at the time.
So you could be completely unrelated to someone and have a partially matching last name.
Combine that with America’s gleefully racist views of Arabs - particularly after 9/11 - and you have a recipe for disaster with no-fly lists.
There is nothing scientific about anti-money laundering. It is one of the ways modern nations hang themselves with self-inflictes inefficiencies for very little gains. Because it's run by police organisations, you cannot criticise it as you would be labelled as a friend of terrorists.
Do you think Saudi Arabia is the Taliban or what? Even when it was banned, it wasn't the big of an offense.
And yes its no longer banned, and there are a lot of women drivers now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Saudi_Ar...
"In September 2011, a Sudanese migrant worker was beheaded for sorcery"
Was this a rhetorical question?
Or does anybody really think things get formulated those ways "by chance" or "by incompetence"?
Never blame on stupidity what you can be blamed on malice, in case of institutions…
This doesn't seem true unless the US citizen is resident in a Schengen area country or (as a technicality) is also an EU/Schengen area citizen, as the EU seems slightly more in favor of government collection of biometric data for automated immigration purposes. I'm not sure about the reverse, as even the CBP seems to be moving towards facial recognition in place of fingerprint data, but it seems like most non-US/Canadian visitors are required to provide fingerprints.
I'm not even sure how to classify this sentence...
Edit: what’s with the downvotes?
I am thankful that the EU is standing up against this threat.
You're pushing a baseless conspiracy theory. There is no evidence that Saudi authorities were involved in 9/11.
Welcome to reality.
The intelligence community missed a lot of clues right at their finger tips that could have prevented 9/11. Do you think biometric tracking would have prevented 9/11? Because it sure sounds like it.
These tools will be abused and must be rolled backed to save freedom and democracy. Authoritarian states working together on a techno-based total control vision is a very bad development.
Thinking about it, I do not understand how any neutral person would take your position - it reads like astroturfing propaganda work.
The "but we just do what the others do" claim (which is afaik false) also made this seem fishy to me.
Especially as every hacker knows: When there is data, this data will be abused, sooner or later. There hasn't been any recorded exception to this rule. Anywhere. Ever. It's like a law of nature.
That's why the zeroes rule of data protection reads: Do not produce data. Only not existing data can't be abused.
The EU does? That's news.
Can someone bake this claim by some source?
Such legislation would basically allow syphoning off all the data of everyone from the EU databases. They could (and would) just go through all possible name combination an see if it's a hit (I'm sure there will be no safeguards in place for that; oh, whoops, the British did this already when Brexit happened).
The precious data will then be stored in a "commercial cloud" service. What could possibly go wrong here?...
> I don't like biometrics, but the hyperbole needs to be tuned down a bit here.
The entire official response to 9/11 is the hyperbole, not the criticism of those measures.
Talk is streaming right now https://streaming.media.ccc.de/jev22/hip1
So your government collects biometric data but passes laws promising not to misuse it... you may very well find that those promises are worth less than dirt when a country with leverage over your own starts making demands that your government feels obliged or coerced to obey.
Or you give lots of your personal data to a software company that promises privacy in their TOS. Great.. until that company gets bought out by the likes of Google or Facebook, then those promises evaporate and good luck doing anything about it.
The solution is to never trust any promises of privacy, and don't hand over personal data to anybody unless it's taken from you at gunpoint. It doesn't matter what promises are given, because all promises can be broken with enough leverage.
I recommend that Europeans petition their governments to delete such databases now, so that compliance with American demands simply won't be possible. Delete the databases now so your governments can't fold to pressure later.
Such private data should never be collected in the first place. You may as well stack up gold bars in your home, in plain view of street-level windows. Such concentrations of data/wealth are asking for trouble. Get rid of it now and you won't have to worry about keeping it secure in the future, no matter what world events may unfold.
Things usually don't change that fast, but nobody can truly predict the geopolitical landscape even half a year into the future.
I am inside the US and have been inside and lived in many countries. As an immigrant from Asia, I am happy most in the US and so are millions of permanent immigrants including tens of thousands from Europe every year :)
I spent some time traveling in various parts of the world and EU works best for me.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/991680.The_Anglo_America...
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-A7-BNmZpG-RLOXZZ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley
-- preface snippet (1981) ---
The Rhodes Scholarships, established by the terms of Cecil Rhodes's seventh will, are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes in five previous wills left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. And what does not seem to be known to anyone is that this secret society was created by Rhodes and his principal trustee, Lord Milner, and continues to exist to this day. To be sure, this secret society is not a childish thing like the Ku Klux Klan, and it does not have any secret robes, secret handclasps, or secret passwords. It does not need any of these, since its members know each other intimately. It probably has no oaths of secrecy nor any formal procedure of initiation. It does, however, exist and holds secret meetings, over which the senior member present presides. At various times since 1891, these meetings have been presided over by Rhodes, Lord Milner, Lord Selborne, Sir Patrick Duncan, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Lord Lothian, and Lord Brand. They have been held in all the British Dominions, starting in South Africa about 1903; in various places in London, chiefly 175 Piccadilly; at various colleges at Oxford, chiefly All Souls; and at many English country houses such as Tring Park, Blickling Hall, Cliveden, and others.
This society has been known at various times as Milner's Kindergarten, as the Round Table Group, as the Rhodes crowd, as The Times crowd, as the All Souls group, and as the Cliveden set. All of these terms are unsatisfactory, for one reason or another, and I have chosen to call it the Milner Group. Those persons who have used the other terms, or heard them used, have not generally been aware that all these various terms referred to the same Group.
It is not easy for an outsider to write the history of a secret group of this kind, but, since no insider is going to do it, an outsider must attempt it. It should be done, for this Group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century. Indeed, the Group is of such significance that evidence of its existence is not hard to find, if one knows where to look. This evidence I have sought to point out without overly burdening this volume with footnotes and bibliographical references. While such evidences of scholarship are kept at a minimum, I believe I have given the source of every fact which I mention. Some of these facts came to me from sources which I am not permitted to name, and I have mentioned them only where I can produce documentary evidence available to everyone. Nevertheless, it would have been very difficult to write this book if I had not received a certain amount of assistance of a personal nature from persons close to the Group. For obvious reasons, I cannot reveal the names of such persons, so I have not made reference to any information derived from them unless it was information readily available from other sources.
...
I should say a few words about my general attitude toward this subject. I approached the subject as a historian. This attitude I have kept. I have tried to describe or to analyze, not to praise or to condemn. I hope that in the book itself this attitude is maintained. Of course I have an attitude, and it would be only fair to state it here. In general, I agree with the goals and aims of the Milner Group. I feel that the British way of life and the British Commonwealth of Nations are among the great achievements of all history. I feel that the destruction of either of them would be a terrible disaster to mankind.
...
William Engdahl's book Gods of Money [ch. 18 - Theft of a Nation] addresses the period you mention and what was happening. There was also an ideological shift in this period, since after the end of Cold War, Neo-Conservatives have been (and remain) in ideological charge. The Wolfowitz Doctrine always struck me as decidedly un-Anglo given its willfully provocative stance, lacking any nuance or subtlety. In fact the behavior of US post Cold War remains somewhat perplexing, even in terms of purely American national interests. There may have been a regime change.
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/us-strategy-plan-ca...
The 20th century saw the rise of American military, economic, and cultural imperialism, which carried Anglo-American culture further as the British Empire declined relatively.
Sure, I'll concede that there are shady people in government trying to do things that are broadly objectionable and sometimes illegal, but to think this means certain individuals or secret societies have a "stranglehold" on global politics or economics goes much too far. There are far too many factors at play for a small group of people to wield the level of outsize power necessary to guide these processes. It's really a very large and ever-changing group of people who "control everything", and this happens in a highly uncoordinated manner.
This might be true on military/nato matters, but economically, Europe and the EU can quite take care of themselves.
As for america, who has a stranglehold there?
If we leave conspiracy theories out of the equation, it is always the 2 parties un power and their corporate or institutional buddies.
I do not think anyone is thelling Trump or Bidens team who to invade or bombard next.
The US is the remaining superpower and thats all there really is.
Look at Musk, richest guy in the world, Trump was making fun of him.
It is not the people with money who have the power, money is a pre requisite to even be allowed near power.
The people with power un the us are simply the people with....power.
USA, with all its flaws, is nobodys vassal state.
What group of people are controlling everything? Please don't let it be Jews...
Even the current moral panic and conspiracy complex around transgendered people leads to anti-semitism if you follow the strings and thumbtacks.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/liquidity_lines/htm...
Without a swap line banks couldn't just treat EUR as USD whenever an entity needs to keep USD for import/export purposes.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?most_rec...
I would have thought HN is more on the small government political spectrum, it appears this does not count for foreign policy?
tldr: USA is the current world empire; EU are their vassals
Homework: (1) find how many European military bases there are on US soil; (2) find how many US military bases there are on European soil;
To do what? Counter the Canadian threat to US American territorial integrity? Prevent war between California and ethnic Nevadans? Monitor unmanaged flows of migrants from unstable regions? Hmm, well maybe that one.
But really, one of the great blessings of the US is a lack of any home-front excitement, which makes this comparison pretty silly. Not that that disagrees with the hypotheses that the US is a world empire and the EU's present existence is predicated on US military size and operations.
They've been plenty of protests in Europe over this matter this year, but they won't show them on CNN, that's for sure.
Random citizen asking obviously does nothing, but foreign base COs are always desperately trying to keep their forces on best behavior to minimize frustration. That's not easy when you import a bunch of guys in the age range that most often causes trouble, give them significant spending money, and remove them from past anchoring influences. It's worse when the receiving society is more orderly; I have Japan in mind.
Fighting against those problems is that all political leadership generally benefits from the arrangements. The foreign host nation gets economic activity and some amount of bargaining power, and the US gets a location that obviously is helpful for some strategic objective.
>Right, so what for are the US military bases on European soil then? (Please spare me the part about protecting Europe from outside threats story).
An anomalous, peaceful Europe is the water that you're swimming in, and I'm trying to point out that it's wet. I recognize the limited prospects of the endeavor. Though, if it's the outside part you're rejecting, I'll acknowledge my imprecise wording. Russia is the outside threat, being outside the Western European culture that is defended, but threats come from within Europe too.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Naval_Base_Subic_Bay
oh, so why are you replying?
In the last 20 years the USA has involved its allies into multiple pointless unwinnable wars. Human rights in the USA have been significantly eroded, and many values essential to modern society are currently being undermined. Additionally, Trump's presidency has done significant damage to a large number of diplomatic relations and resulted not only in widespread doubt about its democratic process, but a genuine coup attempt.
Meanwhile, during the same 20 years the European Union and China have risen in power significantly - and both are making significant effort to curtail the power the USA has over them. Those military bases exist because the USA is still somewhat of an ally and the EU has real threats right on its border - as long as the USA is not actively hostile towards the EU, having direct access to the firepower of a gun-drunk nation is quite convenient.
You're ridiculous and watch Fox news too much.
History contradicts you. I'm an European myself if that wasn't clear enough, so this wasn't an American telling you, an European, you are our vassals.
> EU has no realistic military opponents on its borders
Fully agree on this.
> You're ridiculous and watch Fox news too much.
I might be ridiculous to your eyes, but I certainly don't watch FoxNews.
Europeans want to vacation in the US. The US demands biometric authentication upon crossing the border. So you either give them that data or the US stops letting Europeans in.
And I doubt Europe is going to be any better at not demanding biometric data than the US is, because Europe has the same underlying incentives to do so (i.e. a restrictive immigration system, a large portion of the population who want to NIMBY entire races of people, and a large body of laws to enforce).
Will the relationship being more difficult if not yielding to the demands? Ok then. We are not made of cotton candy to melt in a drop of rain that easily when some difficulty comes along, especially if it is a bureaucracy thingy. The vacations will be a bit more difficult - for those attracted by the US instead of beautiful spots elsewhere. Business relations too, of course, but that one has double edge actually.
Have no plans to visit the US still expect my government would fold like napkin if US county police faxed over a request.
The US tapped even NATO ally governments if they want fingerprints they'll get them.
At any rate don't you have to sign, fingerprint and stand infront of a camera to pass most countries passport control?
If people want to share with a third party, it's their business.
But for US to just access some database and lift them is ridiculous
ToS is like HR: they both exist to protect only the company.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"
meaning, I got the right to secure my sh*t.
I could have been clearer there. I can see why you replied as such.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the Supreme Court routinely flouts long-held interpretations of statute for nakedly ideological reasons. Rights don't mean anything if the government isn't willing to grant them, unfortunately. I would not bet on this court preserving a right to encryption as you describe it.
Not when it comes to server-based software.
- If you host your own servers you can still verify.
- if you are using well-designed, human-centric software, untrusted servers (read: all servers you do not have control of / cannot audit) would not have any access to private data due to encryption, and clients can be verified to make sure decryption only occurs on the client side
The trouble is, this kind of software is a poison pill to advertising. It will be a long time before it takes over.
Custodial services can always still exist for those among us that are incompetent.
It's pretty difficult to fully scrub yourself of the metadata involved in making a connection to a server. For sure it can be minimized, like Signal does. But this has inherent UX tradeoffs that most people are not willing to make, like requiring you share your phone number to use the service, and not having server-based backup (yet, at least).
It was once difficult for me to communicate with you, me being a stranger to you and you being the same, having never met in person. But here we are.
We are all experts at solving difficult problems & giving access to those solutions to everyone.
No, they don't. They only allow you to verify that some entity that possessed some private key made some claim about some set of bits. It tells you absolutely nothing about whether any of those claims are actually true, including whether the possessor of the private key is who they claim to be.
I said encryption. You can do encryption all kinds of ways. In this case, I am talking about encrypting your own data on a client and not allowing a server to see it. This would just require a secret key derived from a password ran through a password hashing algo.
You only need asynchronous crypto when you involve another party, so it would play a role in a trustless architecture, but I am unsure what your point is.
When I say “verify trust” of a system, I am referring to a product making a claim, such as “your data is private and we don’t sell it” — then backing up the claim by building the product in such a way such that it is impossible to sell it. Encryption + open source is just about all the way to proving that claim, and it can be verified that way.
No, you didn't. You said "modern encryption" which is generally understood to mean public-key encryption.
But even so, your claim is still false because you can't trust your encryption software even if it is open source unless you build (and audit!) your entire tool chain yourself (and nowadays you have to roll your own silicon too if you really want to be sure).
What are you going to do about it? Call your senators, who are now in love with Facebook for giving the federal government access to these previously private communications?
As for the real world... nothing. I quite like signal.
This is, of course, not true about HR and yet another thing people just say to sound cool.
HR’s job is to hire people and run your payroll and benefits. If you have a health insurance question are you going to avoid them because they’re going to fire you as soon as you look at them? No.
If you’re a first level manager molesting a distinguished engineer are you totally safe from HR because you’re “the company”? No.
They will sack anyone if they see it necessary to protect the status quo.
But more importantly, HR will create mindless policies to show you how powerful they are. As border force forcing your sneakers of.
To show you how useful they are. It’s very much a matter of misaligned incentives I think. Of course HR has all day to execute their own policies, so they don’t see them as an overt burden.
Sounds like the contract binds me, but does not protect me. It protects the company, but does not bind it.
> Conservatism Consists of Exactly One Proposition, to Wit: There Must Be In-Groups Whom the Law Protects but Does Not Bind, Alongside Out-Groups Whom the Law Binds but Does Not Protect.
All the laws, promises, good intentions etc are not worth the paper they are written on. If there is data to be stolen, it will be stolen.
LOL dude the EU is one of the driving forcing on making sure there is a complete history of ever person.
This has always been the case. Before, it was the threat of imprisonment for speaking out against your government, and having higher taxes levied. Now, it's simply privacy, since that is the key to the countries/companies gaining without literally stealing from you.
That said, I think it is a shitty deal for these leaky, insecure, bad faith entities to be able to negotiate off to the side with our sensitive personal data like this.
Nothing, it's a hostage situation.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I suspect, without proof but read next paragraphs for some evidence, that the US offer their surveillance net. If EU police is searching for someone, even in our own territory, it's easier for US intelligence agencies to locate and eavesdrop on the suspect with the tech that we know.
El Pollo Carvajal [0] was arrested in Madrid, September 2021. Although it was our police that made the arrest, it was the US that provided his exact location. Some say that local authorities had no desire to catch the man, actually he had already been arrested in 2019 and "disappeared" apparently due to some bureaucratic error. If I'm not mistaken, he's awaiting extradition.
The end of terrorist band ETA [1] (that Wikipedia charmingly defines as "separatist group") happened after a continuous string of high-profile arrests in France. Again, our neighbours haven't been always very collaborative, but had no option when alerted of exact location of people in the Interpol watchlist.
I would feel sorry if american tourists would need a visa for europe, as the americans which do travel and get aroynd are the nicest people, first timers get to see the world from another perspective.
I prefer if americans travel for holidays rather than....forgive me...in military uniforms.
Note that it's not at all unprecedented for US/Europe/etc travelers to be offered visa-free access without reciprocity for exactly this reason. The whole concept of "passport power" implies there are a lot of countries that give US citizens access without a visa without the US and other countries giving them the same.
Its due to badly designed Miami airport compared to literally anywhere else in the world I've been, that you can't connect within 'safe' restricted zone after security checkin. No, you basically need to exit airport with all security involved (walk around checkins, go outside if you want) to get to your next flight, and walk throught all security again. At least luggage was transferred automatically, but most airports in undeveloped countries can manage that too.
Well, not our biometric data, certainly. You could get that on eBay.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/technology/for-sale-on-eb...
People are especially sensitive about their DNA since they think pharma companies can somehow develop new expensive drugs just by looking at it. (There’s actual discrimination issues on this one of course, not to mention family drama…)
Mostly the value in tracking you comes from profiling you, i.e. building relationships between facts, mostly metadata about what you do over time. But biometrics aren't metadata and aren't what you do.
I did mention "discrimination" but redacting data in case future governments are racist isn't all that useful; they're the government, you can't hide from them, and since discrimination isn't based on real objective categories then you can't predict what it will be based on. There's no biometric for being a Cagot.
> People are especially sensitive about their DNA since they think pharma companies can somehow develop new expensive drugs just by looking at it.
That's not why people are sensitive about their DNA. It's more to do with the fact that health insurance companies could know if they are particularly susceptible to a myriad of mendelian (gene-linked) diseases and disorders "just by looking at it". Another reason to be sensitive about DNA- if my brother's DNA was found at a crime scene and my DNA was in a database like 23andMe, police could start going after my family members as suspects. This has happened.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/show/a-father-took-an-at-ho...
On the US’ side yes, but it’s not more reliable tracking because the US doesn’t have exit customs and so doesn’t actually verify if people have left the country again.
Though nobody’s against biometrics because of this surely? I don’t think anyone campaigns for the right to enter on fake passports. Spies maybe.
As for health insurance, there’s no country where they’re allowed to act on opinions like that, aside for asking if you’re a smoker. They’re specifically banned from genetic testing on top of that, but they wouldn’t be secretly collecting that info anyway.
…Not that they even exist in most countries.
In fact, just yesterday, the related conversation resulted in and I am paraphrasing 'you need to let go of some control and trust the system.'
I will never understand this level of trust in your own government institutions.
Let’s say I’m a boring white midwestern HVAC contractor with a mortgage and 2.5 kids. Big Bad China acquires a picture of my face and my fingerprints. Also my DNA, why not, just for argument’s sake! I never plan to visit China. How does this biometric sharing affect me, my rights, my safety, monetarily or otherwise? Connect the dots for me because it’s hard for me to argue the privacy angle if I can’t even explain the danger of a simple scenario like this.
Another way of putting it: all personal information should by default be kept private, until there’s a specific need from you for that information to be processed by known people.
- Your data could be sold by China to your insurer.
- Or they could buy your insurer and use the information they have on you.
- They could use it for some corporate espionage.
- Perhaps you or your boss need to be convinced that you should sell Chinese HVAC equipment instead of Korean.
- Maybe one of your kids will get married to someone from China and you have been critical of their government online. They may visit China and be punished for that.
> Let’s say I’m a boring white midwestern HVAC contractor with a mortgage and 2.5 kids. Big Bad China acquires a picture of my face and my fingerprints.
1) If you cannot imagine the potential problems, then why do you believe the contents of your disclaimer?
2) Let's say you are not "a boring white midwestern HVAC contractor"
That is: even if you never plan to visit the remote country in question, the data can come back to your country (or a third country you might want to visit). And it might not even get there intact: what happens if your fingerprints get mislabeled as someone else's?
It's a constant struggle with a lot to sacrifice for your principles. See Richard Stallman for an example of someone who no doubt endures many inconveniences in his life in his ardent avoidance of nonfree software.
It’s definitely a concern for me too, but like you, convenience trumps principle sometimes and travel is already unpleasant enough that “taking a stand” and making travel more unpleasant (including being an “Opt Out” at checkpoints and making the TSA do a pat down) isn’t something I’ve been willing to do.
Likewise, this will become a mandatory integration for states to participate in VWP starting in 2027, and there is a LOT of additional burden for those states citizens in having to apply for and be granted a U.S. visa over and above just using ESTA - paperwork, >= 10x filing fees, an Embassy or Consulate visit, then getting your passport (collection) after the visa has been inserted. Plus at the end of the day the U.S. is getting all the same information via the slower process.
I would guess most European states will integrate and this will be short-lived indignation (a “storm in a teacup”) followed by it being the new normal.
There it is. We make our choices and our children live with the consequences.
I have always opted out of TSA body scans and have been a 100k flier. Frequent fliers know which cattle lanes to use for no scans. Arrive a few minutes early and they even wipe your hands with a cloth and let you know if your hands are dirty.
I am thankful that I do not have a job that requires me to travel much and I can allow myself to do a roadtrip ( and it helps that I actually enjoy stopping by biggest corn castle ).
I absolutely understand the parent. It is not impossible that I would react similarly if I had to fly more often.
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/airport_scan.htm
I believe they have obsoleted all the backscatter scanners at this point.
Or, maybe closer to home, that several European states were complicit in helping the US to kidnap, torture and imprison their innocent citizens (the euphemism for accidentally kidnapping and torturing some completely random person is "erroneous rendition" https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10618427).
Both the US and European allies went through great pains and costs to provide the Taliban with detail biometric data for kill lists https://theconversation.com/the-taliban-reportedly-have-cont....
For just $68 you can even get the collector's edition on ebay, which includes not just lots of biometric and personal data but also comes with the original capture device (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/technology/for-sale-on-eb...).
Conversely, what would the EU do if that same request came from another nation instead of the USA? What about Brazil, Japan, China?
The answer to all these questions would be hard "No.", possibly followed by sanctions for even daring to ask them.
It's rarely talked about, but you gotta imagine, the fact the US controls most of the land and sea is a big factor in how diplomatic issues are resolved.
I don't think this is a great thing, btw.
They do so with the help of allies which they seem to forget.
In the 80s USA sent troops in italy to kidnap a terrorist that had surrendered himself to italy. They had to call up all the available carabinieri on the island to counter the USA troops.
Not one has in mind with "allied nation".
https://www.icij.org/investigations/collateraldamage/clerics...
That's been declining: 430,000 US troops in Europe in the '50s, and about 60,000 at the beginning of this year.
That’s been increasing, up to over 100,000 in June of this year.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/307805...
We are talking about a sub-set of security instruments and preventions, one of the many available, are we sure that an armed conflict - or just threat - would worth the trouble?
P.S. Being originally from USSR freedom of movement was one of the things I've admired greatly about the west. After 30 years it is being vaporized in front of my eyes. This is insanity and is very sad. And we are doing this crap to ourselves. Osamas and Putins of the world must be having time of their lives.
For me it seems that most of EU works with interests of other actors, especially US, from Ursula downwards, so they might give the US access and ignore their own people... again.
How she even became the head of the EU council can only be explained with corruption.
And that's also the main reason why the right is on the rise on the EU, because they don't want an undemocratic overlord. The irony is real.
Considering the history, sooner or later another failed artist will represent a real "alternative", and considering i'm a slav in the first line of slavic countries the the south, I'd prefer some EU-wide changes before that happens.
You're going to have to provide a source here. All the polls I've seen have indicated that the vast majority of EU citizens support thr actions of the EU with regards to Ukraine (helping them with financial, humanitarian and military aid, and hosting their refugees) and Covid (the relief funds).
von der Leyen is a terribly incompetent person, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere close to a place with power. Nonetheless the current EU actions are in line with what the EU wants. The only exceptions are annoying fringe groups, and Hungary which is ruled by such a fringe group.
> Ukraine, which isn't even an EU member
So fuck 'em and let them die at the hands of a brutal invader or do you mean something else? Appeasement doesn't work, and the countries that have the most to lose if Ukraine falls, like Poland and Romania, are very much in the EU.
Unfortunately for your plan, Yellowstone will still be Yellowstone, and New York will still be New York.
I agree with your attitude, but this "well, let them hang themselves" attitude just means the US ends up with the money and the data (via a slower path). A lack of visa waiver won't significantly negate tourism; there are a lot of attractions in the US.
There are a lot of attractions everywhere.
However, freedom of movement within the EU works flawlessly, its just that once youre in a new place and want to settle down, the old habits prevail, opening a bank account and such should be easy, but good luck with that.
From the presentation:
For all travellers (and asylum seekers) before entry into USA
Hit/ No hit query of the foreign databases
On hit: retrieval of existing data record in pull procedure
A part of visa issuance by a U.S. Embassy is a background check against both US databases and those of the local country. I believe all visa appointments perform digital capture of fingerprints, face, along with anything on an e-Passport.
So this gets the U.S. nearer to equivalence in VWP with what they can already do with the visa processes?
If you don’t want the U.S. to hold your biometric information it sounds like you just won’t be traveling to that country any longer.
So the change is the “watch list” lookup / handover of records for hits. Hate to be in the camp saying that “if you haven’t done anything wrong you have nothing to worry about” but I honestly assumed that those checks were already done.
You need to travel to the U.S. with these changes? You still use ESTA and VWP, and the U.S. pulls what they need via an IT integration.
You need to travel to the U.S. and these changes get a “No” from EU states? You go through the visa process for tourism or business, they get your biometrics and background checks through that process. It takes longer. It costs more money. It is more onerous to you as an applicant.
Every time you cross the border as an alien you are fingerprinted and photos are taken (exceptions are given for diplomats).
In short, it’s the same outcome for U.S. travel and your only way to stop the U.S. having this information is to not travel there…
$350 and a minimum six month wait for an appointment at an EU consulate if a congressperson wants to vacation in Italy.
No idea where you live but:
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-...
This also gives you TSA Pre. It’s cut my average time spent queuing in U.S. airports and at the border by an order of magnitude. Worth the effort.
On airports, there are a set of U.S. airports like Los Angeles which always seem to have long queues, and a few where CBP is more prone to asking 20 questions of everyone.
On times of year, visiting cities when a big convention is happening can be much slower, as can traveling near a holiday like Thanksgiving.
I’ve witnessed and stood in a 3 hour queue at San Francisco and that was my #1 motivator to go get Global Entry sorted.
I simply went there to visit a friend which had moved there, that is all.
So just before the transit area after coming off the plane, a ginger and a brown haired fellow stopped me and started asking questions, without showing a badge or identifying themselves. They were plain clothed officers, guessing they are police was rather easy, they had very bad choice of çlothing style. So they ask where are you going and why. Purpose of stay and lenght, how will you get there and blabla, many follow up questions. Do you have a return ticket, whats her name.
I told them, thats your job to find out and I intend to travel by cab, am I good to go now.
They let me go on my way.
This is the kinda people who will be dealing with our data, hell no.
I will fill out whatever if I ever wanna go to the us, but I prefer to not hand over any data upfront.
The way it looks to me (sorry, not trying to offend) is that while the EU may be an OK construct for the peacetime prosperity it is not functioning well during the times of conflict. As of today, it does not have military strength, energy security or economic strength from which it can deliver such an answer. And when you have to depend on someone else for the protection you have few options for saying "no". My 2c.
Here, everyone left to right were saying, this will never happen.
The people who said that are all retired wealthy, their parties still exist, let us hold them accountable.
They always say they will get something in exchange, but it is all lies, the moment you are bargaining for something in exchange, youve already lost.
Keep in mind, never give anything to the EU either, they cannot be trusted blindly either, theyre just somewhat more accountable. If they would be the worlds superpower, I am not sure how benevolent they would be.
Everywhere on earth, the regular citizens have the same domestic nuissance, snoopi governments, all parties somehow collecting big data as if it were their business model.
Anyone who knows a lawyer, a govt tax agency worker and such will know, the data tue govt has will never be used for good, it will even be twisted in their favor.
Left or right does not matter, probably never did, if we had democracies, theycall such things bipartisan, the total left or right wing goverments had leaders like franco, pinochet, mao, stalin and such.
Anarchists keep saying the biggest atrocities were always from governments, not sure what to say about that, governmnents are always humans as well.
There is some issue at hand with power. Even in Switzerland, with its "direct democracy", the police state is quite invasive, discretly in the background.
Maybe human civilization is simply still in its infancy regarding governing the population.
100 years ago we had ww1, bit more back, feudalism etc.
I hope not normally the EU just complies behind the scenes. I understand why that's unprintable but I wish they wouldn't lie to the population about how they handle this.
Why do we let USA companies and military & gov. puppets do their destroying outside of USA? Why ? Europe and asia should ban USA and all of it's companies and specially the nato/military to enter or steal & destroy anything from outside usa.
Why do we let them do this destruction ?
As someone once said: The EU has no balls (and was promptly critiqued on gender grounds which is the more important problem in the EU)
Or it might find itself more and more lonely and less relevant globally. It takes just few steps to make big dent in that - international payment systems, oil cartels, military bases in Africa, military equipment +-on par with west etc.
They already know it from cell phone location data.
The US needs the world far, far more than the world needs the US, and it's time the world realizes this. Forcing this nation of war-criminals and foreign policy bullies in line is long overdue.
Further, please prove you have survived certain medical procedures (Suddenly, border force can operate in violation of hipaa).
Seriously, anyone who wants to justify current western procedures needs vacation. :-D
my analysis
Oceania : US + Airstrip One + ... (5 eyes, etc.)
Eurasia : EU
Eastasia : CN / RU+BY+RS (disunited ATM)
Not sure what you're arguing for? To make EU or EU state tax law as insane as the US tax law? The US is effectively able to bully other nations because of the US dollar and access to the banking system...
If every EU citizen (when opening a bank account) has to sign a document that they are or arent an US citizen...
then all americans should also sign a similar document where they confirm if they are or arent EU citizens.
Now USA has a tool to track avoidance but EU doesnt.
EU could just stop sharing this data with USA and demand reciprocation.
Also I dont claim that this helps much, but it feels like EU citizens are second grade citizens in EU.
I somehow doubt that americans have to sign a document that they arent an EU citizen when they open their bank account.
Also lets dont act like EU doesnt have own ammunition. For starters it can stop sharing this information with US. Both blocks are friends, but come on. EU as a block is second on third in the world per GDP (why wikipedia doesnt show EU as whole block btw).
The demand is for travellers only according the pdf, not for all EU citizens.
This does not seem too onerous - people working in the US from EU already have to submit to much fingerprinting, AIDS tests and what not, and you don't hear much complaining about it.
In Bruxelles, this will be discussed and qhile they arent elected directly, they cannot pass any crap whatsoever there, there is always oposition on everything there.
And they are applying it to everyone, not just US citizens.
The USA wants to check those who turn up at their border is who they say they are, and they also want to know if they are a good egg as far as the authorities know where they are from. Both of these sound iminently reasonable.
Anything happening at the scales international travel flows at needs to be automated.
> The USA are known to be careless and/or evil when it comes to dealing with sensitive data.
What is the specific carelessness or evil you are worried about?
> Why can't they just run someones fingerprint at the airport against their national databases
I assume they do. But of course if someone has lived most of their life outside of the USA any criminal record they might have will be outside of the USA.
> and any international terrorist databases that might exist?
Why should they only be concerned about terrorism?
The US government has just lost databases with biometric data of millions of afghan people, together with the information whether they worked for the ISAF forces which puts those peoples life in immediate danger. When confronted with that, the US government did not indicate that they care about it.
Yes! This is a curious thing too. Biometric passports already have biometric data. The USA will already have your biometric information read out from your passport. One possibility is that they have reasons to not trust the biometric passports completely. Perhaps someone found a way to fake them.
Even if not, it seems prudent that they want to check all 3 things. What is in your passport, what are your own biometrics and what the issuing country has on file about you.
> No need to access European databases.
You are stating this as if obvious. X turns up at the border, why wouldn't the USA (or any country really) would want to know if they are all okay as far as their own country is concerned?
"Hey X is at the border, are they ok?" And 95% of the time the answer will be "yup". 4% will be some petty crime which has been already resolved in their own country, and then the admitting country can decide if they want to let them in. (as is their right.) Less than 1% of the cases will be something weird. Like the person is already recorded as deceased, or they are sought in relation to a crime or should be in prison or something. You check because of that small "weird" group.
> The US government has just lost databases with biometric data of millions of afghan people
The US let down the people of Afghanistan in a milliard ways. The whole thing is a shitshow. From the war, through the occupation, the drone strikes. A lot of things are terrible there. If it makes you distrust the USA I understand you.
Luckily, my country does not even have my biometrics in a database that the US could be querying.
Everyone wants to know as much as they can, that's not a reason to tell them. As far as I'm concerned all my country should be telling the US is whether I hold a valid passport or not. If they want to see other data from my country's database, at a minimum they should need my authorization for that. They may insist I authorize that as a condition of entry to the US (or subject me to extra checks if I refuse), but they certainly don't need to be able to query my information whenever they like.
What they probably want is getting fingerprints for a specific person in automated way. Getting fingerprints per police request is kinda reasonable, but as far as I remember, European law on this stuff limits gathering biometrics for a specific reason -- document issuance. I doubt even police of the same European country would have automated unrestricted access to this database for investigation purposes.
For identification purposes and when permitted by a judge -- maybe.
/s :~(
[1] - https://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/news/frenc...
The EU is the only place on earth having kinda sensitive big data/privacy laws and enforcements thereof.
I am familiar enough with data aggregators like lexis nexis, you do not want to be there or end up there without knowing or without having an option for removal of the entries.
Do not share anything, this paper speaks of fingerprints, damn, even my god damned government and the government where I reside do not have my fingerprint. Some countries have a biometric passport, but usually, taking fingerprints is done on suspects of major crimes.
Hell no, share nothing, for an entry to the us, there is paperwork that needs to be filled and of the us govt requests fingerprints then, that fine.
But an information exchange of personal data like fatca?
Thanks, but no thanks.
Did europe ask the USA for their citizen data? Thought so.
I know for sure the usa does not have access to some very important data from some european countries, and that is good the way it is.
> The EU is the only place on earth having kinda sensitive big data/privacy laws and enforcements thereof
Only for corporations, not for governments. EU already has mandatory ID cards with biometric data (fingerprints), while AFAIK there is no such systematic collection of biometric data in US.
If we put all these things aside, AEoI exists and if a bank does due diligence on mortgages, loans and car leases, they collect plenty of stuff, if they have it, the government can have it.
The EU mindlessly signed up for that, now the US gets all that insight, meanwhile, its almost impossible for americans to open a bank account abroad. The europeans do not share fingerprint data, cept for criminal interpol investigations.
You are mistaken if ypu think your government is collecting less data than the euro governments.
There are more issues with governance there, but I will not go the esclation route, my message is simply to not trust governments with your data.
All on a need to know basis.
I am EU citizen and i think that my government is collecting much more personal data than necessary. Whether they would also share these data with the US government is for me much smaller concern than the fact they collect it for themselves.
[1] https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2022/afghanistan-biometrie
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chine...
But that's not how government works, is it?
One topic is around the dependability and practicality of such metrics as authenticators. The other topic is around surveillance and anonymity. The overlap is in the question of whether we have control over whether we are being authenticated or not. When used in a transactional system, we need to couple our authenticated identity with some positive action to give consent, i.e. that we want the transaction to occur and we accept the responsibilities of being one party to the transaction. In a surveillance system, we are being identified and our movements or actions attributed to us whether we want to or not.
Both topics have a potential for false positives and false negatives. Can someone "steal" my identity by impersonating me and causing transactions or other activities to be attributed to me without my knowledge? Or can someone through violence or coercion cause me to participate in these transactions or other activities against my will? Does the introduction of the authentication system reduce the risks or make them worse?
To what degree can we live our lives without displaying our identity to the public at large and/or while being able to assume some of our movements or activities can be kept confidential? We can choose whether to have our names or ID numbers emblazoned on our clothes. We can choose how often to present other non-biological identifiers like payment cards or mobile phones. It is much less practical to conceal our externally visible biometrics. The databases combining our biometrics and other identifiers continually shift the balance here, as it becomes ever easier to tie different observations together without our consent.
To be honest, I am not even sure whether I should care about the biometrics access being discussed in the original post. Generally, international travelers are already exposing their identities and movements not just at border controls but also via commercial bookings and interactions throughout their travel. I think I am more disgusted by the commercial brokers trying to create total information awareness of consumers than I am of governments monitoring border travel. The commercial brokers are trying to create a much finer-grained record of activities for everybody.
Just think of how much you leave around all the time. If that's all on records with facial images, your face is certainly an identifiable metric of your biology.
its amazing what you can find with HPLC and a gas chromatograph.
Those databases already exists (just look at the MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA, 23andMe etc companies). Furthermore, DNA has the advantage, that you can find someone via relatives. The person to be identified doesn't have to be in the database. It's sufficient if his brother or father is in that db. Afaik this is not the case for fingerprints.
Generally correct, but it's interesting that identical twins have similar but distinct fingerprints. The exact prints are different, but they tend to have the same broader patterns of print.
I think that's where the threat actually lies. I'm equally worried about traces I leave with my Visa/MasterCard than those I leave with my uncovered face or fingerprints.
The main difference being that I can easily control the traces I leave with my cards, less so the traces I leave with my ohone, and it takes a significant effort to lkit traces from my face or fingers.
I would hope so. It appears that you are conflating 'biometric' and 'biological'.