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Comment by hardlianotion | Hacker News Reader

One question that always seems to be unclear and insufficiently negotiated is reciprocity. What is the US going to offer in return. If they do offer to reciprocate, it actually needs to be delivered before the deal is live.

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.

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What is the US going to offer in return.

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Carvajal

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA_(separatist_group)

This all worked without this approach, this is why interpol and fbi have collaborative projects.

Sure, I was responding to the question "what are they going to offer in return" with "probably they're already giving us something in return," it's an ongoing collaboration, only their part is not always public, so the deal seems one-sided.

"What is the US going to offer in return."

Well, not our biometric data, certainly. You could get that on eBay.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/technology/for-sale-on-eb...

It’s not especially valuable or private anyway. If you leave something everywhere you go (ie you can’t protect it without a spacesuit), and there’s nothing special about it compared to anyone else’s (in terms of economic value), it can’t be either of those things.

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…)

This is not thoughtful. Everything is somewhere, so therefore nothing is special as compared to anything? Nevertheless, businesses and dictatorships somehow find value in the information collected and organized in files and databases.

I didn't say anything about "the information collected and organized in files and databases". And I don't think businesses find your fingerprints very helpful in selling you things.

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.

Fingerprints and DNA are valuable with regard to identifying a particular person (or to place them at a certain location, like the scene of a crime). It's easy to enter a country with someone else's cell phone. It's much harder to enter a country with someone else's fingerprints or DNA. Isn't that the goal here? To have a more reliable method identify who has entered a country?

> 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...

> To have a more reliable method identify who has entered a country?

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.

The USA offers to continue the free visa agreement. If that ends, for reciprocity there won't be free visas for USA travelers to Europe too. It's lose lose but one of the two parties is always going to lose more than the other one. Which one? In the case of tourism probably Europe loses more from less USA tourists because of visa friction than the USA loses from European tourists staying at home. Business? It will take more time to setup a travel but people that have to travel will travel anyway.

Business can be conducted via webex and zoom ornon neutral 3rd party grounds if need be.

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.

Curious about free visas, as EU citizen in 2018 we had to go through full ESTA US visa approval process just to have a freakin' connecting flight in Miami to South America including paying for it, nothing free.

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.

This is just a protection racket. Demanding something new to maintain an existing mutually beneficial arrangement is simple greed.

In theory, the European governments could always waive reciprocity on their end and continue allowing travel from the US, if that's the biggest thing stopping them from refusing. On the other hand, that wouldn't leave the US with any "consequence" for not reaching a deal.

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.

Reciprocity is a well understood legal precedent when it comes to things like deportation, I can imagine the European courts asking things like this when the Feds start clamoring for access.

> What is the US going to offer in return.

Nothing, it's a hostage situation.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've unfortunately been doing this repeatedly (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34151395). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We're trying for something different here.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

But is it really? The EU can just respond with: "no". And while that would hurt the economy of the EU it would also hurt the economy of the US. I do not really see any reason for the EU to say yes to this unless the EU gets something in return.

Then we should decouple a little bit.

Probably, and the EU was talking a big game about that a few years ago. But between Nordstream 2 and the Ukraine war the EU seems to have shown how willing it actually is to decouple...

Exactly. Even when the harm to Europe is as blatant as the examples you cited, the cowardly leadership does nothing. This lack of representation for citizens' interests will lead to a lot of resentment and perhaps even extremism, as it has in the past.

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