Posted on 01/04/2003 1:41:36 AM PST by kattracks
WASHINGTON - The government wants detailed information about every person who enters or leaves the country by plane or boat, and for the first time would require U.S. citizens to fill out forms detailing their comings and goings.Under rules proposed yesterday, the information would be sent electronically to the government for matching against security databases.
The public will have a month to comment on the plan before the final regulations take effect later this year. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has criticized many of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism information-gathering efforts, said these rules should not impinge on people's privacy.
"We don't see a huge downside," said ACLU spokeswoman Emily Whitfield.
Congress mandated the changes in legislation signed into law by President Bush in May.
The proposal requires passengers arriving or departing, as well as crew members, to provide name, date of birth, citizenship, sex, passport number and country of issuance, country of residence, U.S. visa number and other details of its issuance, address while in the United States and, where it applies, alien registration number.
Airlines, cargo flights, cruise ships and other vessels carrying crew or passengers will be affected. The information will be sent electronically to the government before a traveler arrives in the United States or departs, giving officials a complete passenger and crew manifest.
This is a bad joke or a bad dream at the very least.
Not making fun of your post but the ironically hilarous part of this is the fact that the private sector has been doing this more efficiently for target marketing which is another example of proving that once the govt gets involved in something most of the time it will be a *%&$#*f*ck.
All the while we continue to enslave ourselves with our tax contributions, apathy and consumerism.
Since we have US citizens involved with al Qaeda (Buffalo cell, Portland cell) and those people have travelled to AFGHANISTAN, I don't see any way you could avoid NOT asking for this information if you are trying to keep track of people like that. I agree that it is something we have never had to do before, but I don't understand another way to track people who leave the country for nefarious purposes. We don't have enough FBI agents to tail everyone who is suspicious, and this method would flag suspicious people through a computer data base as they leave the country.
If someone has a better idea I am willing to entertain it.
Agreed on that point. A different issue that also contributes to the 'this is some kind of bad dream' syndrome that I sometimes experience after learning certain things.
I don't think it's safe to assume that profiling will necessarily help. Certainly the higher percentage of al Qaeda trainees are Arabs, but a smart terrorist group would compensate by training non-Arab types as well, which they obviously have done.
In Bush at War the randomness of airport checks is explained as an effort to snag people like this.
Besides, it is much easier to infringe on the privacy and travel rights of all US citizens than for the government to do it's job and check out potential candidates for US citizenship before that citizenship is conferred. Better that US citizns give up their rights than that the government give up its political correctness. Wouldn't want to offend that religion of peace, after all...
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