Are you a Terrorist?

[Gromit]

Under new anti terror laws, next time you book an holiday, your phone number, credit card details, who accompanied you, your destination and other personal details will be recorded and stored for 5 years. And other EU countries can request and access your details, and there is nohing you can do about it.

Of course the Conservatives who campaigned and got elected on less EU interference, and less public surveillance, have eagerly endorsed the idea.

http://www.telegraph....n-terrorism-plan.html

An invasion of our privacy or a worthwhile counter terrorism measure? Or do you have another view?

[woofgang]

boring............

an holiday?????????

[woofgang]

not sure why my answer was removed. You asked me what i thought and I answered. I do think that the information collected will be boring, its like blanket recording phone conversations, millions of hours of folk discussing their piles, boyfriends, how ratted they got last night, what they bought in the sales, how many teeth the new baby has.......

[237SJ]

Due to the ever more inventive ways terrorists are finding to bring down aircraft, passenger profiling is the way to go in the future and is going to be much more important. Collecting details is just that - passenger profiling.

[anotheoldgit]

Rich of Gromit to criticise the Conservative Government over this, especially when he supports us being in the EU.

After all no matter whether or not the Conservatives endorse the idea, it is still yet another invasion into our privacy by the EU.

[netibiza]

I have no problem with this at all! I also have an I.D. card and like it!

[LoftyLottie]

An invasion of privacy and a useless anti terrorism measure in my opinion. I don't think any form of ID card will stop terrorism either. I have a driving licence and a passport - they are my ID and all that is necessary in my opinion.

[jno]

it seems unnecessary - after all, removing our belts and shoes at security ought to
be enough to stop terror attacks. (Are there any instances where they have failed to do so?) "The ever more inventive ways terrorists are finding to bring down aircraft"? Which ones are those, exactly?

But yes, it is surprising the Tories have gone along with this; less surprising that aog has dodged answering the question, though.

[Cowtipper]

Gromit... Islam won. We're now closer to an Islamic state due to a knee jerk reaction. It only goes downhill from here.

[237SJ]

The inventive ways that terrorists will find to bring down aircraft - ceramic weapons that will not show up on basic x ray machines at Uk airports or backscatter machines or wave machines in foreign airports. When I do my annual security exams we are told "If someone wants to get a bomb on your aircraft, they will".

[SpikeyBush]

"If someone wants to get a bomb on your aircraft, they will"

Easy peasy. I prepare cargo for loading and anyone can get a job doing this. They may have been groomed by fundamentalists and as long as they don't have a criminal record there is nothing to stop them being employed to fill an aeroplane with cargo, cans of coke, and something more sinister.

[237SJ]

Not quite. If someone (anyone) wants to work airside at a UK airport loading aircraft,. they will have to have a very stringenet test to be able to obtain an airside pass. Without the airside pass, that person will not get anywhere near an aircraft.

[SpikeyBush]

They don't need to get airside. Just access to 'known cargo' and if I was that way inclined I could have brought an aircraft down on numerous occasions.

[237SJ]

But known cargo is taken on trust.

[SpikeyBush]

Trust is the weak link. Trust is necessary to keep commerce flowing. But can you justify trust as being the reason why somebody's loved one is in bits floating in the sea or cremated dust on a hillside?

[Answerprancer]

This all ties in with the TSA crap that has been going on lately, total abuse of so called 'security' issues. Indeed, personal details don't crash an aircraft.
The whole 'terrorist threat' thing is being thoroughly exploited IMO - keep the people in a steady state of fear and they are more controllable.

[Answerprancer]

...which is ?

[Cowtipper]

Odds of dying from terrorism:

"Michael Rothschild, a former business professor at the University of Wisconsin, worked out a couple of plausible scenarios. For example, he figured that if terrorists were to destroy entirely one of America's 40,000 shopping malls per week, your chances of being there at the wrong time would be about one in one million or more. Rothschild also estimated that if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000.

Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 "

Stolen without permission from:http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/do
nt-be-terrorized