Stewart Baker – volokh.com – Sept. 29, 2010:
Al-Qaeda is apparently planning Mumbai-style commando attacks on European, and the US has reportedly launched drone strikes in an effort to break up the plot.
One way to keep these terrorists out of the country is to heighten border scrutiny of Europeans and Americans who’ve traveled to Pakistan and spent months there without visible means of support. To do that, of course, border authorities need to know who’s been traveling in and out of Pakistan. Then they can use that information to flag visitors for additional questioning.
So how is the European Commission helping the US get the information it needs to protect itself from European terrorists trained in Pakistan?
It’s not. In fact, it’s campaigning to make sure we never get it.
The European Commission has announced that it will negotiate deals to prevent countries like Pakistan from providing travel data to the United States — except when the US already suspects a particular traveler or is otherwise investigating a particular case. In other words, the European Commission wants to bar the kind of wholesale data exchange that’s needed to spot at the border terrorists who have successfully disguised themselves as tourists. And it plans to withhold all European travel reservation data from Pakistan unless the Pakistanis agree to join a data boycott of the United States.
Remarkably, Brussels is pursuing this data boycott despite a solemn promise to the United States that it would not take such action.
Since 2003, privacy zealots in the European Union have been fighting – so far unsuccessfully — to keep the US from fully using that data to screen air passengers. Under pressure from the European Parliament, this month the European Commission launched its fourth attack in seven years on US use of such data.
Interestingly, the principles wouldn’t prevent Pakistan from giving the same information to European countries. Quite the contrary. The EU’s new principles for negotiation will require such sharing: “Information about terrorism and serious transnational crime resulting from the analysis of PNR data by third countries should be shared with EUROPOL, EUROJUST and EU Member States.”
#19 What do you consist of when you protest?
Just saw Richard Scheer on Book TV–repeat today at 9PM EST, he said something interesting: “Al Quaeda is just a name.” He goes on from there a bit explaining how 911 was based out of Saudi Arabia and Egypt (I would add Germany) and our war in Afghanistan is WILDLY out of proportion to the threat/source of the threat presented.
Good show worth the 90 minutes spent. He rips Dems and Pukes, Bush and Clinton.
“Scheer: Great American Stickup” Yes friends the same criminals that brought us the banking collapse failed “upward” and are still in power.
Massive fraud and no one in Jail. Dems blinded by their “credentials” and Pukes blinded by their greed.
The spiral around the sewer continues.
Time to pull our forces our to Europe? It would save a lot of money but we owe Poland.
deowll, pull the plug. WW2 and the cold war are over. It’s not helping anyone having bases there. Spend the money on roads or paying off the debt or closing prisons or something.
#23–deowll==I’m curious. What do we owe Poland and how is that debt to be paid?
#21 Tea Party platform is everywhere on the NET, don’t bother with the Propaganda Press or major networks…their progressive agenda doesn’t allow truthful reporting.
#26–Alfred Persson==I’m curious. What is the tea party platform. I have looked over the net and all I can find is that they are “for helping to save democracy and freedom in america==send us your money!”
With it all over the net, how about a link?
In advance, thank you.
#27
http://breitbart.tv/levin-tea-party-will-save-this-country/
#27
http://townhall.com/video/rush-limbaugh-explains-tea-party
If Bush has stopped a terrorist attack on Europe, he’d be strutting around on the Eiffel Tower in his codpiece.
It’s great to have a president who gets the job done without all crowing.
Alfie–two shots and a miss? Two talking heads is your tea party platform?
I suspected your politics would be on firmer ground than your religion.
Silly me.
#24 Bravo, good points.
#31 Progressives lie, Obama’s Campaign promises case in point, he is nothing like he represented himself to be.
You are a progressive, therefore you are lying.
We know that from either your lips moving, or your fingers typing.
You don’t care about truth, its not absolute to you. Its all relative to your agenda.
I doubt you even listened past the test to see if the links work. The first few words, then no more.
If I thought your conversation were honest dialogue, I’d ask you questions about what you heard…to see if you understood it…
But that would be a waste of time indeed.
To do that, of course, border authorities need to know who’s been traveling in and out of Pakistan. Then they can use that information to flag visitors for additional questioning.
Perhaps they don’t want to be labeled profilers as are Americans who want to do this on our borders in the USA?
Perhaps they see the inconsistency of the Obama Administration, how he wants them to do in their country what he refuses to in his.
Whenever President Bush proposed court supervised mechanisms to gather information to fight terror, progressives railed at it claiming it all unacceptable threats to privacy and free speech.
But now we have a regime who hasn’t hidden its plans to use every means at its disposal to shut down free speech via the “Fairness Doctrine” or “Net Neutrality” (which is a foot in the door so the rest of the zombie to force his way in, and regulate content).
Imam Obama’s plans to subvert free speech was clearly evident in his choice of Elana Kagan for Supreme court, who once argued for covert Government speech to “un-skew” public discourse.
Obama’s Brownshirt bill, had Bush proposed it, would have raised howls from the left, but because the tyranny it establish is progressive, not a peep from you hypocrites.
Perhaps the Europeans don’t trust Obama, perhaps they realize he is a despot in waiting…who is promoting our economic collapse as the crisis he can surf into absolute authority.
#30 “It’s great to have a president who gets the job done without all crowing”
Sort of a guy you would like to have a beer with, huh?
Now if he can do ANY job without lying.
#14 Someone Else
“Map of Europe according to Americans.”
If ANYONE thinks of the Mediterranean as a swimming pool they must like to swim in raw sewage.
Nextlie==you looked at the map and focus on the Mediterranean? Ha, ha. Idiots will always fixate on some detail and miss the larger point entirely.
Go back and look again. Report back.
Mainstream media is all corporate propaganda, there are no progressive news on mainstream TV. Privacy is a conservative value and like this blog and most posts in the forums we value the things that make america the country of freedom that it is. Right to privacy is not something one can give up and still have a democratic system. So far we have not seen any progressives in any position of power so it would be hard to say what they would do. The corporate world has taken over long ago and very few representatives of the people are in high level politics. Arguing over Obama or Bush or the Tea Party is like trying to choose between different poisons all supplied by the same few rich to keep the rest of us busy.
I believe that not only the European Commish does want to tell. But that the US government really doesn’t want to know, either. That way, it has the excuse to keep tabs on all of us, rather than just a few hundred world travelers. You can’t tell me that with the US having listening stations all over the world, with local nations’ cooperation and permission to snoop electronically. That they can’t get simple travel records for tracking possible terrorist agents. It not the lawful that the Europeans are protecting. It’s the unlawful and their economic trade shenanigans, that they’re hiding. Which is also probably what the US gov really wants the dope on. Not about terrorists or terrorism. An excuse they’re using to cover up what they’re really data mining for.