Reading through the slides, it appears that what has been discussed is sharing signature and fingerprints for travel into the USA. There is a lot of weasel words, but it's probably worth nothing that the USA currently collects this information for foreign nationals coming into the USA (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU). This is being done in the context of a DB query as part of the e VISA application.
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.
I'm not sure that hyperbole is possible when you're discussing the necessity of having worldwide biometric "terrorist" lists that countries like Saudi Arabia would participate in.
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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."
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.
I wish we lived in a world where our governments had integrity, prioritized the interests of the masses, and could be trusted to use powers like this in pursuit of those interests. Sadly we don’t.
> (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU)
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.
Your thinking seems to be based on the idea that "the government" are the good guys. This is extremely naive - and you even mention an example of a government that does not respect basic human rights.
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.
> 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.
The entire official response to 9/11 is the hyperbole, not the criticism of those measures.
the problem with such treaties is they are very shady in their wording and if there is a possibility to interpret it in this direction it will be interpreted in this direction
Yeah, we should 'trust' them after they lost the biometric data for all of the Afghanis they fingerprinted. I was going to have my visa application but I guess I'll defer it.
> […] but it's probably worth nothing that the USA currently collects this information for foreign nationals coming into the USA (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU).
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?...
> 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.
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.
US government demands direct police access to European biometric data. The "Enhanced Border Security Partnership" poses an unprecedented threat to civil liberties in Europe.
Whether it's good local privacy laws in your country or a good privacy-respecting TOS from a company, both are basically worthless when a bigger entity comes barging into the picture.
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.
I sense that many people consider organizations and groups of people as a definite thing. A country, the Google, the Facebook, etc, talk about these like if they were a reliably formed predictable object or entity. While those are an ever changing blob composed of ever chaning composition of people with ever changing views, intentions and agenda in an ever changing environment. Any relationships with those are momentarily only. Relying on promises from those? Like building a house on a solid cloud. No such thing. The saying is especially true in case of big entities formed of humans: a promise is like a fart, you hold it while you can.
Exactly, and the same is true of the laws themselves. "I'm not breaking the law, so I have nothing to hide," is wrong in so many ways that it's hard to enumerate them all.
> 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.
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.
This is very correct. However, I would amend your solution: the solution is modern encryption and open source. These two in conjunction allow you to verify trust.
ToS is like HR: they both exist to protect only the company.
Let's say hypothetically, Facebook buys Signal. They get all the code and signing keys, then use those to push a new update to the Signal app. This update decrypts your messages using the key on your device, then sends those decrypted messages to Facebook.
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?
> ToS is like HR: they both exist to protect only the company.
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.
> These two in conjunction allow you to verify trust.
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.
Even if you're certain America today and into the indeterminate future has no leverage over your country, can't subvert your elections, bribe or blackmail your politicians, threaten sanctions or worse, then you still have to worry about American spies simply stealing that data.
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.
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).
I get the sense you do not quite understand how much essentially all of Europe is a vassal state of the group of people that also has a stranglehold on America.
Google and Facebook are both very good at protecting your personal info. Their business value is based on nobody else having it. Their security teams are much better at their job of protecting it than, say, you are.
> It doesn't matter what promises are given, because all promises can be broken with enough leverage.
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.
Sounds like we can either have nice things and demand better of leadership, or not have nice things and let leadership go fallow. Losing faith in leadership means the whole thing falls apart anyways. I for one think the former is the way to go.
> 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.
LOL dude the EU is one of the driving forcing on making sure there is a complete history of ever person.
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.
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.
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…)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think it is vital we continue to discuss it here, but at the same time my conversations with my extended family show that people overall do not share my concerns over these at all. I do not get upset, because coming from a former soviet union country, I am trying hard to understand their frame of mind ( partially to see if there is a way to counter it ) and lot of it seems to a result from a deep trust in the system.
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.
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).
I very much share your concern and frustration, but even I take convenience over principle in some matters. I happily use TSA PreCheck, despite hating the fact that you have to put yourself on a government list to restore a level of dignity while traveling that the same government took away in the first place.
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.
Global Entry and TSA Pre probably saved me >100 hours of queuing in the last 3-5 years, and I imagine I’d also have missed a handful of flights had I needed to endure the regular checkpoint queues in order to make a tight connection.
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.
Disclaimer: I’m totally against any normalization of the collection/sharing of biometric data. But just to play Devil’s Advocate:
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.
We're bothered, but maybe not enough to do away with visiting family/friends/coworkers/conferences/cons/national parks/etc. Also having various privileges (white, Western European, male, middle class, etc) dulls the concerns.
Given the US has army bases all in and around Europe, more than any European country, I bet the US wouldn't comply.
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.
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.
You think that the US could play the army card against countries (allies) with troops in when the most spectacular failures of armed conflicts after WWII belong to the US (not least because how the US population relate to conflicts abroad, here including WWII as well)? Just to forget about the economic ties for a moment.
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?
Starting from WWI western world is moving from what was basically complete freedom of movement to a corral. Think the best response would be something in line of go fuck yourself. No visa waiver - be my guest and have your tourism industry go belly up. Once tourism industry goes economic cooperation might eventually follow. Maybe this will teach our masters a bit.
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.
I hope we see some strong posturing from EU leaders. It seems like Europe is trying at least to fight in the right direction on this, while the anglosphere slowly becomes another version of China.
This is asuming that EU will work in their (our) interest.
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.
Where is this coming from? The vast majority of what the EU does doesn't concern anyone but the EU, and is sometimes actively hurting non-EU entities like American corporations. Be it the GDPR, the Digital Markets or Services Acts, the Covid recovery funds, farming subsidies, various projects to improve random hyper local infrastructure, etc etc etc.
> No visa waiver - be my guest and have your tourism industry go belly up.
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.
I understand before ww1 passports werent even a thing, it was a "temporary" measure.
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.
Readit News
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.
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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."
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.
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.
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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.
Edit: what’s with the downvotes?
You're pushing a baseless conspiracy theory. There is no evidence that Saudi authorities were involved in 9/11.
I am thankful that the EU is standing up against this threat.
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.
> 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.
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…
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?...
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.
I'm not even sure how to classify this sentence...
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They don’t spy on their own citizens but they exchange info with the other spy agencies, so…
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Talk is streaming right now https://streaming.media.ccc.de/jev22/hip1
https://digit.so36.net
https://pretalx.c3voc.de/hip-berlin-2022/talk/JYX7JA/
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.
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.
ToS is like HR: they both exist to protect only the company.
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?
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.
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.
Not when it comes to server-based software.
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.
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).
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;
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.
LOL dude the EU is one of the driving forcing on making sure there is a complete history of ever person.
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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.
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)
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…)
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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...).
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.
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.
Conversely, what would the EU do if that same request came from another nation instead of the USA? What about Brazil, Japan, China?
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.
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".
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?
That's been declining: 430,000 US troops in Europe in the '50s, and about 60,000 at the beginning of this year.
https://www.boisestate.edu/bluereview/troops-in-europe/
They do so with the help of allies which they seem to forget.
The answer to all these questions would be hard "No.", possibly followed by sanctions for even daring to ask them.
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.
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.