US 'licence to snoop' on British air travellers

[mandy]

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington.

By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account...

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, expressed horror at the extent of the information made available. "It is a complete handover of the rights of people travelling to the United States," she said...

Initially, such material could be inspected for seven days but a reduced number of US officials could view it for three and a half years. Should any record be inspected during this period, the file could remain open for eight years...

full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht...noop01.xml

Commentary on the Telegraph article:

Anyone who has been reading Ars since 1998 knows that I've done my fair share of ranting about the American government's increasing hostility to privacy and civil liberties, and it's definitely the case that scope of the data that the TSA is demanding on foreign air travelers is extremely troubling. But an inspection of the actual sources for the Telegraph's story reveals that the claims quoted above about email and credit card transaction snooping are just hysterical sensationalism of the sort that damages the legitimate efforts of everyone who's concerned about the increasing invasiveness of US security policy. In short, the real story is indeed disturbing, but the Telegraph's more inflammatory claims are bollocks...

full article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070101-8525.html

[BellisimaJ.]

This really sucks. But considering all the violations of civil liberties in the US by the Bush admin, this is not surprising.