Would you please send the following all over your world. It is very troubling. Many thanks to Joe Hueglin for sending it in. Joe writes: Interested in asking whether the Census data is one of the data bases available to Homeland Security for this programme?
/Sandra
(My next court appearance over the out-sourcing of Canadian census work to Lockheed Martin Corporation of the American military-industrial-congressional complex is TUESDAY, MARCH 16th at 9:30 am, Provincial Court in Saskatoon on 19th Street.)
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U.S. gets say on which Canadians can fly
By Kevin Dougherty, The Gazette March 3, 2010
(Link no longer valid Read the Secure Flight Final Rule (PDF, 195 pages – 10.27 MB)
Starting in December, passengers on Canadian airlines flying to, from or even over the United States without landing there will be allowed to board the aircraft only after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.
Secure Flight, the newest weapon in the U.S.’s war on terrorism, gives the United States unprecedented power over who can board planes that fly over U.S. airspace -even if the flights originate and land in Canada.
The program, set to take effect globally in December, was created as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2004.
Canada’s Parliament never adopted or even discussed the Secure Flight program – even though Secure Flight transfers the authority to screen passengers, and their personal information, from domestic airlines to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The European Parliament, on the other hand, has consistently voiced objections to the Secure Flight plan.
When asked about the program, Transport Canada, the federal department in charge of Canadian airlines, deferred to Public Safety Canada.
After refusing to comment on Secure Flight or the government’s position on the U.S. program, David Charbonneau, a Public Safety Canada spokesperson, said: “Canada works in partnership with the United States, as well as with other allies, on aviation safety and security.
Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, referred all questions on the Secure Flight program back to the office of Transport Minister John Baird, who oversees Transport Canada.
Canadian airlines already check their flight manifests against the U.S. no-fly list, which is compiled by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and distributed to airlines around the world. It contains the names of about 16,000 people the U.S. government says are suspected of terrorism. The names and why they are on the list are not disclosed, for reasons of ‘national security.’
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration says Secure Flight will reduce the number of false positives – innocent travellers with the same names as people on the no-fly list – who are stopped at airports.
Under Secure Flight, the TSA, a branch of Homeland Security, will have access to all U.S. government databases.
“If necessary, the TSA analyst will check other classified and unclassified governmental terrorist, law enforcement, and intelligence databases – including databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defence, National Counter Terrorism Centre, and Federal Bureau of Investigation,” notes Secure Flight Final Rule, the U.S. government document that defines the program.
The General Accounting Office, an U.S. institution similar to Canada‚s auditor-general, is concerned this sweeping check could cause new problems.
“More individuals could be misidentified, law enforcement would be put in the position of detaining more individuals until their identities could be resolved, and administrative costs could increase, without knowing what measurable increase in security is achieved,” the GAO said in a January presentation to the U.S. House of Representatives committee on Homeland Security.
Andrea McCauley, a Homeland Security spokesperson in Washington, D.C., said the TSA is confident there will be fewer false positive results than under the current no-fly list system.
“We have designed this program to ask for the minimum amount of personal information necessary,” she said.
Personal information will be purged from the system after seven days, McCauley said.
“If you are a potential match, it would be retained for seven years,” she said, explaining that “a potential match is someone who has been determined not to be an exact match but has the potential to match some of the data elements.”
If the search returns a positive match, personal information will be kept by Secure Flight for 99 years.
kdougherty AT thegazette.canwest.com
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