US looking for more passenger info.
Canadian airlines flying through U.S. airspace will have to hand over the personal data of everyone aboard the plane if a U.S.-proposed program comes into effect.
That's even if the destination does not include the States.
. . .
Homeland Security's Transportation Security Agency (TSA) wrote that the goal of the proposal is to "prevent known or suspected terrorists from boarding aircraft where they may jeopardize the lives of passengers and others," according to the Globe.
Still, ATAC policy vice-president Fred Gaspar told the newspaper the proposal seems out of place, since Canada already has its own no-fly list in place — a list that was developed, in fact, after close consultation with the U.S. government.
Not that Canada's no-fly list is exactly fool-proof, but it is nice to know that the airlines are at least considering fighting to keep Canadians' personal information private.
This matters more than the above story implies, because a previous story about this kind of program for European airlines noted that the personal information that US Homeland Security was demanding from them would not be protected under privacy laws and could be passed along to third parties for whatever use they wanted to make of it.
This proposal doesn't appear to be asking for the amount of personal information the Europeans were being asked to cough up, but I have little doubt that if they get away with this much, they'll be asking for more later.
