Gatwick Alan

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.

Ive paid by cash and/or cheque before and i guess thats what im going to do from now on. If its a simple return flight theres no need to have an e-mail, a paper copy will do. It does mean i wont be booking flights direct with sites like AA.com, but if it keeps my privacy then thats what i'll do.
Ive absolutely nothing to hide, but thats not the point is it.

planemechanic

Who cares?

If they want all this information that you are all so worried about they will get it anyway. While I may not agree with their need for it I won't waste my time hiding my emails to my mother either.

alanR

Principle dear boy, principle.

Plus they'll end up with so much information that they won't be able to see the wood for the trees

stockmanjr

I'm assuming they have these in the UK but I'm not sure.There are now VI and MC giftcards that are pretty much one time use.I would suggest looking into that instead of going thru the hassle of paying cash or cheque.
cheers
howie

Jenbel

The interesting bit is how far they can get within the British system - if I use a UK based ISP, and a UK bank, how easy is it for them to get the court orders to have a look at my accounts? NSA has no power (so far as I know) to just look at things in the UK without a court order - a letter (so far as I know) to my ISP will not suffice.

I'd also be looking at keeping one credit card for paying for flights to the US only and using it for nothing else - doesn't matter if they can access what flights I have bought, they should have that information already. But if I didn't want them to see my other transactions, then keeping one credit card for that does limit the information they can gather on me.

GUWonder

The UK bank-issued cards that are VISA/MC/Amex branded are not beyond review, even independent of court orders/court-issued warrants.

Also, the UK government has been quite the data surrender monkey; and even if it were not involved in explicit authorization of NSA activities involving UK persons/entities, that doesn't mean a no-go for the NSA & Co.

Kremmen

I don't believe that's really the point. If they want the information on an individual, they can get it. That's fine. They won't do it very often.

If they simply get the information on everyone as a matter of course, then the possibilities for abuse and harm are astronomical. It's been widely reported that the DOJ, FBI, etc, lose hundreds of laptops per year. Putting millions of people's credit card numbers and personal details unnecessarily into the hands of a massive, incompetently run, unaccountable set of organisations in the USA is an utterly stupid security risk. It only takes one idiot to let that data into the wrong hands and you have wide-spread credit card fraud, millions of cards having to be reissued and possibly billions of dollars of fraud and lost productivity.

gumbleby

There is an article on arstechnica.com giving more technical detail on this issue. The situation is not nearly as spectacular as the article in The Telegraph would lead one to believe.

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

I still think the US government is overly nosy though. Also I wonder how things work if I book my ticket trough a travel agent (they often have rates not available on the airline's website) ; i.i.r.c. I've had tickets marked as paid in cash even though I paid them by debit card.

GUWonder

Just better hope the travel agent used hasn't been "associated" with names the US Government doesn't like.

Global_Hi_Flyer

The real problem is a lack of checks and balances. I have no problem with the DOJ/FBI/Whatever being able to obtain records pursuant to a search warrant, duly obtained upon showing of probable cause. I do have a problem with an unwarranted and unsupported fishing expedition.

In that vein, I witnessed a TSA screener at DCA rifiling through a SSSS selectee's wallet today and looking at the cash, papers, and credit cards within. No warrant involved. That, IMHO, is way, way over the line.

muddy

Warrants, probable cause, and judicial oversight are things of the past thanks to the [so called] patriot act. A National Security Letter gets them anything they want and only requires the approval of a field office supervisor.

vassilipan

That is absolutely out of line.

As an aside, TSO's can't even get a search warrant - the real police would have to get one.

n5667

Depends on the reason for the search whether or not the police would need a warrant.

As for the TSA, when you submit yourself or your belongings for screener you are giving implied consent and temporarily suspending yoru 4th amendment right - it would be interesting to figure out to what degree that consent allows a TSO to search an individual.

Would a strip search be allowed? Current rules state that a person would be denied boarding and told to come back, and that under no circumstances should a strip search be performed...

GUWonder

For the government to read through a domestic passenger's papers and computer files at an airport security checkpoint is the government asking for trouble .... particularly as such material is likely to be deemed inadmissible by a number of judges on the federal bench, a growing number of whom are sick of the airport nonsense.

cpx

Lets just say there are lot of things beyond ones control and tracing back to
an origine of any electronic message is not as easy as you think.

Sure under normal circumstances, its easy to get a lot of information from
one's ISP, cookies, email trace and time stamps etc...etc... its very hard to
get any useful information if someone really wants to stay anonymous.

You can trace network connections, systems logs and even computers..
but you can only do that if you have access to those systems.

Sometimes you can even find out a lot of information by serching that IP
address on google, but all of this is possible under normal circumstances.

If someone wants to hide, there is little you can do to trace them down. Its
not as easy as you think.

If things were so easy.. you wouldn't be getting so many spams