Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Awake on my Airplane, my Skin is Bare

The government this past June was observing children at play, noticed the infamous "I'm not touching you, can't get mad!" maneuver, and felt the need to address this power imbalance. So they leaped into action to amend the Aeronautics Act.

The act outlines circumstances where the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act can be waived to offer information about the passengers on aircraft who are landing in foreign states in cases where the state demands information about those on board flights without first obtaining their consent. This is apparently no longer stringent enough and the act is under consideration to be amended to include states that are being flown over,  enabling foreign states that one will not even set foot in to request information about the people present on aircraft in their airspace.

Security issues aside, the biggest impediment to this successful implementation is that it requires the full, fool-proof backup of the "No-fly" list; otherwise the problem that we are already experiencing with people being disallowed to board aircraft simply because they share a name with a terrorist will be exacerbated. Also considering that we as passengers are typically not allowed to include input about what path a flight takes, this can create even more tricky situations for people who may be anxious to avoid certain governments. It would  be nice to say that those kind of people are obviously only terrorists, but occasionally systems go awry and good people are put in compromising positions.

This bill is apparently all the way up to its third reading and, to be blunt, if it passes we pretty much have the go ahead to ignore any future parliamentary arguments about "needless amendments", such as what was leveled at the Private member's bill C-389 -the motion to amend the discrimination law to include gender identity, since this is just about the most  ridiculous amendment ever. I have no interest in the United States knowing when I am traveling to Mexico, and unless I plan to set foot on their sovereign soil, I feel they have no right to know my movements. If we effectively control who we allow on planes, there should be no need for every random country that sees our shadow to know who is going where.

The title is from Filter's song "Take my picture".

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My first thought went to people who are considered dissidents in other countries. If you go to the extremely paranoid edge (maybe even not that extreme) can you see a country "accidentally" shooting down a plane that they know is carrying a dissident? Makes you wonder.
lol, mapa

Everything On Nothing said...

Too many issues with airports and airport security right now

Anonymous said...

Whoever you are Miss Ernst, you are one of the human beings that needs to be taken on a ride, to see what it is that other people deal with, people like yourself that make comments without fully experiencing a reality just leave yourself to insults, jabs, and hopefully torture one day.

Miss Ernst said...

Oh I'm sorry Anon; I'm engaged, I can't go "on a ride" with you. But I'm sure there's lots of other lady bloggers out there who would love to have the affection of a semi-literate, immature, self-righteous douche-bag like yourself. You keep trying, sweetie.