"RealID" Passes the Senate 100-0

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 22:19 +0100, Terence McCarthy wrote:
> On Wed, 11 May 2005 22:20:55 +0200
> Roger Oberholtzer <roger at opq.se> wrote:
> 
> > When I call Stockholm Taxi from home, they know where I am calling from
> 
> >  I can elect to change this, but, still, they know...
> > 
> 
> Doesn't this worry you?
> 
> It scares me.

A few years ago, when Sweden was a bit more innocent, you could call the
government agency that managed automobile license plates and get the
name, address and phone number for any license plate. It was pretty
quick. Granted this is not some central key to access all databases, but
the idea that access to the info was so easy is scary. It is no longer
this way and I think Sweden is a bit more savvy about this.

In fact, it seems Europe is guarding personal info more than the U.S.
After 911, the US said that complete info on all passengers on all
flights must be provided to some central government authority. The
European Commission said that this could not be done because it was
against personal privacy laws in Europe. The argument has continued to
this day. Unless the airlines hired investigators to verify the info
from each passenger, the info could not really be trusted anyway. Only
innocent people's info would be correct. Anyone up to something would be
smart enough to provide false info anyway.

-- 
Roger Oberholtzer <roger at opq.se>