Today's comment is by Mark Nestmann, our Wealth Preservation & Tax Consultant and author of numerous books and reports on tax strategies.
Dear A-Letter Reader,
Governments worldwide are secretly developing the technology to create a permanent lifetime record of your international travel.
Every time you cross a border, every time your machine-readable passport is "scanned" at a hotel, bank or other location, your movements will be recorded in a global travel database.
Naturally, this database is being developed in the name of "fighting global terrorism" But it's far from clear that it will be effective for that purpose. And, like virtually everything else in the "War on Terror," the creation of this database is kept top-secret.
In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has proposed a database that would contain a "lifetime personal travel history" of all U.S. visitors, and lawful permanent residents ("green card" holders). Your photograph, your fingerprints, and the details of your entry, exit or transit would be part of your dossier in this "biographic and biometric travel history database."
This data could be shared with whoever the DHS wants. Potentially, your personal information could be shared with any of the 100 countries that have bowed to the U.S. demand for RFID passports.
Such a system is already under construction. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has issued a series of "best practice" standards for biometric passports and the transfer of airline passenger data.
The governing council of the ICAO will require all members to begin issuing machine-readable passports by 2010. The new high-tech passports must contain enough memory to house a "biometric identifier," such as face recognition or fingerprinting. These initiatives are vigorously supported by both the U.S. and the E.U., and will permit the creation of an electronic database on hundreds of millions of travelers.
The ICAO's technical standards for RFID chips specifically reserve memory space to record all border crossings or any other situation when your passport chip is scanned. The new agreement between the United States and European Union on the exchange of airline data could provide a prototype to what kind of global travel database might be created from this information.
Under the agreement, airlines must submit 34 pieces of data about passengers flying from Europe to the United States. This information includes passengers' names, addresses and credit card details. Once the U.S. government has this information, it's "data mined" to provide fodder for the infamous "no-fly list." All U.S. counter-terrorism agencies will have access to this data. And if the U.S. gets their way, the information will be kept on file for 40 years (although the E.U. wants to reduce this period to only 3 1/2 years).
Will this agreement work for its stated purpose-to keep terrorists and other criminals out of the United States? There's no indication it will be any more effective than the U.S. government's immigration database, "US-VISIT," which has yet to snare a single terrorist.
The real purpose of the database has nothing to do with terrorism, but political control. This was aptly demonstrated by a comment from Bob Davidson, a spokesman for the ICAO, at a recent meeting of the organization. During his presentation, Davidson uttered the truth, at least from the standpoint of the United States and other governments determined to control immigration: "Every time someone at a border says the magic words, 'political asylum,' you've lost."
We can all thank Mr. Davidson for uttering the truth about the global travel database. Now we just have to convince citizens of the 100 countries that have agreed to the U.S. requirements for machine-readable passports to understand its real purpose, and demand that it be stopped.
MARK NESTMANN, Privacy Expert & President of The Nestmann Group
www.nestman.com