Travel Database:

Re: Travel Database:

Here’s a bit more about this I found,

Travel database and Government spin
17 march 2009

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Whatever the government tries to tell us, the new travel database has little to do with securing our borders and more to do with controlling and monitoring the activities or each and every British citizen. In fact, with the new telecommunications database, which will monitor every email, text message and mobile phone call, this governments access to our personal data will be akin to a prisoner having a tag fitted, except, it will be on 61m people.

For those that believe the travel database won’t affect them, then think again, as many as 1800 government and private agencies will have access to our personal travel details. Anyone that believes this information will only be used by government agencies with responsibility for border controls is at best naive. Let me give you a couple of examples of what this information could be used for.

If you have children of school age and decide to take them out a week before their school break to save money for your annual holidays, then you should be aware that the travel arrangements will be recorded. The school could then, theoretically at least, access this information and commence proceedings against the parents. Yes, you can argue parents shouldn’t do this, but it is worth nothing that as many as one third of all parents do.

Suppose you regularly go abroad for your booze and fags, these journeys will now be recorded, as will your luggage. As a consequence, if the HMRC deem that you go too often they could seize the goods, seize your vehicle, fine you, prosecute, you or all four!

Maybe you earn air miles as a result of your business or work. If you use air miles or some other voucher to pay for a personal flight, then this will be recorded. How long do you think it will be before the HMRC cotton on to this and send you a bill for this ‘benefit in kind’?

Perhaps you are lucky enough to win an incentive from your company which includes overseas travel or, maybe you have been invited by a supplier for a conference or the like. Strictly speaking, you should ascertain whether or not this would be considered a ‘benefit in kind’, if so, you must declare it on your tax return. If you get it wrong, forget to include it on your return or try and get away with it, HMRC will know, because the details of the trip, including the cost and who paid for it will all be recorded. Do you really think they won’t be looking?

Lets say you have saved up for a trip of a lifetime, or perhaps one of your relatives have contributed to the cost, the HMRC will be able to check the cost of the travel arrangements against your earning and if it is above an accepted average, it could trigger an investigation. Granted, it may be perfectly innocent, but the onus will be on you to prove how the trip was funded, this may mean you having to detail your income and outgoings for

decades. If you have a perfect record AND you can prove it, then you have nothing to fear. If, however, a relative, has gifted you money, whether for the trip, or at some other time, unless it is below the annual gift threshold, then the gift could be subject to tax. If you haven’t paid the tax, you can also expect, at the very minimum, a fine, but they may also prosecute. So, you still think the travel database won’t affect you?

Remember, these new controls will include monitoring how much you spend whilst you are abroad, so if you normally buy a few gifts, electrical items, DVD’s, clothes etc., and you don’t bother declaring them, then think again. Because they will know how much you spent, where and, of course, if you declared these goods when you returned to the UK. How many of the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” brigade can claim to have a perfect record I wonder?

So, if you have never carried out any of the above and you don’t intend to, you are almost certainly in the minority, therefore it may not affect you.

Unless, of course, there is something that I have missed out and you can be certain, that this Government is well ahead of the game. They have even looked at it as a revenue generating scheme by threatening anyone who does not register their travel details with a fine of up to £5,000, as always with this government, it is always stick and no carrot.

For example, this database and UK Border Controls will also start to collect fingerprints, how long before they require other bio-metric data, remember, the Government wanted to include this information on ID Cards, but because there was such an uproar, they are intending to collect it using other means,

in this case, anyone that travels abroad and that is most of us. This Government are just hoping that we are too stupid to notice that they are simply gathering this information via another means. We have seen the government agencies sell our personal data to private companies, one example is the DVLA who have provided parking companies with the name and addresses of vehicle owners, so that they can be hounded for parking fines. How long before they are selling our travel arrangments to airline companies and the like?

Our government consistently lie to us about why they need so much data, constantly harping on about terrorist threats and so on. The reality is, determined terrorists will always be able to get in through our porus borders, they know how to get virgin passport; spying on the travel arrangements of 61m people will NOT prevent terrorists (who may be here anyway) from entering the UK, nor will it stop people being smuggled into the UK. Instead, all it will do is allow the state to terrorise the people of this country. Is this really what you want?

Makes you think ! and so we all should

Re: Travel Database:

Martin as usual I respect your comments and point of view, ID cards may well be out of the window but this is all based on Goverment plans, its in the news go and have a look for yourself. Sorry to post this in this forum perhaps the moderators can move this over to Off Topic for those who are interested.

We are under so much scrutiny these days living in one of the most heavily observed societies on the globe. We have no end of red tape binding us all and so many different agencies who know all about each and every one of us like it or not.

I am not promoting any polictical party at all as I think they are all involved in politics to line their own pockets, for instance yesterday it was reported that our MPs are only willing to give up their perks if they each get a £ 40k per annum pay rise !

meanwhile the state rewards those who sit on their backsides while the likes of us have to use our own money, talents, time and brains to run a small business and small businesess make up a huge proportion of tax revenues as well as offering employment to millions to keep these freeloaders and the non indigenous population, there was even a story the other day which was highlighting the fact that there is now a emerging trend for imigrants to falsify there true ages upwards so they can retire early drawing our pension money !!!!!

Its not tripe Martin the country is in a serious state under pressure from short term problems and long term problems yet to become fully evident.
Be not complacent this is a free country as long as you keep your head below the parapit.

Re: Travel Database:

This was printed in The Times 16th March, a serious newspaper.

E-borders – the new frontier of oppression
Soon, every time you travel, you’ll have to give all kinds of intrusive details. And you can bet they won’t be securely storedLibby Purves
From time to time, when low in spirits, I find solace in websites on “How to Disappear”. It is not an urge to deceive loved ones and insurance companies like the appalling canoe man, but merely to toy with the idea of slipping below the official radar. Imagine walking cheerfully through the world: harmless and innocent, untraceable, unlisted, unfollowed, private.

The guides make it clear how hard this is. It is not only CCTV and biometric passports that betray our whereabouts but also banking, bills, phones, cars, laptops (how ironic , just as you completed your escape, to be outed by web records showing you surfing for advice on how often to throw your prepay phone in the river). As technology moves on, not only fingerprinting but facial scanning may betray you, and if – while remembering your gloves and refraining from sneezing your DNA – you take your sunglasses off to see the cash machine screen on your secret bank account, then iris-recognition technology will get you, snap! Oh yes, we have all watched Spooks.

Well, it is a pleasantly paranoiac way to pass a depressed half-hour, and there is a thrill in switching off the mobile, taking the bus to somewhere without CCTV and paying cash for your tea. You and your innocence can spend an afternoon alone together, unseen by officialdom.

There is something fundamentally unnerving about being watched. After the fall of Ceausescu, our Romanian friends said that one of the worst things under his regime was not lousy housing, shortages or even fear of arrest but that “They knew everything, they knew where you went”. Even in an age of Twitter and texting it is good to feel that obscurity is available: provided we do no harm and pay our taxes, we can go off-radar when we want to and Jacqui Smith can never find us.

Governments, always slow to grasp psychological realities, should try to understand this need. That they do not is apparent in their mania for collecting personal data (soon to include phone, e-mail and text records) from birth onwards, and sharing it between agencies or indeed selling it. At the last count the DVLA in Swansea had scored £9 million in “admin” fees by giving vehicle owners’ names and home addresses to private parking companies – ie, to any dodgy character who claims they saw your car on their yard.

Nor is information guarded efficiently: staff at the Revenue & Customs burnt 25 million child benefit records on to CDs, twice, unencrypted; three million UK learner drivers’ details were lost in Iowa, and in one year 1,500 passports were lost in the post. Even if not lost, data can be handled cavalierly: a Newcastle mother reports that her “hungover, gap-year sons” were hired, without checks, by a sub-contractor two steps from government to spend long yawning days copying NHS personal medical records on to a computer, with the occasional giggle at a funny name or embarrassing ailment.

“But,” splutters government when we jib at this, “it’s for your own good! We’re protecting you!” The same tone of hurt ministerial outrage will be heard more and more as people come to realise exactly what is involved in the vast new “e-borders” system, currently being set up to track everybody’s international travel just because a tiny minority are up to no good. A huge new database near Manchester will hold your personal travel history and mine for up to ten years. A pilot is already running on “high-risk” routes; by the end of April 100 million will be tracked, by next year all rail, air and ferry travellers; by 2014, everyone.

And what will they know? Who you are, where you live, how you paid, your phone and e-mail, where you’re going, who’s with you, where you plan to stay and when you’ll be back. In most cases they want your intentions logged a full day in advance. We may be forced to be “EU citizens” in a hundred other ways, but there’ll be no more casual booze-cruises or spontaneous hops to the Normandy gîte or Frankfurt office; not without telling Nanny.

At the extremes, by 2014 pleasure boats, fishing vessels and private planes will be included. I recognise that yachtsmen are a minority, even counting big sail-training vessels with young crews. I can see that our problems with weather and last-minute changes of crew are hobbyist stuff. But all the same, it may interest you to know that the Royal Yachting Association and others have been trying without success to get government to say how it will work, and have little hope of modifying it.

This causes consternation, what with a £5,000 fine for not notifying your movements online 24 hours early and heaven knows what penalties for accidentally being blown on to an unplanned coast, or indeed filling in the form and then chickening out and staying up Mudlump Creek with a bottle of whisky. It may seem odd to those who do not sail, but there was a pleasing sense of ancient liberty in being able to slip out of a UK anchorage at dawn and make for Dieppe or Waterford (yes, Ireland is included now).

Opposition voices have pointed out the complexity, the cost, the paucity of consultation, the extraordinary power given to the UK Border Agency by statutory instruments without parliamentary scrutiny. Given the cases of councils already using anti-terrorist powers to catch litterbugs and school admissions cheats, there is a real fear that e-borders will be used to trump up tax claims or detect petty infringements like taking your children abroad in the school term. And there is something profoundly dispiriting in the principle of us all being suspects: universal

surveillance rather than targeted concentration on known criminals and murderous creeps with terrorist ambitions.

All this began when Tony Blair was embarrassed by a question about how many failed asylum seekers were here, and when it became clear that UK immigration control is ludicrously ineffective in an enlarged, porous EU. The depressing thing is that there used to be a reasonable system for knowing who was here – exit checks on passports. These were largely abandoned in 2004 to save money.

Under e-borders, the idea is that the pendulum will swing back until they know everything about everyone. And having so much information, they will become even more confused and give your plans to some cowboy IT contractor, who will leave it on a train seat to be picked up by grateful burglars, blackmailers and gossips.

They’ll write in saying this is a caricature. It’s not. It’s an extrapolation, based on experience.