Britons and other Europeans who fly to the US could have their credit-card transactions as well as e-mail messages inspected by US officials, a British newspaper reported yesterday.
Under a US-EU deal struck in October, the Daily Telegraph said passengers face having other transactions on their credit cards inspected by US authorities if they use the card to reserve flights.
Under the headline "license to snoop" on flying Britons, the daily added that passengers who provide an e-mail address to an airline could see other messages sent or received on that account studied by the US government.
The paper said the details were revealed in "undertakings" given by the US Department of Homeland Security to the EU and published by Britain's Department for Transport following a Freedom of Information request.
A department spokesman told the Telegraph: "Every airline is obliged to conform with these rules if they wish to continue flying. As part of the terms of carriage, it is made clear to passengers what these requirements are."
"The US government has given undertakings on how this data will be used and who will see it," he said.
However, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human-rights group Liberty, was quoted as telling the newspaper she was horrified at the extent of the information made available.
"It is making the act of buying a ticket a gateway to a host of personal e-mail and financial information. While there are safeguards, it appears you would have to go to a US court to assert your rights," Chakrabarti said.
With the security clampdown that followed the Sept. 11 attacks on the US, Washington demanded that airlines yield full details about passengers before allowing them to land, the newspaper said.
However, EU governments threatened to impose heavy fines on the airlines for breaches of European data protection legislation.
In October, the EU agreed to remove the "bureaucratic hurdles" preventing airlines handing over such information after the US authorities threatened to bar European carriers. Washington meanwhile promised to "encourage" US airlines to make similar information available to EU governments rather than force them to do so, the newspaper said.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS