Security at the cost of privacy

The entire United States polity has been calling for a strengthening of internal security measures. The recent car bomb attacks by a naturalized United States citizen has send shock waves throughout the nation and people have become concerned about the security set up. The officials at the Home Land security department have been forced to think of new ways to contain the terrorists and prevent any further attack. This comes in the wake of the Pakistan Taliban taking responsibility and warning the United States government and people of more such attacks.

With the United States security agencies contemplating a move to add a few more security measures for air travellers, Canadian people are worried. Canadian privacy watchdogs are concerned that new security policies are not good. United Security agencies were not too concerned about flights from Canada, but now they fear that terrorist might be using Canada as a gateway to United States. Now flyers from Canada to the United States will have to give full personal detail to their airlines. The airlines will then hand them over to the security agencies. The new Homeland security flight policy requires that passengers flying from Canada to United States or vice versa are required to submit full details about themselves. Anybody who raises the suspicion of the authorities in the United States is likely to be interrogated. Even those who have the same name as someone in the US security checklist will be interrogated; many of them might not be allowed to board the airplane. The Canadian parliamentarians say that this is something that they do not have a say in as if the aircraft enters the United States airspace, it is the United States authorities that will decide how to handle the security. What worries people in Canada are that the information demanded by security watch dogs from the fliers is a bit too much? The information extracted should be limited; they should be asked to furnish just enough detail to remove them from suspicion. But that is not the case, as apart from the basics such as name, date of birth, sex, address and identification proof a detailed purpose of visit also has to be given. Entire time-table of the visit has to be given as well, and this detail will be kept with the homeland security and will e used for any law enforcement purpose. If an aircraft flies over US airspace these rules will apply. This means that people travelling Canada to Mexico can be stopped from doing so. Thankfully, these rules will not apply to flights within Canada.