Can they make the US less inviting? [purplecthulhu]

*Appalled*. I absolutely wish I could refuse to go to the US. Thousands of my colleagues feel the same and this will only strengthen our feeling, if not our ability to do anything about it.

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Something to mention to the Union?

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All flying unions (Amicus, T&G, BALPA) could effectively do nothing unilaterally, or even as a group. To even register as a blip in the US this would be something that has to be fought by trade unions of airlines of every country that flies there, not just the UK.

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There's action that can go on behind the scenes. Just expressing concerns to management about the impact of this on the airline in all ways - members and passengers. A resolution opposing this idiocy and breaking the cosy conspiracy that surrounds airport security theatre would do even more good.

The UK flying unions know more about airline security than any politician or journalist. If they all said at once that the security emperor has no clothes that could be a major step forward. And no strikes would be needed. There'd even be some airlines who'd support this (Ryanair for one).

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Truth is, the security theatre has probably done more to benefit the environment than any number of hypocritical greens bleating. Anything that can have me saying to

autopope How ridiculously expensive would it be to get the sleeper train to London for Picocon? must be having some effect.

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Has there been a measurable change to the number of people flying as a result of all the security theatre, to the US or elsewhere? I've not seen any reports of this.

If you book a sleeper far enough out they can be quite cheap - I did this for Worldcon and it was really rather nice!

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It's definitely affecting the number of people travelling to the US. I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that gave the figures (which I can't find again, pooh). The business travel sector has been particularly badly hit, with losses to US businesses estimated in the tens of billions per annum as a result.

Personally, I'm down from nearly 40 sectors a year to around 10, even though I'm better off than I was. I'm not bothering with the US at all, my trips to London are down to about one a year and trips to the Midlands are done in the Swedish Tank. Number of trips in Tank will increase when I have a full driving license - not exactly good for the environment.

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I'd be interested to hear more of those figures. I've not heard them anywhere and its the kind of thing that needs to be said about all the security theatre, not just in the US.

Add up the cost of all the new security measures, and this economic cost, and its doing more (financial) damage than 11/9/01 itself, which is exactly what the terrorists want.

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I've been looking for the article. It was only a couple of weeks ago, and in one of the news sources I read via RSS, but I can't come up with a decent search term for either the BBC or the Grauniad that will reveal it. It wasn't in the aviation-specific news feeds. Am now trying Google News - it's all very frustrating.

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Any figures will be masked by the weak dollar encouraging tourist travel.

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In terms of raw passenger numbers yes, but not if you can measure the knock on economic effect on business in general.Of course I don't know if you can measure that (which is why tracking down

feorag's original reference would be useful).

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Wow, I'm surprised this looks new for you guys. It has affected us for the past year or two. All our new passports now have biometrics of some sort (iris scan, argh, can't recall and too tired and bothered to look it up.) for 'increased security'. I have refused to go back to the US since the introduction of fingerprinting, but one day I'm sure I'll *want* to go back. And I'm not sure if or when this whole stupidness will subside.

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I want to go back, but the whole security theater has become so incredibly tiring that it's an ordeal I'm not sure I have the energy to go through again.

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I stopped travelling to the US when they brought in the fingerprinting thing, and my last visit was to Noreascon. I used to go two or three times a year, and I noticed an increasing paranoia and general unfriendliness before I finally stopped.

Meanwhile, Australia, which is supposed to be unfriendly, was wonderful. I want to go back! Is the Worldcon bid for 2010?

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Gosh! Who said we were unfriendly? That's interesting. Of course, I only get to hear about us from people who have been here, but generally speaking people have such a great time here they (a) wonder why they never visited earlier and (b) want to come back again as soon as possible (if only we weren't on the other side of the planet.
Notable exceptions to teh rule are Frank Sinatra and Jerry Seinfeld. But then, if you're going to start insulting your gracious hosts within minutes of landing you have to expect a certain amount of hostility. :-)
And of course, we stand a good chance of continuing to make a good impression on the rest of the world if we continure to focus more on our positives and less on this weird obsession much of the population seems to have developed of emulating the USA. Weird.

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I suspect that the 'biometrics' in your new passports will be the same as ours - ie. a digitised version of the picture in the same passport. Given the limited accuracies of iris and fingerprint scans I really can't see any positive results from going further than digitised pictures, and they're probably a waste of time.

My problem with the US is that I get to go there for work a fair bit. This last year I've taken off from intercontinental travel, but that's all starting up again. Frankly I'd prefer to go to Oz, but there's not a lot of my type of astronomy going on there :-(

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Damn! Cos it'd be nice to see you here. Yes, those are probably the type of biometrics mentioned. I just recall breing relieved that I renewed my not long before the change so I won't have to be 'scanned' for a couple of years yet, but I fidn the whole thing pretty dehunmanising and disgusting. So I'm not quite sure how I'll react yet when I *have* to go through one procedure or another. Be it fingerprinting or getting a new passport.

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And it would be nice to visit! Its not impossible since there are conferences as well as observing trips and some are in Oz :-)

I've got about 9 years until I have to renew my passport again, so am safe for a while as long as the UK doesn't bring in compulsory ID cards, which is currently planned. The photos in the current 'biometric passport' chips are just derived from the photo you send, so its not *that* bad, though there are issues if its stored on a remotely interrogatable RFID chip.

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These people assume that all foreigners are terrorists, a view I expect supported by many of the people who voted them in into power.

Mind you I expect the FBI, like the British police, would really like to fingerprint all local citizens too, because it would make their job easier. If you spent your whole life dealing with criminals, it makes you assume everyone is guilty until exonerated, and I doubt the Department of Homeland Security employs liberals.

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The concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' seems at best to only apply to US citizens in these people's minds, and probably not to many US citizens either.

The ghost of McCarthy is haunting the US.

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So, um, do ordinary American citizens get all their fingers scanned too when they take a domestic flight? You know, like the flights the 9/11 terrorists hijacked?

I found the two-fingerprint system unreliable, time-consuming, and intrusive last time I visited the US, and I wouldn't be keen to repeat even that. There's a lot I like about the US, but there seems to be an increasingly pervasive feeling of paranoia each time I go.

As far as I'm concerned, this plan gets them exactly one finger from me.

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No, US citizens don't have fingerprints taken for domestic flights (nor, in fairness, do people from the UK using domestic flights - its only entering and exiting the country when they do that, at the moment).

Its more than a year since I've been to the US, and the fingerprint and picture system seemed to work fairly well then. It might be different at different airports. I've been through LAX and Vancouver on this system. It may be worse elsewhere...

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US citizens don't have their fingers scanned at all when entering or leaving the US, or when travelling within it. Only people from other countries.

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Oh, I'm sure that La Migra can think of something else.

My impression is that all the security has discouraged USers from traveling by air. Unfortunately, the alternative is usually driving, which is a pain. So why doesn't the UK have high-speed rail?

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Pretty much, people don't have to travel to the US - there are plenty of alternatives. If

feorag is correct and the current surly attitude is already costing 10s of billions a year to US businesses, what's going to happen with this new lot? Might the US be writing its own economic suicide note in the fingerprints of absent business travelers and tourists?

As to high speed rail, the UK has that - its called the Eurostar :-)

Its absent in the rest of the country because successive governments have thought that the private sector can provide it (though it has to be said the not-as-fast-as-TGV fast services by Pendolino etc. aren't bad).

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Problem is that London has the high-speed rail that is Eurostar. The rest of us are stuck several hours away.

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The 225 GNER trains that run the east coast mainline are capable of 225 kph or more, only 75km slower than the TGVs. However, signaling keeps them down to 200 kph, at least according to this wikipedia article, so that's what needs the work.

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It still takes 4.5 hours to get to London, due to them not running the trains any faster than they used to run 125s. Then we have to cross London by tube, with all our luggage, to reach the Eurostar. It's no bloody wonder we fly - we'd have no weekend left if we tried to get to Amsterdam by train.

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I'm not sure of the distances, but I think it would still take quite a time from Edinburgh even if you did TGV-speeds all the way. Edinburgh is further away from Amsterdam than London after all...

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Edinburgh, right? 2-2.5 hours, actually, if there were a road. Not a bad trip time at all. But if you're going to build a new road between Edinburgh and London, why not leapfrog the Continent, and build a maglev road? That could do it in about an hour.

Sooner or later someone is going to build those systems, unless we eco-disaster ourselves back into the stone age. Really, I think, it's likely to be China, which needs them most. But no reason the UK couldn't. Just a SMoE.

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What, you let the French get ahead of you?

We have a Talgo train between Seattle and Portland; it's very nice, but unfortunately does not run often enough.

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I guess the lack of frequency is due to outdated signals, which seems to be keeping some of the UK trains slow as well.

Does Talgo go further north to Vancouver? If so it could come in handy at some point.

We once did Seatle to San Francisco in 1st class on the Coast Starlight. Now that is the way to travel.

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The Talgo trains connect with an Amtrak bus in Seattle, which makes the rest of the run. As I recall, it's a relatively comfortable bus, but it's a bus. The BC rails are too busy with freight; there's only one daily Seattle-Vancouver rail run, and I don't think it's a Talgo. There's talk of a second set of tracks in BC, but funding would have to come from Canada or the US federal government.

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purplecthulhu

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