For the past two years or so I've been wearing a badge designed by
Vivienne Westwood for the civil liberty organisation Liberty. On it is
written in friendly letters ‘I
am not a terrorist, please don't arrest me’. Liberty describes
the writing as ‘a child-like scrawl plea’. It obviously works as I have
not been arrested, or even stopped and searched, since I started
wearing this badge.
The badge helps people realise that we must all adopt a rational attitude to the terrorist threats. We must promote measures that really do enhance our security and not security theatre measures that just inconvenience many innocents and do not make us any safer.
I have travelled abroad many times while wearing it. While waiting in security queues at airports I had the occasional positive response from fellow passengers. At Stansted Airport, early February, I had the first and so far only negative reaction to it. While I was waiting at the gate, by the counter, for an Easyjet flight to Copenhagen, a Swissport staff requested that I remove the badge which was pinned to my coat.
When I queried the staff why he was making such a request, he explained his motivation was that it might upset some passengers. I pointed out that the design of this badge is friendly and the message is non-threatening. I found his request upsetting and that his motivation was purely hypothetical as he hadn't heard from any concerned passenger. As he insisted, I complied with his request. This exchange was short and polite. At the bottom of the steps leading to the tarmac, he further discussed this incident with a colleague travelling with me adding that you have to be careful because some people are getting nervous about these things.
On board of the plane, my colleague opened The Times, and the headline on top of p.3, visible from several rows, was ‘Ryanair ordered to pay damages to steel band ‘terrorists’ thrown off jet’. Oh, the irony.
As no passenger has ever complained about this badge and I don't believe requesting me to remove it increases our security, back in London I contacted the General Manager for Swissport at Stansted to query the regulations covering Swissport staff's authority in requesting passenger to remove badges and other items of clothing. He investigated the incident and was very diligent in responding:
As all communications from passengers and customers are important to us, we do investigate all complaints or comments fully, and by the nature of our business this can take longer than perhaps I might prefer.
I have now had the opportunity to investigate the circumstances surrounding a member of Swissport staff asking you to remove your badge before boarding a flight at Stansted Airport.
Our business as a major provider of airport ground handling services around the world, works hard with our customer airlines and operators at airports where we work, to ensure aviation continues to be a safe and secure method of transport. The aviation industry is rightly well regulated and all businesses co-operate with the Department for Transport and the police services and security staff at the airports to meet these regulations. Additionally, we try and ensure that passengers are spared additional anxiety that they may feel as a result of enhanced security processes at the airports.
The badge which I understand you were wearing bears the message "I am not a terrorist. Please don't arrest me." Whilst it is unlikely that anybody could take exception to such a friendly and, presumably well-intentioned sentiment, our concerns were that the word "terrorist" was clearly the most prominent and could be read from a distance, while the context in which it was used could not.
Our request for the badge to be removed while you were preparing to board the flight and during the flight itself, followed consultation with the airline on which you were travelling, in particular the Captain and senior cabin crew member. We did not intend to cause you offence or to demonstrate support or rejection of the objectives of Liberty, the cause which I gather the badge supports. It was merely to spare other passengers any potential anxiety through the prominence of the word "terrorist" in what many would consider a security sensitive area. As part of legislative requirements, all airport staff are now required to undergo a greater degree of security awareness training and one of the supporting strains of this is to recognize and to act upon the “out of the ordinary”.
I hope that this provides some explanation of the reason for the action of our member of staff and I trust that this explains why you were asked to remove the badge on this occasion.
It is reassuring that airport staff benefit from additional security awareness training. This is exactly the type of measure that increases our safety.
Unfortunately some of the explanations still left me confused. Neither my colleague nor I noticed the Swissport staff having radio communications with the Easyjet Captain. We may have missed that as even though we were right by the counter we weren't paying particular attention to this. However, during the request to remove my badge, there was no mention of any consultation with the Captain. Sparing potential anxiety is of course something I fully subscribe to, but how come the word ‘terrorists’ when more prominent on a newspaper has not the same potential to create anxiety in a security sensitive area? Security measures, if efficient, should be applied consistently. Why singling my badge out?
I sent a further email requesting clarifications. Here's the concluding email:
Thank you for your further correspondence, and my apologies for a tardy reply. I have been dealing with a large redundancy issue which as I hope you can appreciate is very time consuming.
Our dispatchers are responsible for ensuring the boarding process is safe and timely and, as such, liaise with a number of personnel during the time the aircraft is on the ground. It is likely you would not have been aware of all of these discussions, some of which will have been made by radio or telephone from our Operations office, and there was no need for the dispatcher to explain them to you at the time.
Whilst I can understand your frustration, I am satisfied that in the light of the circumstances on the day as they were explained to me, the dispatcher made the right decision in asking you to remove the badge in question. The dispatcher was the senior member of our staff on duty at the time and, as such, I support his decision and am grateful to you for complying with it.
I have not received the Swissport's regulations covering Swissport staff's authority in requesting passenger to remove badges and other items of clothing
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Some countries require Police record information as part of their immigration, visas, work permits and residency acceptance processes. This is the case for the USA: ‘Under United States visa law, people who have been arrested at anytime are required to declare the arrest when applying for a visa.’ This applies to all those that have been arrested even if never convicted.
The way to get details of your – blank or otherwise – police record is to make a subject access request using the Police National Computer (PNC) Form 3019B. This is a right given by the Data Protection Act 1998. The act stipulates that a reply must be received within 40 days as long as the necessary fee has been paid. The fee is decided by the relevant data controller up to a maximum of £10 and the Police do charge the maximum.
With very little fanfare, a trial has recently started in which four countries will no longer accepting PNC record extracts for their visa procedures. Instead you will need a police certificate:
The ACPO Criminal Records Office is piloting an initiative to provide Police Certificates for Visa purposes. The four countries involved in the pilot are Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America.
There's no press release from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) I could find. Searching the Hansard (or They work for you) does not bring any result so this doesn't appear to have been debated in Parliament at all. Nothing either on the websites of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Department for Transport, the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice (sponsor of the Information Commissioner's Office). The new form on the ACPO site, a Word file, does not include any issuance date, but the document properties reveal that it was created by the Hampshire Constabulary on 2008-01-15. The US Embassy is requiring new visa applicants to furnish a new style police certificate from the ACPO and those that have already applied for a PNC data subject access have only until 2008-08-15 to appear for interview. For a trial, it looks rather definitive. The websites of the Australian, Canadian, New Zealand embassies do not appear to have been updated yet to reflect the changes (with the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website even including out of date URLs to the Metropolitan Police Service website).
Here's a summary of the differences:
| PNC data subject access | ACPO police certificate | |
| Provides | ‘[I]nformation that may be held about you on the Police National Computer’ | Unclear The form states: ‘ACRO will carry out extensive authentication exercises including searching various databases.’ |
| Validity | 12 months | 6 months |
| Cost | £10 paid to the local police force | £35 for standard service (£70 for a premium service) paid to ‘HPA’ (apparently the Hampshire Police Authority) |
| Processing time | Within 40 days (Data Protection Act requirement) | Aimed to be within 10 working days (2 working days for the premium service) |
| Requirements | Proof of identity (returned), fee and form 3019B (less than a page) | Proof of identity (retained), photograph, fee and Police Certificate Application Form (two pages) Declaration and photograph to be countersigned by a guarantor |
| Who handles the requests | National Indentification Service (NIS) All data subject access requests are under the authority of the Information Commissioner's Office |
ACPO Criminal Records Office (ACRO) |
These new police certificates appear to work outside the constraints of any law and any debate, they are entirely governed by the ACPO and the agreements it made with several embassies. The list of database queried is not known and what will be communicated is not yet known either (someone who has gone through the process may detail what the result reveals). The fee has more than tripled. The only positive is that it is speedier, but even that is not guaranteed: ‘ACRO will aim to produce all police certificates (standard service) within 10 working days.’
And the ACPO is most likely free to change any aspect of this scheme as it chooses.
Why introducing a paralegal process when there's already one in place that seems to do the job? If the PNC data subject access process was not adquate for visa requirements of some countries then this should be explained, debated by Parliament and put under the authority of the Information Commissioner's Office.
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‘Additional personal information sought as a direct result of PNR data will be obtained from sources outside the government only through lawful channels, including through the use of mutual legal assistance channels where appropriate, and only for the purposes set forth in paragraph 3 hereof. For example, if a credit card number is listed in a PNR, transaction information linked to that account may be sought, pursuant to lawful process, such as a subpoena issued by a grand jury or a court order, or as otherwise authorized by law. In addition, access to records related to e-mail accounts derived from a PNR will follow U.S. statutory requirements for subpoenas, court orders, warrants, and other processes as authorized by law, depending on the type of information being sought;’And here's the list of ‘PNR data elements required by CBP from air carriers’:
This document is dated from May 2004; ‘these Undertakings shall apply for a term of three years and six months (3.5 years), beginning on the date upon which an agreement enters into force between the United States and the European Community’.
- PNR record locator code
- Date of reservation
- Date(s) of intended travel
- Name
- Other names on PNR
- Address
- All forms of payment information
- Billing address
- Contact telephone numbers
- All travel itinerary for specific PNR
- Frequent flyer information (limited to miles flown and address(es))
- Travel agency
- Travel agent
- Code share PNR information
- Travel status of passenger
- Split/Divided PNR information
- Email address
- Ticketing field information
- General remarks
- Ticket number
- Seat number
- Date of ticket issuance
- No show history
- Bag tag numbers
- Go show information
- OSI information
- SSI/SSR information
- Received from information
- All historical changes to the PNR
- Number of travelers on PNR
- Seat information
- One-way tickets
- Any collected APIS information
- ATFQ fields
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Advice for border guards when conducting the border check:
- when you take the travel document always have a look at the face of the traveller at first (try to remember as much as possible of the noticeable features of the traveller's face);
- compare the features of the traveller with the photo and description included in the travel document, match them also with the visa when this is required (this could help to eliminate impostors);
- check the travel document through in order to rule out the possibility that it is counterfeit or forged (the numbering, printing and stitching of pages, seals and stamps inserted, the inclusion of other persons; all corrections made in the document especially at the personal data page should be clarified by the traveller);
- check the data in the file system; while doing this keep always verbal contact and observe the behaviour and reaction of the traveller (e.g., nervousness, an aggressive attitude, excessive willingness to co-operate);
- before you put the border's stamp make sure that the person did not overstay the allowed period during his/her last stay within the Schengen States territory (i.e. 3 months within six months[)];
- do not interrogate the traveller as a potential criminal or illegal immigrant. All the questions should be well balanced and asked in a friendly way.
- questions posed by the traveller should not be considered as intrusive and should be answered in a factual and polite manner.
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‘[...] he felt compelled to speak out to protect other innocent travellers from a similar experience.
"This man could have garrotted me and what was awful was that one or two of the passengers went up afterwards to thank him," said Mr Stein. He has since been told by airline staff he was targeted because he was using an iPod, had used the toilet when he got on the plane and that his tan made him appear "Arab". [...]’
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"The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave,"
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