Americans to Receive Full Biometric Treatment for all Forms of European Travel

Amanda Warren

Travel becomes truly ominous...

In a trend that isn't wholly surprising, EU Observer reports:

US citizens and other non-EU nationals who enter Europe will be asked to have their faces image-captured and fingerprints scanned upon arrivalat a half-dozen major airports. [emphasis added]

This "biometric dragnet" is the pilot test for the EU's new "smart borders" packages. The test portion will run March - September 2015, for starters. The commission originally proposed this package in 2013 but pulled it and began revising. While there is some opposition, the experiment is shortly underway.

The captures include fingerprint scans, iris scans and facial recognition scans for all forms of European travel - road, train, sea and air. 

Of course, what's usual for such programs - travelers can refuse...for now. But officials are letting travelers know through the media that it will become mandatory in time.

How the U.S. Government Tracked Me Overseas

Erika Nolan

I was on vacation in Europe recently when I experienced firsthand the extent to which the U.S. government will go to follow and track its citizens. It has made me very grateful that I hold dual citizenship and have a second passport.

This is what happened.

After relaxing along the Adriatic Sea in Dubrovnik for a week, my family and I decided to take a day trip to the Bay of Kotor in neighboring Montenegro. Feeling rather lazy, we opted for a group tour rather than driving south ourselves.

In less than 45 minutes our coach rolled into the large, rather militaristic border crossing between Croatia and Montenegro. Our guide announced that the border patrol officers often waive the tour buses straight through, but that didn’t happen.

I'm Afraid to Return to the Land of the Free

Anthony Freda Art

Talon Windwalker

There was a time when America truly was synonymous with the tagline Land of the Free. However, that statement is becoming less and less truthful.

Snowden revealed the lengths our country is going to monitor all our communications, and our government insists on continuing this Orwellian type of surveillance. Despite committee findings showing that not one single act of terrorism has been thwarted by these unconstitutional practices.

Over the last several years we’ve also witnessed our police force becoming militarized to the point where they are using surplus military weapons and vehicles even in small towns where the worst recent crime was that time someone put sugar in their cornbread.

So far this year I have sat in shock as I’ve read case after case of parents being arrested and convicted for actions so horrific as letting their child walk alone to the park.

The U.S. Government Does Not Want Americans To Travel Abroad

Freda Art

Digby Jones

No other government on the face of this Earth wants to make it’s citizens more ill-at-ease, deathly afraid, or made to feel so guilty for stepping outside of it’s national boundaries as the United States of America. Rather than encouraging Americans to embrace overseas travel as one of the most educational, enjoyable, and emotionally and spiritually satisfying endeavors that people can undertake in the course of our painfully short lives, U.S. government departments and institutions are notorious for wanting to make even just the IDEA of pursuing international travel as unpleasant and unsettling as they can possibly muster.

You must look no further than the U.S. State Department’s “Global Travel Alert” issued this past Friday (August 2nd 2013) to grasp the sheer ridiculousness and paranoia of the U.S. governments stance on it’s citizens travelling abroad. The alert, which is based upon the “most specific, credible threat information in years” (but of course lacking any actual date or timing), warned of the potential for terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, to be carried out by operatives of Al Qaeda and their associates.