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.

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.