Hot on the heels of “Fortress Britain” comes the news of a terror crackdown, requiring anyone entering or leaving Britain to give up 53 pieces of personal information before they can fly.

For every journey, security officials will want credit card details, holiday contact numbers, travel plans, email addresses, car numbers and even any previous missed flights.

But there’s more. Much more. And you’re also going to pay more money for the privilege of having that leash shoved up your ass. This information will be taken upon purchasing an airline ticket. It will then be shared with “police, customs, immigration and the security services for at least 24 hours before a journey is due to take place.”

Anyone, and I mean absolutely anyone, who is considered questionable can be denied access to their flight. This includes people with parking tickets or speeding tickets, even if they pose no security threat and aren’t suspected of being a terrorist.

The e-borders scheme is expected to cost at least £1.2billion over the next decade. Travel companies, which will run up a bill of £20million a year compiling the information, will pass on the cost to customers via ticket prices, and the Government is considering introducing its own charge on travellers to recoup costs.

Ah, isn’t it great that you get to pay for such a system that isn’t necessary and will do nothing except increase paperwork that will, most likely never be used by police but sold to data miners who want to sell you junk?

You now have the exciting prospect of paying more for your ticket, more to your travel agent and, quite possibly, more to your government as soon as they think up a random number to charge you.

Critics warned of mayhem at ports and airports when the system is introduced, beginning in earnest from mid-2009. By 2014 every one of the predicted 305million passenger journeys in and out of the UK will be logged, with details stored about the passenger on every trip.

You got that right. Airports will be clogged with pissed off people. Oh, but don’t worry. If you’re pissed off, then some stupid behavior recognition program will cite you as suspicious and you aren’t going anywhere anyway. Problem solved. No clogged airport.

The other end of the spectrum results in no one traveling anywhere and the United Kingdom losing billions of tourist dollars.

The scheme will apply to every way of leaving the country, whether by ferry, plane, or small aircraft. It would apply to a family having a day out in France by Eurotunnel, and even to a yachtsman leaving British waters during the day and returning to shore. The measure applies equally to UK residents going abroad and foreigners travelling here.

I hear and Ayn Rand quote echoing through my brain. You’re all criminals now.

The information will be stored for as long as the authorities believe it is useful, allowing them to build a complete picture of where a person has been over their lifetime, how they paid and the contact numbers of who they stayed with.

Here we go again. So much for keeping the data for a specific amount of time and destroying it. We can’t do that when you could possibly commit a crime somewhere in the distant future.

The Home Office, which yesterday signed a contract with U.S. company Raytheon Systems to run the computer system, said e-borders would help to keep terrorists and illegal immigrants out of the country.

I am so sick of this defense. Let me repeat it AGAIN! This will not keep out terrorists and illegal immigrants. They will find a way to enter the country if they are determined to do so. This system is designed to keep track of normal citizens. Stalin would be so proud of the UK right now.
If the British citizens will not rise up in revolt against such a scheme, then we can hope this will fail due to the government’s own track record on not delivering things on time. It’s not going to happen for a long time, due, quite simply, to incompetence.