What’s the best way to lose what little prestige you have left in the world?  Start banning people from even flying over your precious airspace.  That’s Washington’s plan for their latest attempt at protecting us from terrorists.

Under anti-terrorism measures due to come into force within two years, the US authorities insist they need to do background checks on all UK air passengers travelling to Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico and South America.

Those pesky foreigners are attempting to circumvent…uhm…something…so we need all their travel information before we let them into our hemisphere.

We weren’t even this paranoid during the Nazi regime or the Cold War.

Anyone identified as having “suspicious indicators associated with travel behaviour” by US security would be prevented from boarding their flight.

No one really defines what constitutes these suspicious indicators, so we’re all at risk and, because most airlines skirt the USA in case of emergencies, nearly everyone flying anywhere near the USA is going to be affected by these measures.