Airport News - Africa / Middle East

New York, Geneva (AirGuide - Airport News Africa / Middle East) Apr 25, 2010 Privacy advocates question the millions of background checks conducted each year in the U.S. and Canada Some privacy advocates question the millions of background checks conducted each year by U.S. and Canadian officials accessing the other country's databases. In the first four months of this year, the U.S. has queried Canadian databases 1.4 million times, while Canada has accessed U.S. data 400,000 times. Officials say the 1999 arrest of Ahmed Ressam, an al-Qaida operative convicted of smuggling explosives across the border to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, is proof that sharing information is key to security. But some Canadian lawmakers are "very nervous" about the open-database policy, and the ACLU calls it a "dangerous practice that needs a tremendous amount of accountability." Apr 22, 2010