Union Membership a Sign of Terrorism?

Your union membership will be the newest information stored in a terrorist database, reports Mike Hall of the AFL-CIO Now Blog. Starting in August, airlines with flights from Europe to the US must turn over personal information of passengers to the Department of Homeland Security, including union membership, race, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation. The Department of Homeland Security will retain the information for 15 years and other government agencies and nations will have access to the database. The data-gathering program is part of a European Union and US agreement that expands on previous programs. The agreement “has privacy and civil libertarians on both sides of the Atlantic alarmed,” Hall reports.