Changes to China visa rules

I'd seen reports of changes in China's visa requirements made before the Olympics but had not paid much attention, having already secured my Chinese visa before the changes occurred. The Practical Nomad has brought me up to speed with his latest entry. For casual travellers like me who spurn tours, travel independently, and make changes to their travels on the fly, the changes are a major inconvenience.

As well as seemingly abandoning the most flexible visa options, there are more hoops to jump through to get a visitor visa. The most significant of which, in my view, is visas must be issued at the embassy or consulate in the country of residency or citizenship (presumably exemptions for those from countries that have no Chinese embassy or consulate). So if you're in the middle of a trip and decide you want to visit China, you need to go back home first to get a visa.

Another change which might impact me (I haven't checked it out yet) is the requirement to arrange the visa in person. I use a specialist visa company for my visa requirements - one reason being that for many countries their nearest embassy/consulate is in another city or even another country. That company couriers the documents to the relevant city and has a local representative deal with the application - does that meet the requirements? Maybe.

One point I was surprised to read was this remark relating to a new question on the visa application form.

"Do you have any criminal record in China or any other country?"

I'd never been asked this question before, in more than 50
countries including previous visits to China, but it seems to be becoming more
common. I'll have more about this question in a separate forthcoming article.

Perhaps The Practical Nomad is unaware, or perhaps he has forgotten, but anyone who enters USA under either the visa waiver program or with a visa gets a similar question (see sample I94W form).

2 years of liquids rules, some funny slogans

The Cranky Flier recently ran a 6-word contest to mark the 2 year anniversary of the liquids restrictions. The winning entries have now been posted - congratulations to all. My entry "security has dry sense of humor" won an honorary mention. To check out lots more great slogans entered, click here.

More weather woes

Lately my travel pattern seems to be coinciding with the worst of winter weather. In the past few weeks my flights have been affected by more thunderstorms than I can count, hail, snow, excessive winds, heavy rain, frost/ice. Today looks like it will be no different. 2 prop flights. Wind 80 mph. Thunderstorms. Hail. Heavy rain. Weak tornadoes possible. Not a good mix.

So once again, I'm preparing back-up plans. But this time won't be easy as I'm flying somewhere remote and have further connecting travel tomorrow. A flight cancellation will be problematic.

Waiting out weather situation

Once again I'm sitting in an airport lounge waiting out an unfolding weather situation. There are a number of possibilities for my trip today.

1) Flights are delayed (currently 90 minutes delay for the first of my 4 flights and lengthening) but I fly as planned.
2) I fly part of the trip as booked and then switch to other flights/airlines - perhaps unlikely as I have no status on this particular airline.
3) I fly part of the trip and then get stuck overnight - possible depending on whether the snow and ice at transit and destination airports clears.
4) The trip gets cancelled.

Fortunately I have some tools to help me. As I noticed yesterday that the weather forecast was not great for today (although it actually is worse than forecast currently), I brought more stuff with me than I normally would - just in case I get stuck somewhere. However, I just noticed my cell phone is running low on battery. I should have brought my charger with me - doh.

Despite not having status on the airline I'm flying, I have access to lounges at a couple of the airports I will (I hope) visit today, thanks to status I have with the airline running those lounges. I'm making good use of the lounge by checking my options on the computer and working out various contingencies.

I'm checking out several websites for information. The airline website has arrival and departure information, as well as schedules. This information is partly updated but flow on delays are not being recorded. From the schedules I can work this out myself by figuring out where each aircraft goes next. The websites of the airports - the one I'm currently at, the transit airport and destination airport - help me by showing general delays and will give the first warning if the airport actually closes. Two of these airport websites are not very good at updating, so I am also checking out flightstats and using the airport and flight status tools. I also have an official weather website up which is updated hourly with weather conditions including radar - this helps me predict impacts for later in the day. Lastly, I have a page that links to various online weather stations for current conditions updated more frequently than the official weather website.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Wish me luck.

Sleeping in airports

For the first time in years I recently slept at 2 different airports. I'd forgotten what it was like and I ended up paying the penalty. I was lulled into a false sense by my dodgy memories and also a quick review of the sleeping in airports website.

The first one was at Auckland when a schedule change meant I had 3 hours in the wee hours of the morning between international flights. Factoring in immigration both ways, customs, and a cab ride to & from the nearest hotel I reckoned I'd get 30 minutes sleep if I was lucky. I didn't need a hotel to access a shower - having the option of the free airside international terminal shower (bring your own towel and soap) or the shower in the 2 lounges I had access to after a couple of hours of waiting for them to open. So I cleared security (requiring a phone call to summons an officer) and settled in one of the comfy chairs on the upper level. While good for lying down it was soon apparent that some fellow transitting passengers were going to talk noisily all night (and some also playing football) thus making it difficult to sleep. I found some of the gate lounge areas were overlooked by passengers wandering aimlessly and thus a quiet respite. I managed an hour or so of sleep. The shower in the lounge, when it opened at 4am, was a godsend.

The second one was at Hamilton. This time I had 4 1/2 hours between international flights. Factoring in immigration, customs and check in time I figured I'd get a maximum of 2 1/2 hours sleep at the nearby airport hotel. I found a comfy chair on the upper level. Even though the terminal was locked up once the last passenger on my flight had cleared customs, I was allowed to remain inside. However, I was kept awake by the heavy rain drumming on the roof, and then an hour later by the cafe staff preparing to open up for the day (lights on, and an automated announcement every 10 minutes or so about security and keep your bags with you at all times). I gave up trying to sleep having had less than 30 minutes sleep. The airport has no showers, so I had to wait until my next destination to shower. In hindsight I would have been better off with the airport hotel (despite the relatively high cost).

The other option for such short overnight transits is to not try to sleep at all. I've done that before, but that is easier said than done when the body clock wants sleep and there are no stimulants coffee or cola on hand. What do you do in these situations?

TSA Watchlist a False Security

In my previous blog entry I explained how the TSA’s claim of "small" selectee and no fly watchlist is nothing of the sort and impacts millions. Many readers will, however, have noticed that I omitted (deliberately in the interests of space) some key arguments against a watchlist. This entry covers those arguments.

In tv crime shows the detective or lawyer looks for 3 angles to assess guilt – motive, opportunity and means. I’ll use these in a different way, to assess the worth of having the watchlist.

For the sake of argument, lets suppose the watchlist is perfect. There are no false positives (name of an innocent matches someone on the list or an innocent name is on the list). The watchlist, then, is a list of names of those who have the motive for terrorism based on perfect intelligence. But perfect intelligence is an oxymoron. It is relatively easy for a terrorist to avoid being on the list, or to find someone else who is not on the list to do the evil deed. So the watchlist is insufficient to prove motive, or to put it another way does not filter passengers into those with motive and those without. Not a good start against the criteria.

Next consider opportunity. Pretty much everyone who flies, works in or near airports or airlines has an opportunity to do harm. It is a fact of life, and really by definition, that you cannot prevent opportunity for terrorism. This criteria therefore is no help at all, and again the presence or absence of a name on a watchlist proves nothing.

What about means? This is where security really should be, and leave the rest of the window dressing alone. If the means are prevented then there can be no terrorist attack. The names on a watchlist matter not to means either.

Thus, the watchlist does not improve security – it is a false security.

But wait, there’s more. If the 50,000 people on the no fly and selectee watchlists really all are going to crash or hijack planes, shouldn’t they all be arrested? The 50,000 are not arrested because the intelligence is imperfect. They don’t have sufficient proof of terrorist intent and means, and the outcry from so many false arrests would show up the lists as the sham they are. The bigger the list gets and the more times the importance of the watchlist is emphasised by TSA, the harder it is for a reversal, an admission of error. That is really unfortunate, especially for the millions of innocents caught up in the dragnet (refer my previous blog entry).

TSA watchlist of 1 million

I don't blog much about the TSA (USA's transport security if you're lucky enough to not know what it is about), mainly because pretty much every policy they implement riles me up. There is plenty of coverage elsewhere on their terrible practices and stuff-ups.

However, an entry on the TSA blog from a couple of weeks ago has gotten me even more riled up than normal so that I have to comment on it. The blog entry is a self-styled myth buster on the recent news that the watchlist has 1 million names.

A summary of the TSA blog entry:

• 2 million daily passengers (this is USA only)
• 400,000 on a consolidated terror watch list
• 50,000 selectee and no-fly lists (subsets of the consolidated terror watch list)
• buster #1 - the list is not 1 million names long
• buster #2 - ACLU's method to estimate 1 million names is flawed
• buster #3 - Ted Kennedy, Catherine Stevens and Robert Johnson are not on the no-fly lists, they just happen to have the same names as other who are on the no-fly lists. Then there is spiel that spending more money will enable the number of false positives to be reduced, and that those who are falsely identified (false positive) face only minor inconvenience.
• Terror watch lists keep legitimate terror threats off of airplanes every day, all over the world. (This point is a verbatim quote.)

Given the watchlist isn't public info, I'll take TSA's word that the list is "only" 400,000 names long. I'll also take their word that the names used to trigger extra security or outright prevent from flying are a mere 50,000 names.

Now to some that may not seem a big number, compared with say the population of USA.

However, a unique name is rather rare. Some common names have many thousands who share the exact same name - for example a couple of dozen others shared my name even in the small town I used to live in (and no my surname is not Smith). Suppose there are 100 people with the same name on average - this I think is a low estimate. Some unusual names will only have few people with the same name, while other names may have 100,000 people or more with the same name. That 50,000 list now matches 5,000,000 names. Not so small any more, is it?

Unfortunately that isn't the end of it. For "bad people" could try to fool the system by slightly tweaking their name - using initials, changing the spelling slightly, etc. So the watchlist system gets close matches as well as exact matches. The number of names matching the list grows again.

Now, for some the ends (prevent terrorist attack) justify the means (extra hassles for those whose name "matches" the selectee and no-fly lists). However, consider this. How many of the 50,000 names realistically will try to blow up or crash a plane? I bet it is a tiny number - let's say 100 for argument's sake. Of those, a portion will presumably be savvy enough to realise that if they can take a name that doesn't match the list (or find a suitably named new recruit) they won't be subject to extra security. So really the security the name matching provides is non-existant.

But for the notion of apparent security, a significant proportion of the travelling public faces inconvenience. The TSA blog entry downplays the impact by claiming it merely limits ability to check in online. However, the real impact is far worse. Missed flights due to longer times to check in, missed connecting flights, being stranded at the transit point (eg if you couldn't get through checked for the onward flight), not being able to easily switch flights to another airline in the event of irregular operations, etc. Then there is the time totally wasted by all these people, which somehow never make it into a proper cost-benefit analysis.

To sum up - lots of costs, no benefit, faulty logic being used to justify it all. Unfortunately this sounds rather like some other aspects of security (and not just TSA, other countries are not immune).

Those readers interested in finding out more, I suggest checking out the excellent Schneier on Security.