The Amazing Race 5, Episode 9

Dubai (United Arab Emirates) - Kolkata, West Bengal (India)

Starting during the first season, I've urged in my columns that the producers of The Amazing Race give the contestants less money, to cut down the extent to which the race hinges on the speed and recklessness of taxi drivers rather than the skills of the racers. When I interviewed Team Guido after that first season, they made the same recommendation .

This season, the producers have finally begun to cut back on how much cash they give out: The racers still have enough money to take taxis everywhere, but only if they are careful to minimize other spending. Those that aren't, or that lose their saved cash (and their allowance for the next leg) as a penalty for finishing last in the non-elimination legs, have repeatedly run short.

Unfortunately, they've resorted to begging for cab fare -- not, I hope, a strategy that any of you will emulate -- rather than providing any useful object lessons in how to travel more cheaply.

But there are financial issues of a different sort for some of the racers this week, when "bowling moms" Karen and Linda discover that they can't use U.S. Dollars to buy tickets on a government-operated Indian commuter train.

Ironically, it was "the moms", earlier this season when the racers arrived in Argentina by ferry from Uruguay, who induced Marsha and Jim to waste time changing money by telling them that they wouldn't be able to use U.S. dollars or Uruguayan pesos (either of which, especially the former, would have been readily accepted) for taxis or other services in Buenos Aires.

This week in Kolkata, the moms lose both time and money through not having local currency (Indian rupees). First they try to take a cab to the bank, only to find that the nearest bank that will change foreign currency is downtown, further away than where they were trying to go on the train. Then, their desperate hurry (and willingness to give up money for time) obvious, they change US$10 with the taxi driver, who gives them only Rs. 250 when a bank would have given at least Rs. 400.

So how can we real travellers avoid these problems? I have a lengthier discussion of currency issues in The Practical Nomad, How To Travel Around the World , but here are a few key tips:

First, you can try to figure out, in advance, what currency(ies) are accepted or preferred. Bear in mind, however, that this can change overnight, and that any current guidebook was probably researched at least a year ago. You can't totally rely on acquaintances who've been there before, either, even if their visits were recent: in my experience, "Everyone takes dollars" often means, "Everyone I dealt with took U.S. dollars, but I stayed in a resort and never tried to spend money with anyone who doesn't make their living from foreign tourists."

The best informants on this (and on many other things) are people on or waiting for the plane, bus, train or ferry with you, who live in the place you are going (and who are themselves returning from a short trip abroad). If you don't yet have any local currency, these are also the people most likely to have a little extra that they will exchange with you privately, to tide you over in case there are no ATM's or money changers, or none open or working, at the point of entry. There's simply no excuse for any of the teams in the race to arrive in any new country without having changed a small amount of dollars with other travellers for the local currency of their destination.

You'll have any easier time changing money informally, and not having to waste it, if you have it in relatively small denominations. You're much more likely to find a fellow traveller willing to change US$5, $10 or $20 for local currency than willing to change a US$100 bill (note). And, as Chip finds out in the race, if all you have are $20 bills, you'll have to pay $20 even if the taxi meter shows only $5. What esle can you do if the driver claims to have no change (which might even be true)?

For a trip oversees, I bring some money in US$100 bills (for the unpredictable times when there are no ATM's working and the banks or money changers prefer cash to travellers' checks), some in US$20, $10, and $5 notes (for small-scale transactions and local purchases), and a thick pile ($100 or $200) of US$1 notes for things like taxis, transit fares, and other minor expenses, especially when first arriving in new places, or for places where U.S. dollars are in routine use in the local economy.

It's usually easier to get large-denomination notes than small ones, whether from a bank or money-changer or an ATM. Banks, money changers, and ATM's generally give you your cash in as few notes as they can, in the largest possible denominations. That's what's easiest for them, but rarely what's best for you.

Except when I get a huge pile of small-value notes (I've been in places where the local currency has collapsed, new notes have yet to be printed, and the largest-denomination local currency note was worth little more than US$1), I automatically hand back some of what I get from any currency exchange and ask for more smaller notes and coins. If I've gotten money from an ATM, I take the first opportunity to ask a bank, money changer, or merchant to break some of it down for me into smaller denominations, even if that requires buying a newspaper or packet of chewing gum from a vendor or kiosk.

Special broadcast time for "The Amazing Race" this week

In at least some time zones in the USA, "The Amazing Race 5" will be broadcast earlier than usual this week to acocmmodate "news coverage" (free broadcast of a party propaganda rally, at which few if any newsworthy decisions will be made) of the Republican Party National Convention.

The official CBS-TV newsletter says that this week's episode of The Amazing Race 5 will be broadcast beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time (and, presumably, 7 p.m. Central and Mountain Time) on Tuesday, 31 August 2004.

Some local listings have different times. I'll be setting my VCR to record from 8 p.m.-midnight Pacific Daylight Time, just in case.

I'm just back (off the plane 2 hours ago) from a vacation off the Internet; my columns on The Amazing Race will be updated shortly. Some of these were written eariler, but not posted. Others are being written as I catch up with videotapes of the race. I don't normally backdate blog entries, but to keep the archives consistent, I will post these columns under the original broadcast dates.

The Amazing Race 5, Episode 8

Lake Manyara (Tanzania) - Kilimanjaro Airport (Tanzania) - Nairobi (Kenya) - Dubai (United Arab Emirates)

I've tried to avoid criticizing the contestants on The Amazing Race, most of whom have limited international travel experience and all of whom are subject to being depicted
in whatever manner the television show's producers and editors think will attract the most viewers, no matter how much that may distort what really happened.

But I can't restrain myself this week, when the racers' behavior, at least as depicted on television , crosses what I see as an ethical line between unskilled travellers, or even boorish "ugly Americans", and people who refuse to pay their bills.

Aside from the possibility that getting arrested for "theft of services" could ruin your trip or cause you to lose the race (presumably it's only the presence of the television cameras that protects Colin when his and Christie's driver goes to the police), it's a breach of the trust extended by people much poorer than the racers. It has no excuse -- again, as shown on television, which may well have edited out exculpatory events -- even if doing otherwise would have cost them the race.

The television producers share the blame, unless they too redeemed themselves off camera: It's one thing to cheat other racers, or allow them to cheat each other, but it's something else entirely to cheat locals, and the producers should forbid and penalize it. I can only hope that, off camera, the producers made up the amount that Chip and Kim shorted their taxi driver, and would have done the same for Colin and Christie's driver had they not eventually paid what they had agreed.

Colin tries to claim that he only agreed to pay the full US$100 if his taxi driver didn't let any others pass him. That's not much for a two-hour taxi ride, for four passengers -- the two team members, the camera operator, and the sound technician -- from a luxury safari lodge in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. More importantly, he appears not to have tried to qualify his offer to pay until well after getting into the cab -- and, by doing so without the driver's explicit agreement to a lower price, implicitly agreeing to pay the $100 price the driver had demanded.

Travellers, in their inevitable ignorance relative to locals, make lots of mistakes, but that doesn't entitle them to demand their money back after the fact. That's even more true where, as here, a relatively poor local person has, in effect, extended credit to a much wealthier traveller by not demanding payment in advance.

The way to minimize problems is to ask questions in advance, and/or to reciprocate the trust by assuming that local people know what they are doing, and are trying to help.

After the fact, Colin complains that it was unsafe for the driver to start the journey with a "compact spare tire" on one wheel. But the "doughnut" spare would have been plainly visible had Colin given the cab even the most cursory visual inspection. That should be standard practice before getting in almost any vehicle, certainly for a journey as long as two hours. Before buying a bus or train ticket, especially when there's a choice of companies or classes, I always try to go down to the station or bus yard to inspect the vehicles.

Colin might also have suspected that if the driver was reluctant to go faster, even for more money, maybe he had a reason. The last couple of times I've had to drive on compact spare tires, they have been rated for a maximum speed of only 45-50 miles per hour.

Whether a flat tire is normal wear and tear which should be included in the regular fare or rental price, or damage for which the passenger or renter should pay extra, is perhaps arguable (although I don't think so). I'm currently contesting an attempt to bill me over US$200 for "damage" to a car I rented from the Fox Rental Car franchise at LAX airport in Los Angeles that had a flat tire in the garage of my hotel, forcing me to drive back to the airport to return it at 45 mph on city streets on the compact spare, rather than on the freeway. For all I know, that tire may have had a slow leak when I picked it up. But in Colin's case, any court in the USA would have found that insisting the driver go faster than he wanted to was "contributory negligence". He should have paid more if he caused the driver to ruin his spare tire, not less.

It's not clear that Chip and Kim's taxi driver is really much more willing to accept their inability to pay the full amount on the meter. But since he doesn't find out until they are outside the city of Dubai in the desert, it's not as easy to walk over to the police station to make a complaint as it was for Colin and Christie's driver at Kilimanjaro Airport. Despite Chip's protestations of good intentions, he actually placed himself at even greater risk of arrest: Colin had the money to pay the full amount he had agreed to (as he eventually did), which Chip didn't.

Chip had a choice: he could have, but didn't, warn the cabbie in advance, "I have only US$X. Will that be OK, or can we work something out?" Nor did he offer to give up something of readily realized value -- his watch, for example -- in lieu of cash to pay the fare. In the end, he put the race ahead of his ethical and financial obligations -- and, as travellers so often do, moved on while someone else was left behind with the adverse consequences of their lack of consideration.

Earlier this season in the race, when self-described "bowling moms" Karen and Linda lost all their money (under a new rule for the race this season) for finishing last in a non-elimination leg in Egypt, they decided that it would be unfair to beg from people poorer than they are. So they waited for a tour bus to arrive at the pyramids, and begged what they needed to get on with the race from other (relatively wealthy) foreign tourists. A commendable choice: too many First World travellers who run short of cash in the Third or Fourth World forget that theirs is only a temporary cash-flow problem, and very different from the situation of local people trapped in permanent poverty.

Next week we'll see how Kami and Karli, who had to turn in all their cash as the penalty for finishing last this week, cope with a similar set of choices. (Note to future racers: bring or, if you accumulate some cash or are in danger of finishing last in a likely non-elimination leg, buy some small readily saleable items -- an extra wristwatch, for example -- that you can use in lieu of cash if your money is forfeited.)

Thus far, the twins' (lack of) attire in Egypt, Tanzania, and the UAE has displayed an astonishing lack or either awareness or concern for local mores. The teaser for the next episode suggests that we'll get a case study of whether sex appeal will trump the immorality (by local standards) of so much young female flesh on display in motivating people to help them. I suspect that it will work better in Dubai than in Kolkata, but we'll have to wait and see.

The Amazing Race 5, Episode 7

Luxor (Egypt) - Cairo (Egypt) - Nairobi (Kenya) - Kilimanjaro Airport (Tanzania) - Mtowambu (Tanzania) - Kibaoni (Tanzania) - Lake Manyara (Tanzania)

A series of mistakes -- both by the television producers and the racers -- provides an object lesson for real-life travellers in, "How not to get to Kilimanjaro Airport" and onward to the villages in Tanzania that are the scene of this week's episode of The Amazing Race.

Luxor (Egypt) doesn't have an international airport, so the teams have no choice but to start their journey south to Kilimanjaro Airport by going north to Cairo. From there, however, the producers require them to fly to Nairobi (Kenya) for the sole purpose of getting a flight on to Tanzania.

It's a typical tourist mistake to fly to country X for the sole purpose of arranging, once in X, to get a flight from there to country Y. But the television producers, or their travel consultant (actually, I've seen no evidence yet that a travel consultant is involved in planning the show, although one should be), should have known better.

Aside from the hassle of having to clear customs and immigration (and perhaps procure visas or satisfy onward ticket requirements for entry) in country X, there's the possibility, if you don't arrange them in advance, that flights from X to Y will be more expensive or less frequent than they were when the guidebook you are relying on was researched, or that seats won't be available for days or weeks. That's the situation, to give just one of many possible examples, faced every year by tourists who show up in Bangkok, hoping to find cheap tickets onward to Nepal available locally at short notice, and end up paying extra to fly business class or spending the Himalayan trekking season standing by for seats on flights that were sold out weeks or months in advance.

In the race, the producers charter flights from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro, probably because they realized that the racers could otherwise have been stuck in Nairobi for several days, in spite of being willing to pay full fare.

It's generally easier (although not always, and neither necessarily more nor less expensive) to get seats locally, at the last minute, on domestic flights than international ones. In this case, there is more likely to be space available at the last minute on the domestic flights from Dar es Salam to Kilimanjaro than on the international ones from Nairobi. But the directions to the racers don't give them that option.

The only choice given the racers is what route to take from Cairo to Nairobi. If you can afford to be patient (patience is one of the keys to more affordable travel), there are inexpensive nonstop flights between Cairo and Nairobi -- but not every day. If your schedule requires you to travel on another day (if possible, reserve your flights before you commit to the dates of a safari, tour, or the like), it's both more expensive and less convenient, involving connections like those the racers make in the United Arab Emirates.

Several of the teams of racers make matters worse for themselves by assuming. in typical tourist fashion, that a First World airline will have the best service even between points in the Third World. It should be no surprise that while European airlines have many flights to and from Africa, they have almost none within Africa: to get from Cairo to Nairobi on Swissair, you have to go back through Zurich (just as to get from anywhere in Latin America to anywhere else in Latin America on any USA-based airline you have to go back through Miami or some other hub in the USA, with rare exceptions such as the United and American flights with local traffic rights between Buenos Aires and Montevideo).

Whether through knowledge or desperation, all the racers who bought Swissair tickets did manage to get them "endorsed" for use on faster, more direct connections on Gulf Air. I guess it didn't make for exciting television, so we didn't see how they went about it, but it's a very important lesson about what is possible in the race, and permitted by the rules.

In the past, all the racers have assumed that because they had to use the first tickets they bought, that meant they had to take the first airline on which they bought tickets. That's a reasonable assumption: all discounted tickets are nonendorseable. Airlines themselves can, and do, routinely endorse "nonendorseable" tickets in cases such as of suspension of service on a route, but that's at the airline's discretion, not the passenger's.

Most travellers have never seen an endorseable ticket unless they have had to travel at the last minute, regardless of price, on full-fare tickets on business or in an emergency. But full-fare tickets are, by default, freely endorseable to any IATA member airline that accepts the so-called "industry fares" jointly fixed (under a Congressionally-authorized exemption from antitrust laws in the USA) by IATA "traffic conferences".

It's been only a matter of time before some racer figured out that, if they buy full-fare tickets, they can change airlines without needing to buy new tickets. I expect that, in seasons filmed after this week's broadcast (unless the rules are changed), teams will routinely attempt to get their tickets endorsed to other airlines when they discover that there are flights available on other airlines arriving sooner than those for which they have bought tickets.

Kilimanjaro International Airport is a small airport serving mainly tourists, not a city or major population center, and not surprisingly it wasn't the racers' final destination. Haste made for more waste for some of them when, as soon as they got to the airport, they had to take a bus to the village of Mtowambu.

Taxis (especially long-distance taxis between, rather than within, cities or towns) in much of the world including large parts of Africa, are typically shared rather than hired for the exclusive use of a single passenger or party. The standard fare is for one seat, and the taxi leaves only once it is full. To win your business from competitors, drivers and touts inevitably say that the bus or taxi will be leaving "right away", no matter how long it is actually likely to take to collect a full complement of passengers. And locals may not consider a vehicle "full" until it has taken on several times the number of people and/or quantity of cargo that you might expect. If you want the whole taxi to yourself, or want to leave sooner, you have to pay the fare for as many places as will be left empty.

The same holds true if you want to charter a bus. The teams that wait until their buses are full pay US$3-5 per person for the ride. But when Brandon demands that his driver leave right away, he is told that it will cost US$200, which he appears to haggle down to US$100. He seems to think he is being gouged, but that isn't necessarily the case: If twenty more people, each paying $5, could fit in or on the bus, then the operator is foregoing $100 in potential revenue, and $100 extra is a fair price to pay for them to leave without waiting for their bus to fill up. It remains to be seen whether, in the race, it will prove to have been a worthwhile expense for the amount of time it saved.

See you in September

I'll be on vacation until 1 September 2004, so don't expect to hear from me until then (except for whatever I may finish in the airport tonight). I'll be out of cell phone coverage and a toll call from the Internet, so I won't be checking messages often. In an emergency, you may be able to reach me at +1-518-543-6847 (Silver Bay, NY).

Congress sets hearings on transportation security

The Committees on Transportation of the USA Senate and House of Representatives have scheduled hearings Monday, August 16th in the Senate and August 25th in the House to condsider the recommnedations of the 9/11 Commission on aviation and transportation security . I expect that the public face of The Program Formerly Known As CAPPS-II will also be unveiled by Department of Homeland Security witnesses at these hearings, beginning Monday.

AIRIMP adds support for additional passenger data

I've mentioned previously that airlines and computerized reservation systems (CRS's) don't have fields in their databases of passenger name records (PNR's) to accommodate the additional advance passenger information (API) data increasingly being requested by the USA and other governments for CAPPS-II and other "travel inteeligence gathering' programs, such as a separate address, telephone number, and other identifying details for each passenger in a multi-passenger PNR.

I've also mentioned that, because PNR data typically is collected by travel agencies using different CRS's, and transmitted to the airlines through a series of CRS and other interfaces, the first step towards including API data in PNR's would be the adoption by the airline industry associations ATA (in the USA) and IATA (worldwide) of amendments to the ATA/IATA Reservations Interline Messaging Procedures -- Passenger (AIRIMP).

That process has now begun: the 28th edition of the AIRIMP, effective 1 June 2004 - 31 May 2005, includes as its largest change from prior editions an entirely new section (Section 3.14, pp. 138-151) specifying formats for "interline" (between airlines or CRS's, or including with travel agents using different CRS's form the airline's host system) transmission of per-passenger API data.

This does not mean that any airline or CRS is yet able to store, transmit, or receive this information. Most don't, and wouldn't be able to handle it. By greatly increasing the amount of data in reservation messages, inclusion of the optional data would cause many systems to truncate messages and lose reservations. The new AIRIMP message formats recognize this by forbidding the inclusion of any of this information in general messages to all airlines participating in the itinerary (through the use of the messaging wild card, airline pseudo-code "YY"), or in any case except where the sending and receiving systems have a bilateral agreement in place to allow it. Even in those cases, all of the API fields for which formats are provided are optional.

The new AIRIMP formats apply only to international flights, although there is no technical reason why they couldn't be extended to domestic flights (as they probbaly will be).

The main interest of the airlines in adding these formats to the AIRIMP (despite the airlines' opposition to being conscripted into collecting API data not needed for their business purposes) would be that, once airline host systems and CRS's have been modified to support the new formats, airlines will be able to shift the labor burden of API data collection and data entry from their own staff to the travel agencies who already enter most reservations, and who airlines don't have to pay for their time.

By adopting their own standards, before being forced to do so by governments, airlines are also trying to minimize the amount of data they have to collect, and the changes to their messagiung systems required to accommodate the lengthier reservation messages. In particular, the "address" field of the new AIRIMP message format is limited to 35 characters. Considering that this needs to include a company name, house or building name (much more common in some other countries, such as the UK, than in the USA), steeet number, street name, and floor, room, or mailstop, this means that most addresses will be so severely truncated (for which no standard methodology is provided) as to make address matching difficult or impossible.

In effect, the AIRIMP messaging standards have now defined the fields that CRS's will now start adding to their databases and interfaces, as that is possible in the course of their other work.

Ridge: "Aggressive schedule" for new CAPPS-II

In an interview yesterday, USA Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge reportedly said that The Program No Longer Known As CAPPS-II will be rolled out today in a (secret, of course) meeting with other "security" (but not civil liberties) agencies:

Ridge spoke about screening Tuesday at a meeting with USA Today editors and reporters.... Top officials from agencies overseeing national security are expected to review details of the new computer screening system at a meeting today. "We've got an aggressive timeline," Ridge said.

Ridge, the DHS, and the TSA face a dilemma on CAPPS-II:

• If they continue to call the program CAPPS-II , it cannot be deployed without GAO certification that it has met the criteria specified in oversight legislation enacted last year, which it hasn't met yet and isn't likely ever to meet. Only by renaming the program, getting Congress to change the law, or defying Congress can the DHS deploy any system called "CAPPS-II" without meeting those standards.
  
  
• The DHS agreement with the European Union (currently being challenged by the European Parliament in the European Court of Justice) permits it to use data collected in the EU only for testing of "CAPPS-II". Use of this data for any program by another name is not authorized by the "agreement", and if the DHS changes the name of the program they will have to start negotiations with the EU all over again, and obtain approval of a new agreement before they legally can even test the new (?) system.

The bottom line is that that no program mandating collection, provision, or government access to additional passenger information -- whether or not it is labeled CAPPS-II -- currently can be deployed without violating either Federal law or DHS commitments to the European Union.

The question, of course, is whether the DHS will bother to seek Congressional apporval, or negotiate new international agreements, to authorize its (not so new) scheme, or whether it will continue to do whatever it wants, ignoring the law.

"This 'Privocrat' Believes In the Freedom to Travel"

Today the Wall Street Journal published my letter in reply to last week's ad hominem attack on their op-ed page:

This 'Privocrat' Believes in the Freedom to Travel

In regard to Heather Mac Donald's Aug. 5 editorial-page commentary "Hijacked by the 'Privocrats'": Whatever Ms. Mac Donald means by calling me a "privocrat," it seems peculiar that a professed believer in market-oriented policies is championing CAPPS-II (or whatever new name the program will be given), which would impose a billion-dollar unfunded government mandate on the travel industry for changes to its information technology infrastructure. And it's unfortunate that she accepts the government's claims about CAPPS-II so uncritically.

"Passengers already give their name, address and phone number to make a flight reservation," she writes. Actually, group reservations are routinely made with no names at all. Most reservations contain only a travel agency, not passenger, address or phone number -- as government contractors found out in 2002 when they started testing CAPPS-II with real reservations, and as airline industry representatives have pointed out in testimony to Congress.

She says that "neither the government nor the airlines would have kept any of the information beyond the safe completion of a flight." In fact, because reservations contain financial records, current tax and accounting regulations require airlines to retain them for years.

Lastly, she claims the government "would have had no access to the commercial records used to check a passenger's alleged identity." But under the USA-PATRIOT Act, the government can get access to travel reservations and other commercial records at any time. And the additional identifying information in reservations will enable them to be indexed into lifetime "travel histories" freely shareable with foreign governments (doesn't that make you feel safer?) or anyone to whom travel companies choose to sell them.

Ms. Mac Donald confesses she is mystified as to why "the government should pay heed to people who so disregard the public good." Personally, I consider freedom -- including the freedom to travel, recognized in the First Amendment as the "right of the people... peaceably to assemble" -- to be part of the public good.

Oddly, although my letter was published almost uncut, one error (corrected in the version above) was added. I had said that "Most reservations contain only a travel agency, not passenger, address or phone number." That was changed, without my being consulted, to, "Most reservations contain only a travel agency, not passenger name , address or phone number." [my emphasis] I'm not sure what to make of the change, other than that the Journal's editors, like most travellers outside the travel industry, assume they know more about the content of airline reservations than they actually do.

The Amazing Race 5, Episode 6

Giza (Egypt) - Cairo (Egypt) - Luxor (Egypt)

The most interesting lesson for world travellers in this week's episode of The Amazing Race may have been in the decision the racers weren't allowed to make for themselves: whether to travel by air, land, or water from the Great Pyramid at Giza to the temple of Karnak near Luxor, Egypt.

Most people in the USA unfamiliar with travel in other countries would assume wrongly, as did the racers, that:

1. Flights on such a domestic route as Cairo-Luxor would be more frequent than they actually are, on more airlines. (There are 3-5 scheduled flights per day, on only one airline, the national carrier, Egypt Air. In Egypt as in the USA, foreign airlines are forbidding from flying domestic routes.)
   
   
2. If there are several flights, they will be spaced throughout the day. (There are flights early in the morning, in late afternoon, or late in the evening, with none in the middle of the day, a typical schedule to suit the preferences of passengers who want a full day in one place or the other. Even where several airlines fly the same route, they often do so at very similar times.)
   
   
3. For a 650 km (400 mile) journey, flying will be dramatically faster than ground transport.

On this last point the racers were right, but not by much -- and, although the race teams don't have to pay for airline tickets or charters out of the cash they are given (the sound technician accompanying each team along with the camera operator carries a credit card used for scheduled flights at any coach fare, and in this case the producers chartered a plane), at considerable additional expense to save only a few hours.

Starting shortly after the Great Pyramid opened to visitors at 6 a.m., the first of the racers, after making their way from Giza across the Nile, through Cairo, and to the airport on the other side of the city, missed the last of the morning flights to Luxor departing at 7:30 a.m.

They and several other teams could easily have made the express train which, after leaving Cairo at 7:30 a.m., crosses the river and stops in Giza (much closer to the pyramids) at 7:50 a.m. According to Table 2655 of the Thomas Cook Overseas Timetable (one of the more important references for the racers to try to pick up if they get a chance along the way, although it's hard enough to find that real around-the-world travellers should consider bring a copy with them, or at least, as I always do, the pages for the countries they plan to visit), that train is scheduled to arrive in Luxor at 5 p.m.

And the train is a good deal more likely to arrive on time than a flight, as the racers find out: having missed the scheduled morning flights, and there being none until late afternoon, the racers all take a flight chartered for them in advance and scheduled to leave at 11:30 a.m. It actually leaves at 1:45 p.m., not atypically, and arrives at Luxor airport at 2:30 p.m.

As I say in The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World :

Outside the First World, with certain exceptions, flying anywhere can be expected to be an all-day project no matter how short the flight: you go to the airport first thing in the morning and hope that by the end of the day you have gotten to your destination. In many countries, any flight that operates at any time on the scheduled day is considered on time.

The charter flight pre-arranged and standing by for the racers the got them 650 km (400 miles) only two and a half hours faster than the train. For a shorter distance, say 500 km (300 miles), it would have been a wash. Any shorter and the train would have been quicker than a plane. That's actually a reasonable rule of thumb in most of the world: for less than 500 km (300 miles), especially where there's an adequately comfortable train, flying will only cost you more money, not save you much if any time. And wouldn't you rather spend the same amount of time talking to people and looking out the windows of a train than in an airport waiting room?

A car would have been less comfortable and dramatically less safe (even without racing) than the train, but could have been faster. It's even conceivable that with a sufficiently crazed (or desperate for an extra tip) driver, they could have made it as quickly by chartered taxi as by chartered plane! The racers are stuck with the decisions made in advance by the producers of the television show, but let this be a lesson for your next real trip.

9/11 Commission recommends "Targeting travel"

Back in April, the USA Department of Homeland Security announced plans for a Data Integrity, Privacy, and Interoperability Advisory Committee . I applied, naturally, and this month got a letter from the DHS Privacy Office saying that, "We anticipate that recommendations for consideration will be submitted to the Office of the Secretary [of Homeland Security] in August 2004. Appointments are expected soon thereafter."

It will be interesting to see whether this committee is appointed in time to play a meaningful role in reviewing possible responses to the report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States , especially its recommendations .

In Section 12.4 of the report, "Protect Against and Prepare for Terrorist Attacks", the first recommendation of the commission is for "targeting travel" through expansion of "travel intelligence collection and analysis."

The report focuses on mandatory identification and tracking of travelers, and on the denial of transportation: "What information is an individual required to present and in what form? [is] a fundamental problem." [emphasis in original]

Under current practices, air carriers enforce government orders to stop certain known and suspected terrorists from boarding commercial flights and to apply secondary screening procedures to others.The no-fly and "automatic selectee" lists include only those individuals who the U.S. government believes pose a direct threat of attacking aviation....

Unfortunately, the "beliefs" by the government may be entirely unfounded: the only way to determine whether individuals proposed to be subjected to travel sanctions actually "pose a direct threat of attacking aviation" is to present the evidence, if any, supporting that allegation to a neutral judge, in an adversary proceeding in which the object of the proposed injunction can present evidence and arguments to the contrary.

That's what happens every day when allegations are made, typically in stalking and domestic abuse cases, that particular people are so demonstrably likely to injure others as to warrant their being forbidden by the government from travelling on particular public rights of way (e.g. the street adjoining a provably likely victim's house) or other public places.

That system isn't perfect -- people subject to these sorts of injunctions ("restraining orders") nonetheless kill far more people than air terrorists. But it's bizarre that the 9/111 Commission and other advocates of "no-fly lists" fail even to mention, much less make any attempt to use, the existing legal mechanisms for accomplishing their professed goals:

Recommendation: Improved use of "no-fly" and "automatic
selectee" lists should not be delayed while the argument about a successor to CAPPS continues. This screening function should ... utilize the larger set of watchlists maintained by the federal government. Air carriers should be required to supply the information needed to test and implement this new system.

There are numerous contradictions in the 9/11 Commission's limited recommendations on privacy and civil liberties:

Recommendation: The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executive's use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties. If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use.

With respect to the various proposals formerly included in CAPPS-II, including the "no-fly lists" and compulsory identifcation of travellers, that burden of proof has not been met, as auditors from the GAO have found.

While the commission's recommendation is for oversight and "supervision of the executive", the only suggestion for implementation in its report is an empty one for "oversight" by the exeutive of itself, and subject to its authority: "a board within the executive" -- effectively nothing more than a plea for executive self-restraint, not supervision. What's needed -- and, in our Constitutional system, required -- is independent oversight by the judiciary.

The report also fails to consider -- either in its recommendations or elsewhere -- such questions as the Constitutionality (under the First Amendment right of the people to assemble) of compelling travellers, without a search warrant or particularized suspicion of a crime, to carry and display credentials or evidence of identity; ordering common carriers (legally obligated to transport all qualified passengers paying the fare specified in their tariff) to refuse to transport passengers on "no-fly lists"; or placing people on those lists (and thus subjecting them to restrictions on the activities such as assembly specifically protected by the First Amendment) without due process, an adversary hearing, and a court order.

Those questions should be at the top of the agenda of the DHS Privacy Advisory Committee -- if it is appointed in time to consider them before action is taken without its input, and if the DHS (to which it will be, after all, only an advisory body), actually seeks its opinion on these issues critical to our freedom.

ACLU targets airlines' role in the "Surveillance-Industrial Complex"

A new No Spy Pledge campaign announced today by the ACLU targets airlines and other travel companies as key retail businesses involved in the emerging "Surveillance-Industrial Complex" described in an ACLU report released in conjunction with the launch of the campaign.

I highly recommend the report as an overview of the relationship between commercial data and government surveillance. It cites some of my work on travel data, but puts it in larger context.

The campaign seeks to get the targetted companies to take the "No Spy Pledge":

I understand that companies like yours are sometimes confronted with subpoenas, national security letters, or other legally binding intruments that require you to share information with the government. But you still have a lot of lattitude in deciding whether you will become an extension of the government's surveillance machinery.

And so, I am asking whether you will pledge to me that:

1. You will not turn individually identifiable data on your customers over to the government for security purposes unless legally required to do so.
   
   
2. You will use every legal means to fight government demands for data that are not authorized by current law, or which violate your Constitutional rights or those of your customers.
   
   
3. If the government serves you with a legally binding request to turn over customer information, you will notify customers that our information has been turned over (unless you are subject to a gag order prohibiting you from doing so under the Patriot Act or other legislation). In addition, companies called data aggregators are increasingly becoming a means by which the government accesses information on individuals. I would also like to ask whether you provide information about your customers to data aggregators or any other companies that are in the business of consolidating customer information. If so, which ones?

Unfortunately, the computerized reservation systems (CRS's) -- the principal travel data aggregators, travel privacy invaders, and travel surveillance partners of the government -- don't deal directly with consumers, in most cases, and thus are immune to this sort of consumer campaign.

It will be interesting to see how the targetted airlines respond to the question about third-party data aggregators, but the role of CRS's is likely to be glossed over, or to get lost in finger-pointing between airlines and CRS's as to which of them is the real "owner" of personal data in reservations (which ought to belong to the travellers to whom it pertains).

Without having any foreknowledge of the new ACLU campaign, I've recently asked almost exactly the same questions of some of the CRS's (the others wouldn't respond at all), but none were willing to agree to change their current policies reserving the right to provide information to the government whenever they are asked (not ordered) to do so, without notice to the people whose data is being handed over.

Of necessity, most airlines and almost all travel agencies rely on the CRS's to host their databases. As a result, even the best privacy policy from a retail travel company is effectively meaningless until the CRS's clean up their act -- which they've made clear they aren't going to do unless they are forced to by enactment of a new Federal travel privacy law in the USA, specifically written to encompass the potential abuse of CRS data, or by enforcement action on complaints by citizens and residents of other countries (especially the European Union) where those CRS's operate and where local privacy laws are being broken by the CRS's current policies and practices.

"Crossing The Lines: Kashmir, Pakistan, India"

On Satrurday evening I attended the Bay Area premiere and a discussion with the filmmaker, other activists, and Kashmiri, Pakistani, and Indian community members of an impressive new documentary film by Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mann, Crossing The Lines: Kashmir, Pakistan, India.

It's remarkable enough that even progressive South Asians would seek to present a balanced view of the Kashmir controversy -- balanced not in the sense of "objectivity", but in allowing Kashmiris (from different regions and communities), Indians, and Pakistanis all to speak for themselves. So far as Hoodbhoy knows, it's the first time anyone has even tried. It's more amazing that Hoodbhoy, Mann, and their collaborators have succeeded far beyond what anyone could have hoped for.

In addition to their role in the South Asian anti-nuclear movement as physicists and writers, both Hoodbhoy and Mann have been leaders in Indo-Pak "citizen diplomacy" on Kashmir, nuclear weapons, and the intrusion of religious fundamentalism into government (a serious and in some respects similar problem both with Islamists in Pakistan and with Hindu fundamentalists -- the organizational descendants of Gandhi's assassins -- in India).

Holders of passports from the USA or other foreign countries can cross the Indo-Pak border with surprising ease, although in only a very few places. To go from Gilgit to Srinagar, I had to go by way of Rwalpindi, Lahore, and Amritsar or Delhi. But it was possible, and I went back and forth several times. But the border is almost completely closed to Indians, Pakistanis, and Kashmiris. In the discussion following the film, Hoodbhoy's most concrete suggestion was that it be made eaisier for people travel across the Indo-Pak border and the "Line Of Control" in Kashmir.

The main intended audience for the film appears to be in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, but I think that most of "Crossing The Lines", with the exception of a few acronyms and allusions, will be accessible to general audiences in the USA.

"Crossing The Lines" was produced for the Eqbal Ahmad Foundation with grants from, among others, the Ploughshares Fund. It's been shown in Pakistan (the filmmakers are trying to get it shown in India) and on a few university campuses in North America, but it deserves much wider circulation. If you have any interest in the issue, it's worth the US$35 to buy a copy on DVD.

CAPPS-II defenders won't give up

I'm denounced on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal today (and in a slightly different version on their Web site) as a "leading advocate" for travellers' civil liberties.

I'll take the compliment. The late Dave Dellinger (who led massive anti-war demonstrations outside the White House while President Nixon claimed to be obliviously watching football on television) taught me that you can't expect the government to admit defeat, and that you know you are having an effect when the government, and its apologists, switch from ignoring you to criticizing you.

Today Heather Mac Donald writes in the Journal:

Edward Hasbrouck has decried both a voluntary [not really - EH] registered traveler option [true - EH], in which passengers agree to a background check in order to circumvent some security measures, and physical screening at the gate [false - EH]. Bottom line: Any security precautions prior to flight constitute a civil liberties violation [false - EH].

Heather Mac Donald has been a vociferous advocate of racial and ethnic profiling by police and other government agencies as well as of Total Terrorism Information Awareness and CAPPS-II. Her Op-Ed today is largely a rehash (although the dig at me is new) of a 1 April 2004 column on, inter alia , CAPPS-II, that was so extreme that Declan McCullagh, in describing it to his Politech mailing list, found it necessary to advise his readers, "This is not an April Fool's joke (I'm serious)."

Ms. Mac Donald apparently includes me among those she dubs "Privocrats". I'm not sure if that means she thinks I'm a government bureaucrat -- an odd accusation to make against an anarchist whose only government employment was more than 25 years ago as a summer intern for the Massachusetts Department of Education, writing a handbook for public high school students on their legal rights -- or if she's trying to tar me by association with the Democratic Party, or vice versa. (For what it's worth, it's a matter of public record that I'm currently registered as a member of the Peace and Freedom Party, having signed a petition a while ago to help them keep their California ballot status, and not having bothered to go down to City Hall to change my affiliation back to "independent".) And whatever she means, it seems peculiar for someone who works for an organization that professes a belief in market-oriented policies to be devoting her work to advocacy of a billion dollar unfunded government mandate for changes by travel companies to their information technology infrastructure.

For the most part, Ms. Mac Donald's piece today simply repeats the same lies the TSA itself has been telling about CAPPS-II. But it's also clear that she has no idea what she is talking about, and has made no attempt to familiarize herself with the work of people like me who she singles out for criticism: I rebutted these lies in detail in my comments on the CAPPS-II Privacy Act notices (both in writing and in person in a meeting last year with DHS Chief Privacy Officer Nuala O'Connor Kelly -- who has continued to propagate the same lies anyway) and in a long succession of articles in this blog.

"Contrary to the rights lobby," Ms. Mac Donald says, "Capps II was not:"

• "A privacy intrusion. Passengers already give their name, address and phone number to make a flight reservation."
  Actually, group reservations are routinely made with no names at all. Most reservations contain only a travel agency, not passenger, address or phone number -- as the TSA found out as soon as it started testing CAPPS-II with real reservations, and as airline industry representatives have pointed out in testimony to Congress. Until changes made in June of 2004 to the airlines' interline messaging protocol (the subject of one of several articles in progress that I hope to post before I leave on vacation next week) there was no way for airlines, travel agencies, or reservation systems to communicate individual passenger address information to each other, even if their own PNR databases supported it, which most still don't and none yet require.
  
  
• "A surveillance system. Neither the government nor the airlines would have kept any of the information beyond the safe completion of a flight."
  This is perhaps both the most obviously false, and the most misleading, of the DHS/TSA lies that Ms. Mac Donald parrots. Nothing in any public version of the CAPPS-II proposals or any existing or proposed law or regulation in the USA would place any restriction whatsoever on the ability of airlines, CRS's, travel agencies, or any other travel companies to retain reservation data for as long as they like. Even the additional data people making reservations would be required to provide -- by government order -- would still be considered the exclusive property of private companies, to do with as they chose. It's unclear if the government has the authority under any existing law to order such records destroyed after flights are completed -- even if it wanted to, which it doesn't. On the contrary, because reservations contain financial records, current tax and public accounting regulations require airlines and other travel companies to retain them for years.
  
  
• "The government would have had no access to the commercial records used to check a passenger's alleged identity."
  Actually, under the USA-PATRIOT Act (with whose provisions Ms. Mac Donald ought to be familiar, since she has written extensively in their defense), the government can get access to travel reservations and other commercial records, secretly and without the need to obtain a warrant, at any time.
  
  
• "A data mining program. This misunderstood technology seeks to use computers to spot suspicious patterns or anomalies in large data bases, sometimes for predictive analysis. Capps II had nothing to do with data mining."
  Actually, the whole reason the government puts such stress on requiring additional evidence of identity from travellers, and identifying information in reservations (if birth date is unimportant, why does the DHS care about it so much?) is to ensure the ability to mine reservation databases for patterns that might (although there is no evidence of this from the CAPPS-II tests to date) reliably identify would-be terrorists -- or for any other surveillance purpose.

Ms. Mac Donald's screed concludes, "It is mystifying why the government should pay heed to people who so disregard the public good." Personally, I consider freedom, including the fredom to travel recognized in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the USA as, "The right of the people... peacably to assemble", to be part of the public good.

The Amazing Race 5, Episode 5

Pushkin (Russia) - St. Petersburg (Russia) - Cairo (Egypt) - Giza (Egypt)

I've criticized the travelling couples on The Amazing Race repeatedly for their lack of preparation, especially in not studying how to find the best flights. The importance of flight choices was on display again this week, with some teams getting from St. Petersburg to Cairo -- not that far apart, on a global scale -- 12 hours faster than others, and only two of the seven remaining teams finding any of the possible sets of connections that involved more than two flights, or flights on more than one airline.

If you make it through the current application process (no, Canadians are still not being allowed to apply, even though they travel much more and the race is much more popular on TV in Canada than in the USA), and get picked to race around the world for a one-in-eleven chance at half a million dollars, you should immediately apprentice yourself as a part-time intern in a local travel agency specializing in international flights, start physical training for extensive daily walking with a full pack, and plan as extensive an international practice trip with your partner as you can get time for before the race. You can go around the world from the USA and back in 2 weeks, with stops in Europe, India, and Southeast Asia, for US$2500 per person, all inclusive. I wouldn't recommend such a pace for fun, but it would be excellent race training, as would spending two weeks trying to get around in a Third World country where you don't know the language. Maybe let a friend pick the destination and arrange your tickets, so that, like the racers, you are completely unprepared.

There's a limit, though, to how much you can prepare, and to what references you can bring. For the racers, that limit is the race rule forbidding them from bringing any references such as maps or guidebooks with them, even for the countries for which they have visas. For real travellers, the limit is the volume and weight -- too much to carry for the entire trip -- of all the guidebooks they are likely to want for a trip around the world.

So like travellers who aren't on TV, the racers end up buying their maps and guidebooks along the way. At airports, mostly: teams aren't allowed to leave the "pit stops" between legs of the race; only a few books are typically available for sale at the hotel bookstores at the pit stops; and most of the time the producers favor villas, dude ranches, castles, and other smaller, more distinctive, and isolated hotels that are even less likely to have on-site bookstores, newsstands, or Internet cafés than large, "What continent are we on?", downtown business hotels.

For the majority of teams that spent 12 hours in Frankfurt airport (and could, if they so chose, have left the airport in search of bookstores in the city) in this leg of the race, it was likely to be their single best research and map and book buying opportunity of the entire race. Choosing which books and maps to buy, or how much money to spend on them (at US$23 for the Lonely Planet Egypt or US$24 for the Footprint Egypt guidebook, a single book or a couple of maps could cost a significant fraction of the US$123 the teams were each given for this leg) may not make good television drama, and weren't shown at all, but these were actually key decisions in this episode.

So what's the best reference and book buying strategy? For guidebooks, the needs of the racers are very different than those of normal travellers: almost none of the tasks for the racers have required any real understanding of, or interaction with local cultures, and there wouldn't be time to acquire that sort of knowledge at a racing pace anyway. So the best guidebooks for the racers would be broad but shallow, covering large geographical areas in a single small book, filled with logistical details, and wasting no space on interpretation or reasons to visit, just how to get there and get around.

Different books would, of course, be best for real travellers with a higher priority on understanding what they see, interacting with local people, and being part of what's happening, rather than just passing through as quickly as possible. I have reviews of the major guidebook series for independent travellers, as well as almost a hundred pages of other print and Internet resources on specific topics and for each region of the world (some of the references I find most useful for travel preparation, both in print and on the Internet, aren't intended or marketed primarily for travellers) in The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World. And if you're not forbidden to bring them with you, you can find many times more maps and guidebooks through specialty stores like Maplink in the USA, ITMB in Canada, and Stanfords in the UK than you would in any airport bookshop or hotel newsstand.

Unlike the racers, who had to solve a map puzzle this week as the clue to one of their "route markers", real travellers aren't given maps, and get to choose our own destinations. Whether in a reality-TV race or reality, though, my recommendation is to make bringing maps with you a higher priority for your money, and the space in your luggage, than guidebooks.

Special-interest guidebooks and references aren't always available locally, but you can always buy or trade for second-hand copies of the more common general-purpose guidebooks from travellers about to leave, or coming from where you are going.

Finding maps locally is hit or miss, with little rhyme or reason to how useful or easy to find they will be. Some sort of map is almost always available locally, but it might be a "tourist map" (often the worst sort, designed for people who don't need a map at all because they are on a guided tour, with pictures of tourist attractions rather than any useful detail) or a map in a language or even an alphabet you don't understand.

When I was in China, for example, I found good cheap, detailed bus and transit maps readily available -- in Chinese only. Since I can't read Chinese, they would have been useless to me without the English-language maps I'd brought with me. First I would find where I was, and where I wanted to go, on the English map. Then I would locate the corresponding points on the Chinese map. From that, I could either figure out which numbered transit line would get me where I wanted to go, or point to my destination on the Chinese map to ask a passer-by to point me in the right direction or show me where the right bus stopped.

I recommend bringing with you whatever maps you think are essential, particularly overview maps of countries and regions and any specialized maps you'll need for trekking or the like. I bring the best maps I can find, regardless of cost, and I've never regretted it. More than once I've had local people covet maps I brought that turned out to be better than anything locals had seen, and in China I wasn't allowed to mail home my beautiful big bilingual map of the entire country (published as a joint venture with the Chinese government, but purchased from China Books in the USA) because the customs inspector at the post office assumed that any map that good must be a state secret!

Enough for now. It's time for me to get some sleep (sleep deprivation is the bane of the overnight columnist as much as it is of the 'round-the-world racer!) so I can go back to work in the morning helping other people plan their trips. But if you want more tips to plan your own amazing non-race around the world, and you're in the San Francisco area, I'll be giving a special talk this Thursday evening (5 August 2004) at the Airtreks.com office, and everyone who puts down a deposit toward an air trek will get a free, autographed copy of the new 3rd edition of The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World, with 600+ pages of additional advice. See my events calendar and the events of this blog for details of other coming events, including a newly-scheduled panel discussion on around-the-world travel at National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, DC, 22 September 2004.

Practical Nomad night at Airtreks.com in San Francisco

In addition to my books, articles, and of course this blog, I'm the staff "Travel Guru" at Airtreks.com in San Francisco.

Airtreks.com is much more than a Web site. If you've worked with us, you know that we have a well-traveled staff of expert consultants to advise each of our clients.

This Thursday, 5 August 2004, Airtreks.com hosts a special free "Practical Nomad night" at our downtown San Francisco office for anyone with questions about "How To Travel Around The World".

Here's the deal:

• You get to hear my presentation on "How To Travel Around the World" -- how to get the time and money, how it can be easier and more affordable than you think, how to make your dream trip happen, and lots of other tips -- and get your individual questions answered.
  
• You get to meet our travel consultants in person, and establish a relationship with the right person to help plan your trip.
  
• If you put down a deposit that evening toward airfare for a multistop international trip from Airtreks.com, you'll get a free, autographed copy of the new 3rd edition of The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World -- a US$21.95 value.

So if you are going to take the trip anyway, come get inspired, get your questions answered, and get a free book. Your deposit is applicable in full to any air trek over US$1000 purchased from Airtreks.com within six months. The program is free and open to all, and we'll have books available for sale for those who aren't yet ready to make a commitment to their trip with a deposit.

Practical Nomad night at Airtreks.com
Thursday, 5 August 2004, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
301 Howard St., 4th floor, San Francisco, CA

(entrance at the corner of Howard St. and Beale St.,
2 blocks south of the Embarcadero BART station
and 1 block from the Transbay Terminal;
ID unfortunately required for admission to the building)

RSVP requested but not required
+1-415-977-7183

Many of the other Airtreks.com travel consultants will also be available to answer your questions, talk about their favorite places to go and things to do around the world, and help get you started on planning the trip of your lifetime.

(And if you can't make it on August 5th, I and the other Airtreks.com consultants are always available for individual consultations by appointment, in person at our office or by phone.)