CANADA: Skimming Machines and the Border

BTC - These two articles came in from the Windsor Star, Vancouver B.C. , a Canadian town due north of Seattle, Washington.

Skimming machines found at 2 TD ATMs

Police are confident that the suspect or suspects did not gain any personal information from the ATM in Devonshire mall. The skimming machine was comprised of a camera and an electronic component that’s installed over the card slot which holds a memory card. When police investigated, they found the memory card still intact.

Police are unsure at this time if any personal information was compromised at the TD on Walker Road.

A man was caught on a surveillance camera at the Walker Road location, but police don’t know how long ago both devices were installed.

The border: An 8-year assessment

The WHTI has hurt businesses on both sides of the border and squeezed tourism. Business groups are also worried that when the recession ends, and truck traffic ramps up again, the border will turn into a chokepoint for two-way trade.

In the hours after 9-11, we used this space to point out that the immediate priority of our American neighbours would be to improve national security, and they would start with their borders.

We argued that the U.S. would build a higher, stronger wall around itself to protect its citizens, and Canadians could not afford to find themselves on the wrong side of the new security fence.

If that happened, the price to pay would be the erosion of a co-operative relationship that had created the world's most open and intertwined economies.

Now, eight years later, we haven't reached the point that the Canada-U.S. border has become a wall, but it is not the same border it was before 9-11, and it isn't operating in the best interest of either country.

The days when you could count on hassle-free travel across the border are mostly over. The last-minute decisions to cross the border for dinner or a night-on-the-town aren't being made as often.

Initially, it was the risk of delays as U.S. customs ramped up inspections. Now traffic in both directions is down again with the U.S. requiring passports or similar documentation (the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative) to enter the U.S. The rule applies to both Americans and Canadians.

The war on terrorism was not supposed to turn into a war on the lifestyle and livelihoods of law-abiding Canadians and Americans. :::MORE HERE:::