The European Commission tomorrow will announce plans for surveillance of passenger data similar to a process already deployed by the United States.
The program will be included in a broader package of pan-European Union anti-terrorism measures. Airlines will have to provide the same 19 fields of data from passenger name records that U.S. authorities inspect following a deal between the EU and the United States this summer
(BTN, July 9). The requirement will cover all flights between the European Union and outside countries but not flights within the EU. Information will be surrendered to national passenger information units that each of the 27 member states will establish. The information will be collected by the unit of the first European Union country where the aircraft lands.
Provisional plans are for data to be stored on an active database for five years and then on a dormant database for a further eight years. According to sections of the draft seen by
Business Travel News, the units will be required to undertake risk assessments to "identify persons who are or may be involved in a terrorist or organised crime offence, as well as their associates." The methodology for carrying out such assessments will be left to each EU state to determine.
According to the provisional plan, all member states will have to comply with the directive by Dec. 31, 2010. As with data collected by U.S. authorities, the PNR details to be handed over to passenger intelligence units include name, travel dates, billing data, contact details and names of accompanying passengers. Any sensitive information, such as race, religious beliefs or state of health, would be deleted.
Member states will be allowed to appoint intermediaries to handle the collection of PNRs from airlines on behalf of the passenger units. Data will be pushed by airlines to the units or intermediaries, unless they lack the technology to do so, in which case the units or intermediaries will pull the PNRs from the carriers' databases and filter out such information themselves.
The Article 29 Working Party, which represents the data-protection authorities of European Union member states, has opposed the proposal, criticizing the universal collection of all PNRs as 'unnecessary'. However, the
Washington Post yesterday quoted a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson as saying DHS is "definitely open to the idea. It would be fair of the Europeans to ask the same information of us that we're asking of them."
The Commission's proposal cites a lengthy list of airline associations that were consulted, but no organizations representing passengers or travel management companies. "It is wrong that yet again this issue is being looked at without formally consulting passenger groups or TMCs," said Mike Platt, director of industry relations for HRG. "They have stopped at the top of the supply chain and not gone any further."