PNR data could be shared with European governments

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Despite the recent decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the
annulment of the EU-US deal on Passenger Name Records PNR data, the
European Commission is trying to push for PNR data to be shared also with
the secret services of the European governments for all the flights within
Europe.

The new position expressed by Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for Vice
President of the European Commission and Justice and Security Commissioner,
comes just a few days after several people were charged in UK for alleged
plans to blow up transatlantic planes.

This time the data would not be reduced to the name or address of the
passengers and could include also information related to their credit card,
telephone numbers, hotel reservations or other details as available in the
files created by the global travel reservation services. The same
principles as in the deal with US should be maintained in the new proposal,
where the PNR data will be available to the European governments that should
have access to the same 34 pieces the information. The data could be kept
for three years. According to the spokesman, “The information would be
handed to the government of the country a person was flying to and would
only be used for anti-terrorism purposes.”

Until now, no official proposal was sent to the Commission, but a draft
document is being discussed. Such a proposal should be
approved by the Commission and the Council of Ministers.

This decision comes in close connection with the EU-US PNR agreement that
needs to be re-drafted in order to comply with the ECJ decision. US
officials are also trying to push for an extension of the data shared
in the new agreement. In a recent interview Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff said that the US Government wanted to search
broadly through the PNR data in order to identify people that could be
linked to terrorists.

Under the former agreement, the US was limited in sharing the PNR data with
other law enforcement agencies for cross searches between databases.

Officials Seek Broader Access to Airline Data (22.08.2006)

Security services will be given passenger data on all European flights
(22.08.2006)
http://www.out-law.com/page-7218

Frattini to propose giving up passenger privacy to uncover terror plots
(23.08.2006)
http://www.euractiv.com/en/justice/frattini-propose-giving-passenger-privacy-uncover-terror-plots/article-157208

Michael Chertoff – A Tool We Need to Stop the Next Airliner Plot
(29.08.2006)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/28/AR2006082800849.html

EDRI-gram : EU-US agreement on passenger data transfer annulled (7.06.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.11/pnr

EDRI-gram : The European Commission dribbles the Parliament again in the PNR
deal (21.06.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.12/pnr