EU seeks access to private passenger data to combat terrorism

According to the European Commission, "terrorist and organised criminals are mobile and increasingly more so. They travel abroad to plan and execute their sinister activities. They fly into and out of the EU using commercial flights. It is important that law enforcement authorities are equipped with the best possible tools to investigate, prevent and disrupt both terrorist and organised crime networks. PNR offer one of those useful tools." 

It also stressed that its proposals were fully compliant with fundamental rights provisions, "particularly with respect to the protection of personal data and the privacy of the persons". 

However, data-protection practitioners, legal experts and human-rights groups are against the move. 

Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch, a group devoted to monitoring civil liberties in Europe, commented: "This is yet another measure that places everyone under surveillance and makes everyone a 'suspect' without any meaningful right to know how the data is used, how it is further processed and by whom." 

He added: "There is little evidence that the gathering of 'mountain upon mountain' of data on the activities of every person in the EU makes a significant contribution [to tackling terrorism]." 

Dutch Liberal MEP Sophie in 't Veld called on the Commission not to override civil liberties in its pursuit of terrorists: "We should not forget that it is not only lives that we are trying to protect from terrorists but our democracy too." 

She urged the Commission not to compound "the mistakes of the July PNR agreement with the US by introducing our own – at least until there is serious and irrefutable proof that such mass exchange of personal data is resulting in the arrest of terrorists." 

She also criticised the Commission's double approach to the issue of data protection, saying: "It is disingenuous of the Commission to tell us in July that they fought to resist US demands for an intrusive system only to propose a similar system themselves four months later." 

"These proposals will bypass parliamentary scrutiny and judicial oversight and only a secret committee will evaluate their effectiveness," she lamented. 

Dutch Green MEP and civil liberties spokesperson Kathalijne Buitenweg agreed that the proposal seemed "unnecessary and incoherent". 

"The Commission has made no attempt to justify why these measures are necessary and why the existing legislation is not sufficient," she said, pointing to an existing directive on passenger data from 2004, which requires airlines to transfer data on the identity of their passengers to the authorities of the destination country after check-in, but which most member states have still not brought into operation.