Fears over plan to give air passenger details to US

A PROPOSED agreement to hand over personal information about every passenger flying from the EU to the US is contrary to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, the EU’s data protection officer has said.

The agreement comes into force on Wednesday next, August 1, and will give a huge range of US bodies access to the information, which they can hold on file for 15 years.

The Dáil has already voted for the agreement, despite warnings from the European data protection supervisor and the European Parliament.

In all, 19 pieces of information given by passengers when they are booking their flights will be passed onto the US Department of Homeland Security. The information will then be available to a range of other US agencies.

Sensitive data that could give clues to a person’s religion — such as meal preference — will be filtered out unless the US authorities insist it is essential.

The data can be held for a total of 15 years — increased from three-and- a-half years under the previous agreement — and there are no limits to how the US authorities can use it.

EU citizens can be advised of what data is being kept on them but there is no legal mechanism to allow the public challenge misuse of the information.

EU officials insist Europe was placed in an impossible position when the US said it would refuse to allow planes to land unless passengers’ details were given in advance. The US also threatened to negotiate with each individual airline.

The EU won some concessions from the US in tough negotiations over several months, including reducing the original 32 pieces of information to 19 and eliminating data that would give clues to a person’s ethnicity or religion.

The US wanted to keep the data on file for 50 years but that demand was reduced to seven years with a further eight years as dormant data — if deemed necessary.

While all 27 EU governments agreed to the deal, the European Parliament described the agreement as flawed.

The parliament warned of “open and vague definitions and many possibilities for exceptions”.

Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor, said the agreement had many areas of grave concern and he doubted it complied with data protection requirements in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The commission’s Justice Director General Jonathan Faull who helped negotiate the agreement said the lessons learnt from the 9/11 Commission in the US justified holding the data for longer and sharing it with various US bodies.

Sensitive date would only be handed over in “rare and exceptional circumstances”.

“If the authorities are looking for a diabetic then meal preference could be useful. But other data such as to do with a person’s sexual orientation and trade union affiliation will not be collected by the airlines,” he said.

“If you use the same credit card and travel agency as other people who are on the terrorism list; if you change your reservation at the last minute; if you book a one way ticket, requesting a seat as close to the cockpit as possible — this may trigger the interest of the authorities,” said Mr Faull.