Northman's Fury

The EC is in the final stages of agreeing a new Passenger Name Record system with the US which will allow American officials to access detailed biographical information about passengers entering international airports.

. . .

In a strongly worded document drawn up in response to the plan that will affect the 4 million-plus Britons who travel to the US every year, the EU parliament said it 'notes with concern that sensitive data (ie personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and data concerning the health or sex life of individuals) will be made available to the DHS and that these data may be used by the DHS in exceptional cases'.

Under the new agreement, which goes live at the end of this month, the US will be able to hold the records of European passengers for 15 years compared with the current three year limit. The EU parliament said it was concerned the data would lead to 'a significant risk of massive profiling and data mining, which is incompatible with basic European principles and is a practice still under discussion in the US congress.'

At a guess, Britain isn't the only country whose government is being pressured to hand over this kind of data on its population.

Most privacy legislation, particularly for governments, revolve around two basic principles.

1. Only collect the data you need to fulfill the task at hand.

2. Only use the data for the purpose it was collected.

The agreement the US is pushing for seems to throw both of those principles out the window. Can you see any reason how somebody's sex life is relevant to the threat of terrorism?

Trade union membership and political opinions? Sure, I can see if you're an active member of Hamas or some such that DHS might like that information, but the implication is that everybody who voted Liberal Democrat last election will have that data recorded as well for the next 15 years. I'll leave the fear-mongering to others, but it doesn't take to active an imagination to see how such information could be abused.

The other significant point is how that information is going to be used. The major reason that we even have privacy laws in North America is because Europe made such laws and the protection of private citizens' data that come with them a requirement to continue trading with European countries. Prior to that, information collected on Europeans was being bought and sold by American companies to be used for marketing campaigns, call lists, whatever.

Information about someone's health or sex life or even income level may not be terribly useful in determining a terror threat, but I'm sure there are pharmaceutical companies that would love to get their hands on that kind of data, particularly when combined with addresses to neighbourhoods where others of similar background are probably to be found.

He warned that under the new system the data will be shared with numerous US agencies. 'The data protection supervisor and the European parliament are angry that they were not consulted,' Bunyan said. 'But they are also angry with a number of elements of the plan such as giving the US the absolute right to pass the data on to third parties.'

Kind of sounds like among other things, someone is trying to do an end run around those pesky privacy laws they've been saddled with.