Europe sets minimum PNR standards The European Commission has set minimum standards under which countries should agree to exchange airline passenger name information with nations outside the EU. The guidelines will underline new Passenger Name Record agreements with Australia, Canada and the US. EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström said PNR …
No teeth - waste of paper!
OS Authorities are not going to let EU auditors trample around their databases so there is no way of enforcing the good intent. Once the data is in a foreign administrations computer it will stay there for ever - simple as that.
The first transgression will be Tax authorities - PNRs are just part of the bigger big brother roll out.
If this is needed to track the bad guys / prevent them boarding, then they should provide a list of the "bad guys" to _US_ and _WE_ should check if they are on the list.
We should not send the details of every single person that wants to fly, just because a small few might be matches.
This list should also say why the person is on the list, or at least the category, such as "wanted murderer", etc. rather than just a list of names that the United States World Police want to track whereever they go (e.g. executives of companies that compete with American comapnies).
..like those who use their iPhones to make crappy recordings in cinemas.
How long before the MPAA re-defines 'terrorism' as "any act that could seek to make profits (or to stop legitimate profits to movie copyright owners) and potentially use said profits to fund under-ground (and maybe terrorist) activities."
OK I can see the logic to having a standard form of agreement throughout the EU and it's encouraging that the EC has taken on board some of the reservations about the current situation; but how do they propose to enforce these rules? I can't see the EU refusing to let people either in or out of the EU just because another country does not live up to our standards and requirements. As with the US/GB extraditon treaty the table seems to be tilted in favour of the US, so how is reciprocity to be enforced and who in the world is going to police all this? The parties themselves? That's not a runner as far as I can see, more likely it will be a case of "you scratch my back..." Maybe the whole agreement will be overseen by a third party committee or something but again, who will do this.
To my mind this is window dressing to keep the general public quite whilst business goes on as usual.
Data should only be used to fight terrorism and serious transnational crime.
and of course the defintion of what is 'terrorism' and 'transnational crime' will not be stretched until it covers virtually any crime anywhere.
Data should be limited to that useful in fighting those types of crime, and should be clearly specified by the agreement....and will not of course be 'everything, cos you never know might be useful'
"Passengers should not be prevented from boarding by automated checks alone."
"We just have some manual checks to complete. Don't worry Sir. The checks won't take long. Can you come back tomorrow?"
Any country receiving and storing PNR data must ensure high standards of data protection.
"Memory sticks are just fine. just make sure you don't loose them"
Periods of retention should be limited.
"20 years long enough?"
There should be oversight that the agreement is being followed.
"Wayhay. More oveseas trips by auditors on expense accounts"
There should be reciprocity between countries.
And the recoprocity agreement will last just as long as the first request of data "or we will not let you aircraft land on pur soil" threat is issued."
So instead of requesting the data from any Eu governments the US authorities simply request it form the airlines. No data - no permission for them to operate in the US.
In turn the airlines request the data from you and demand you waive all your rights over the data and what they do with it - no check box - no ticket.
(1) Who's version of 'terrorist' or 'serious offender' is going to control the 'agreement'. In this imperfect world, one persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter.
(2) No really, that's all we've kept in the records. Look, I'll prove it. I login using the super account 'limitedcontentforgullableinspectors' and there you go!
(3) You show me yours and I'll show you mine, even if it's wrong or misleading?
Just another political/bureaucratic pretense going on. The words mean nothing, but you bet they cost a bucket to 'get right' and all in a effort to pretend there is care and responsible control.
Reportedly, the US database incorporated the 'Soundex' technology (circa 1920), to vastly expand the false positive rate while accomplishing nothing with respect to 'terism'. After detaining hundreds of infants, they've now added the birthdate to the database.
Unless you add mandatory prison sentences to that list I guarantee the US will be found after the fact to have been in violation the entire time and absolutely nothing will be done about it.
FBI constantly violates the law, gets investigated, receives a reprimand, management makes a statement in which they deny any actual legal violations occurred and nothing changes. Your average FBI employee should be in prison for at least 5 years.
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