• Home /
• News /
• 2003 /
• September /
• European Commission tells USA that demands for access to data on airline passengers breaches EU Data Protection Directive - but hints at a deal that would "fudge" the issue (update 18.9.03):

European Commission tells USA that demands for access to data on airline passengers breaches EU Data Protection Directive - but hints at a deal that would "fudge" the issue (update 18.9.03):

01 September 2003

"The debate in Europe over the US demand for access to personal information on air passengers travelling from the EU has rightly centred on data protection issues. However, the issue of how the information could be used to potentially infringe peoples' civil liberties has been missing from the discussion. Everyone flying to the USA, and flying within the USA, will automatically be "profiled" under the proposed Computer Assisted Passenger Profiling System (CAPPS II). Their "profile" will be determined after checks against a series of "watch-lists", which although said to be directed at terrorism go much wider in practice.

Data protection covers what information is passed over, who it is passed on to, how long it is kept for and whether a person can see and correct data held on them. Civil liberties deals with how that data is used against people - whether they are questioned, searched, detained or placed under surveillance. In a democratic society the two are indivisible."