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EU-USA-PNR: European Commission: Report on the joint review of the implementation of the EU-USA Agreement on the processing and transfer of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data

01 April 2010

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EU-USA-PNR: European Commission: Report on the joint review of the implementation of the Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America on the processing and transfer of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data by air carriers to the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (pdf):

"There are some concerns as regards broad use of PNR data and in particular the matching of PNR against some databases that have immigration and customs policy elements to them... also has some concerns both as regards the number of ad hoc requests but also as regards the fact that DHS executes such request by pulling the data... Ad hoc requests should be substantially reduced... requests for access to data is only able to track requests under the general heading ‘travelers’ and it is unable to distinguish between requests for access to PNR data and requests for other data, or to track requests specifically relating to EU-originating PNR data."

As regards the cross-checking of PNR against law enforcement databases the USA side state that: "TECS enforcement data which comprises of various criminal watchlists and other criminal databases of DHS, i.e. missing persons, persons against who a warrant is pending. These databases only contain information of persons involved or suspected to be involved in felonies, which are criminal offences which carry a minimum of one year imprisonment" - which is a very low threshold and does not seem to match the purpose limitation that the agreement only applies to: "the fight against terrorism and serious crime."

See also: US letter response (pdf)

Viewed as whole the US use of PNR data is geared to: 1) Tracking everyone's travel in and out of the USA; 2) creating a "life-time" history of an individual's movements and more recently 3) starting to operate an invisible "permission" to travel regime for very passenger.

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