It
also emerged that the US does not believe that it needs a new data
sharing deal in order to demand details on Europeans flying into
the US.
Passenger details, known as the passenger name
record (PNR), are passed to US authorities by airlines in a deal
brokered by the European Commission but long opposed by the
European Parliament as a breach of European privacy and data
protection rules.
Spiros Simitis, a data protection expert which
advises the Commission, told a Parliament hearing this week that
the Commission has "clearly breached its obligations" in the deal
it cut with the US over PNR. The law says that in order to obtain
and process personal data, an authority must state an exact purpose
for it.
"Undefined terms like 'terrorism'
and 'public interest' are completely counterproductive and
inadmissible for any functioning data protection rules," he
said.
The
current, temporary, deal expires in July and negotiations between
the Commission and the US on a new, long term deal have just
started. One negotiator involved in the process, Hans Jurgen
Forster, told the Parliament that "people expected the negotiations
to be difficult and they are".
He said that the US is even beginning to
refuse to concede the need for a deal at all. "The US doubt the
need for a new PNR agreement. They even think a short extension of
the existing interim agreement is unnecessary," he said.
There is a possibility that an open skies
agreement on transatlantic air travel, which has some security
provisions, could be used by the US as a replacement deal to the
PNR agreement, warned some MEPs.
The Parliamentary session was a hearing of the
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. That
Committee's chair, Greek MEP Stavros Lambrinidis, that he was
concerned not only about the volume of data being passed to the US,
but about what it is used for. "The transfer of PNR data has only
been scrutinised by the Parliament once, and we were critical about
it. We ask to evaluate a future agreement," he said.
Some MEPs said that they wanted the new system
to include greater controls over European data, including a switch
of the data transfer system from being one in which the US has
access to any of the data it wants to one which demands that it
request any information.
"This would include switching to a
'push' system, so that US officers should have to request
data specifically required, case-by-case rather than
simply being granted access to the full database and reducing
the number of PNR data fields that they can check," said a
Parliament statement.
"The switch to the push procedure is urgent,
this has been made absolutely clear to the Americans," said
Forster. "The US government has indicated a willingness to discuss
and draft a list of principles, to see whether additional
restrictions to PNR transfer are desirable. The American side is
expected to deliver a revised version on the undertakings before we
start a second round of negotiations".
