US To Start Sharing Pax Data With EU

The US will next year begin sharing personal data about airline passengers with foreign security services. That word came Wednesday from the G-8 summit meeting in Sea Island (GA). The exchange of information will reportedly go far beyond what is now shared between the US and the European Union.

"The information exchange that we are talking about developing here will go beyond the arrangements that we've made bilaterally with the European Union," said one anonymous official attending the summit.

Although the controversial data exchange between the US and EU has continued for the better part of a year, it was only formalized June 1st. It covers 34 data fields contained in the PNR (Passenger Name Record) and includes telephone and credit card numbers.

Data shared under the new agreement will reportedly also include passport or social security numbers. Officials hope that, by increasing the amount of data to be shared, they can cut down on embarrassing incidents such as a recent terrorist alert in Paris. As it turned out, the "terrorist" fingered was a mere child.

The furor over data sharing continued Wednesday, according to UPI. "We have said for some time now that the administration is engaged in policy laundering," said Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project, "bludgeoning our allies into accepting proposals that it would be politically difficult to implement in the United States. Once they're adopted, the administration can turn around and say, 'This is the international standard.'"

It's challenges like that which have landed the US-EU pact in a European court for a hearing later this month.

Will the data to be shared under this latest agreement include information that might be construed as "racial profiling"? An unidentified source close to the deal said no.

"I can't say that I personally have gone and looked," the official said, "but I feel relatively confident that that is (not) the case. Those are not factors for screening."

FMI: www.dhs.gov