Claim Private Information May Reveal Terrorist Links

The governments of the United States and several European countries want to know more about airline passengers. A lot more.

Hoping to develop a new set of tools to detect and prevent terror plots like the one British authorities uncovered August 10, the Department of Homeland Security and its counterparts in a number of EU countries want more access to information once considered private -- travel itineraries, personal information and methods of payment.

The New York Times quotes DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff as saying broader information access would allow him to identify not only the terrorists themselves... but people linked to the terrorists.

European governments want names, addresses, e-mail addresses, credit card numbers, telephone numbers, information on hotel reservations and rental cars.

With that comes an "I told you so" from the American Civil Liberties Union.

"This is a confirmation of our warnings that once you let the camel’s nose under the tent, it takes 10 minutes for them to want to start expanding these programs in all different directions," said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the organization.

Already, the US has access to passport information. European nations will have that same access by this fall.

But the Times reports there's a second, much more aggressive database called the Passenger Name Record -- which is drawn from the computer files of reservation companies like Sabre, Galileo, and Amadeus.

Those files include information on who's actually paying for the ticket, and the data used to create a passenger preference profile -- such as what sort of room they prefer at the hotel, what class of rental car and the like.

Aside from the ACLU... European politicians and civil liberties groups oppose an expansion of the passenger data governments can collect. There's another issue, as well... just how much information are EU member states willing to share with each other?

One analyst says, though, that no matter how detailed the information available to the governments... it is still not enough to thwart an attack on its own.

"Even with the best technology in the world, we will never be able to separate the individual from the tools he needs to attack us," said aviation consultant and former Northwest Airlines pilot Stephen A. Luckey, who also helped US airlines develop a screening system for domestic passengers. "You are not going to find them all. You have to look for the person with hostile intent."

FMI: www.aclu.org, www.dhs.gov, www.europa.eu