Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/08/12/pnr_sell_out/
The great Passenger Name Record sell out
Uncle Sam turns Open Skies dark
Posted in Legal, 12th August 2007 07:02 GMT
Analysis As you pack your bags and plot your escape from the miserable British "summer" we're having this year: the security - long or short term - of your personal travel data is probably the last thing on your mind. And thanks to a much trumpeted deal between the EU and the US, even if it was a consideration in your travel plans, it is now out of your hands.
Last month, a settlement was reached in the long-running dispute between the US and the EU over sharing financial and travel data. The decision has generally been presented as a success for the EU in moderating the US's demands for data. A closer look at the situation with respect to travel data tells a different story.
The data in question takes the form of what are known as "PNRs" – the passenger name records that are generated when a travel booking (flight, hotel, car rental) is made. The exact information contained in these varies, but it typically includes identifying information about both the traveller and the person or agency who bought the ticket and the itinerary. But they may contain a considerable amount of additional information, such as who in a company is allowed which perks, and whether or not a traveller is authorised to use the company limo.
Privacy advocates, in particular Edward Hasbrouck, a San Francisco-based expert on the travel industry, have maintained for a long time that travel data, more than many other types of data, is particularly sensitive. Your travel records can reveal who you travel with and how often, how many beds you sleep in (and therefore your sexuality), who buys your travel tickets, and sometimes even, through the special meals you order, your medical condition or religion. A government couldn't ask these things directly without creating a public outcry. But, Hasbrouck also notes, PNRs may reveal considerable information about third parties, such as the company or agency employees who buy your ticket.
The sell-out
Despite the EU's data protection laws, which require data processors to show us our files and give us the chance to issue corrections, it can be very difficult to get a look at your PNR data. Even if you do, it can be difficult to understand. Last year, I tested this out by asking US Airways and Galileo, the customer reservations service it used to handle data, for a look at my PNR. Galileo responded promptly by post with a copy of the information. US Airways itself, however, refused to show anything beyond a simple receipt for the ticket and said: "Because of security concerns the PNR is a company document not released to passengers." The company ignored further communications. The third parties whose data is included in such records are even less likely to get anywhere.
The agreement announced last week will do nothing to change this situation.
"The recent agreement is a complete con," says Gus Hosein, a Fellow at the London School of Economics and of Privacy International. Despite negotiators' claims that they had protected the rights of Europeans by reducing the number of data fields demanded from 34 to 19, "what the Americans and Europeans cunningly did is dupe the entire population by taking the list of 34, dropping two, and then taking less lines on the page. They merged items on one line".
Beyond that, the agreement allows the US to use the data for purposes other than fighting terrorism and lets the US keep the data for at least seven years, possibly 15. "It could even go beyond that." It was, he says, "a failure of the entire process. Europeans have no clue how to negotiate with Americans."
Lock, stock and two smoking passports
But in future such negotiations may not even take place. More sinister for the long term, says Hasbrouck, are provisions of the Open Skies treaty that have been largely overlooked in the rush to praise the treaty's potential for opening up better competition between US and European airlines. Hasbrouck points in particular to article 8, which requires signatories to the treaty to comply with the "recommended practices" of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
Because international treaties take precedence over national law, this article effectively transfers considerable authority to the ICAO, an unelected body with only limited input from outside the travel industry and law enforcement. The ICAO then becomes the arbiter of such decisions as requiring RFID or biometrics in passports and other travel documents, or specifying what data is encapsulated via RFID and how widely it's shared.
Under such a system there can be no public debate and any negotiating that's done will be through the ICAO, which in the past has generally been thought to be a conduit for policies that the US wants but can't necessarily get through Congress. Previous attempts at this type of data gathering, "Total Information Awareness" and the proposed airline security system CAPPS-II, met with public opposition and were cancelled, at least in name.
Yet, says Hosein: "The Department of Homeland Security has managed very quietly, through the back channels, to take the system as originally designed for cargo and apply it to people. We have no idea how effective it will be – and the EU just became complicit with it."
You look a bit dodgy to us...
We know, he says, that the US is not just using the data to match prospective travellers against a list of "bad people". Instead, they are "taking the data and running algorithms on it. They're not saying which algorithms. They decide who is a high-risk passenger and who isn't. What they do once they've processed the data is create a profile. You can't access, affect, or view your profile whether you're a citizen or not. You have no influence in deciding whether or not you are a threat".
There is no question that this is not the data protection regime that Europeans signed up for – running those algorithms would be illegal in Europe. Why the EU has been so willing to abrogate its own policies is unclear. Hosein believes it's in response to promises to extend the visa waiver programme, but that any promises the US makes to do so are unlikely to bear fruit.
"Congress likes to look tough on borders and foreigners," he says.
The thing is that data protection is like the starship Heart of Gold ("Be the envy of other major governments"). If the US collects all this PNR data... well, why shouldn't the EU have it, too? And once the data is there, why not use it for general law enforcement? The overall result is a massive expansion in government profiling of all of us – and a significant diminution of our ability to do anything about it. ®