WASHINGTON –U.S. officials told a House subcommittee on Wednesday that personal information international airplane passengers share when booking is vital to combatting terrorism, despite privacy concerns.
An agreement between the European Union and United States was negotiated in 2007 to share travel information, but the European Parliament asked that the pact be renegotiated because of privacy concerns.
In a hearing on intelligence sharing and terrorist travel, representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection testified that personal information shared on airline PNRs (passenger name records) – such things as travel itinerary, name, date of birth, payment, email address, phone number, and co-traveler information – has proven necessary in the last 10 years.
“It’s a tool we cannot live without,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan, R-Pa., chair of the subcommittee looking at the issue. “Privacy is a right, but so is security, one relies on the other.”
The idea from some members of the European parliament that the U.S. should “only collect information from the people you need to collect information from, for example the bad guys — the criminals,” is wrong, said Mary Ellen Callahan, the chief privacy officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security .
The United States is in its fourth negotiation with the European Union in the last nine years.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee passed a bill that urged Callahan’s department not to budge on any new language in the negotiations that would degrade its ability to identify terrorists and not to enter an agreement that would allow European oversight.
“I am confident that all parties share a desire to achieve an agreement that increases safety and security in airline travel, does not undermine privacy protections and embodies our shared tradition of individual rights,” wrote the standing committee’s Ranking Member Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
Reports and audits of U.S. Homeland Security’s use of this data has shown that of the billions of passengers in the last 10 years, there has not been a single data breach, according to joint testimony.
The European Union, collectively, does not have a PNR data system, so the United States does not share much information in return except in a case-by-case basis. Some countries, like the United Kingdom are in the process of setting up their own PNR systems.
According to the testimony, the PNR data has assisted in 1,750 suspicious cases annually. In particular, it was useful in investigating terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks, a plot to bomb New York subways, potential threats over the 10-year anniversary weekend of 9/11, and Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to detonate a care bomb in Times Square.
Prior to Sept. 11, terrorists were able to get a visa and board an airplane to the U.S. with relative ease, he said, and screening passengers was limited to the Department of State and inspection by a border guard.
Commercial airlines began voluntarily providing PNR data to the U.S. in the early 1990s in hopes to provide additional security on their planes, and Congress made is a requirement after the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks.