European court deadline for data sharing agreement passes

Published 3 October 2006

Negotiations will continue while the U.S. defers imposing $6,000 fines; privacy rights at issue, but U.S. will not budge on refusal to allow passengers to inspect shared information

Negotiators from the United States and the European Union have failed to meet the 29 September deadline imposed by the European Court of Justice to conclude a passenger data-sharing agreement that meets European privacy standards. In May, the court annulled a previous agreement under which E.U. authorities provided the U.S. vast information on airline passengers’ addressess and credit card information, and the U.S. had threatened to impose fines of $6,000 per passenger if its demands for that information could not be satisfied. Such a move would have been extremely aggressive and further aggravated ongoing U.S.-E.U. tensions over a wide slate of counter-terrorism initiatives, and it appears that DHS will keep the arrow in its quiver for now.

Talks on the issue will continue, but at least one critic thinks the issue could have been resolved long ago but for U.S. intransigence. Esward Hasbrouck, an expert on travel data privacy, told the Washington Post the United States is refusing to adopt privacy standards that would permit the person whose data is being shared to have access to the information transmitted. American policy in these matters, however, is to keep its intelligence operations as close to the vest as possible, and the administration is consistent in its belief that allowing those being monitored to see the effort’s work product might provide clues on how to trump the system.

-read more in Ellen Nakasima’s Washington Post report