European privacy watchdogs voiced concern on Monday over an
agreement between the U.S. and the European Union that would allow
airlines to pass on data concerning passengers to U.S. authorities,
and asked for more time to rethink the deal.Under the accord struck by U.S. Customs with
the European Commission, airlines would from March 5 disclose
booking details about passengers flying to the United States to
comply with new U.S. anti-terrorism measures.
But national data controllers, charged with
ensuring that companies and institutions comply with EU privacy
rules, want more guarantees for EU passengers and more time to
assess the impact of the accord on national laws, a letter obtained
by Reuters showed.
The request risks reopening a translatlantic
row over the use of information on airline passengers to prevent
terrorist acts.
"This approach (requires) additional
consideration in light of domestic laws as well as a definition of
a suitable deadline for airlines to develop and implement effective
measures aimed at informing passengers," said the letter, which was
sent to European Commission President Romano Prodi, European
Parliament President Pat Cox and EU president Costas Simitis.
To comply with the U.S. requests, the EU will
have to modify its data privacy laws to explicitly allow airlines
to provide the information.
Under EU rules, personal information about EU
citizens cannot be passed on to non-EU countries without explicit
prior consent from the citizen in question.
Airlines would normally risk fines if they
handed over passenger data such as names, addresses and other
information including dietary requirements.
But the European Commission said that U.S.
Customs had given guarantees that the information would only be
used for security purposes and, if stored on official U.S.
databases, would be subject to U.S. laws that protect personal
data.
Though the controllers said they had been
properly consulted by the European Commission prior to the
agreement, they reiterated concerns aired originally in
October.
At that time, they said the U.S. request
raised serious doubts with regards to privacy and would "lead to
the disproportionate and routine disclosure of information by
airlines."
They also said that the information risked
being shared among all U.S. federal agencies.