Airlines Told to Turn Over Passenger Data
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WASHINGTON - Everyone who took a commercial flight within the United States in June will have travel information turned over to the government so it can test a new system for identifying potential terrorists, federal officials announced Tuesday.    The Transportation Security Administration unveiled details for its previously announced "Secure Flight" program, its second attempt at finding a better way to screen passengers without infringing on privacy...
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(InfoWorld) - A failure by the U.S. and European Union to reach a new agreement next month on the provision passenger data for transatlantic flights could ground up to 105,000 people each week, the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) director general said Thursday. The two sides need to reach a new accord by the end of September, after the European Court of Justice ruled in May that the current agreement is unacceptable. That agreement calls for airlines to provide U.S. authorities with the names, addresses, ticket payment details, and telephone numbers of passengers on U.S.-bound flights. The EU'sÂ highest court ruledÂ that there was no "appropriate legal basis" for the deal, and said it would cease to be valid from October. If a new agreement isn't reached before then, airlines will be forced to decide whether to continue providing the information in violation of European privacy law, withhold the information in violation of U.S. law, orÂ ground flights to avoid breaking any law, said Giovanni Bisignani, director general and CEO of IATA, at a news conference in Tokyo. "I hope that there will be an agreement because I know that the cooperation between the Homeland Security and European Union is strong and effective," he said. "I think there is time to find a decision," Bisignani said. "It's not up to me to say which is the best decision. It's up to me to say I look forward to increased cooperation and increased discussion between the two parties because we cannot be in a situation on Sept. 30 when we have to make the decision which law to break." Bisignani's comments came two days after U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff wrote in The Washington Post that the U.S. needs continued access to the personal information on passengers, and also wants the rules relaxed on how the information can be used. The US Customs and Border Protection receives the information regularly, he wrote, but cannot share it freely with investigators in other Department of Homeland Security divisions, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or with the Federal Bureau of Investigations -- "never mind with our allies in London." "This information might yet identify associates of those arrested in the plot in Britain, but the rules blind us in routinely searching for that connection," Chertoff wrote. The U.S. says the data allows them to identify certain passengers for additional screening when they arrive in the U.S. while reducing the amount of time spent on screening low-risk passengers.
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The U.K.&#39;s busiest airport is starting to affix radio chips to the luggage of passengers as part of an experiment aimed at reducing lost bags.The six-month trial will involve tagging around 50,000 bags a month with RFID (radio frequency identification tags) for passengers traveling or transferring on Emirates Airline between Dubai and Heathrow, said BAA, the company that runs the airport.Barcode tags are currently used, but the barcodes can be misread by scanners, especially if the tags are wet or creased. Those problems increase costs for BAA and the airlines, as well aggravating passengers with slower baggage handling.The RFID tags, which will be attached by staff at nine specially-equipped Emirates check-in desks, will be encoded the passenger&#39;s name and route. Higher-capacity chips could contain more data but won&#39;t be used for this trial, BAA said. Barcodes will still be used with the RFID tags.The RFID chips can be read by scanning equipment from a short distance away as the luggage passes through Heathrow&#39;s baggage system. Once at their destination, some passengers will receive a text message on their mobile phone informing of the baggage reclaim belt, BAA said.
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Europe's top data protection official criticized plans for air passenger records like those gathered by U.S. authorities.
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BBC News Online looks at what rights passengers have if their holidays or flights are cancelled.
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U.S. authorities told a British  Airways flight to New York to return to London because a  passenger's personal data matched that of a suspected member of  a Moroccan terror group, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
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Heathrow Airport introduced a new security system for some of its passengers Friday, requiring them to undergo iris scans and be fingerprinted before boarding their flights.
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U.S.-bound air passengers may have to  board their planes an hour before take-off to allow for more  rigorous security checks, according to proposals outlined by a  senior U.S. official Thursday.
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The government will take over from the airlines responsibility for checking passenger names against terrorism watch lists and will begin testing its system within two months, the
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The European Union tomorrow will impose the world's toughest rules on airlines for passenger rights, potentially requiring refunds and penalty payments even if a flight is canceled or significantly delayed by bad weather or mechanical problems. The system would be the world's first to cover situations that have traditionally been considered outside an airline's control.
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The U.S. government wants airlines  to turn over information on the millions of people who traveled  in June to test a new system for identifying passengers who may  pose a security risk, officials said on Tuesday.
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If you&#39;re flying this weekend, you might want to have a change of clothes and a toothbrush with you in a carry-on bag. After last weekend&#39;s fiasco with US Airways
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(InfoWorld) - Critics ofÂ last week's agreementÂ allowing European passengers' personal data to be shared with U.S. authorities have just under a month to reshape the accord before it comes into force, said Stavros Lambrinidis, vice president of the European Parliament's civil liberties committee Monday. "There is aÂ battleÂ to make this agreement respectful of European citizens' civil liberties, and it's not over," he said in a telephone interview. The European Parliament has no direct say in the shaping of an agreement that will give U.S. customs, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other agencies including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency free access to airlines' passenger databases to help them prevent potential terrorist attacks. However, some national parliaments will get the chance. "There are about six or seven countries that have to debate this agreement. There is still a chance to change it," Lambrinidis said. The U.S. government demanded access to information about everyone flying to the U.S. from the E.U. in the wake of the terrorist attacks in September 2001. However, by complying with the demand, airlines would have been breaching strict European data protection laws, so the U.S. and E.U. drafted an exemption clause from the laws, which they claim was respectful of European citizens' data. The European Court of JusticeÂ annulled that agreementÂ last year and gave the two sides until the end of this month to come up with an alternative. Failure to do so would leave European airlinesÂ exposed to massive finesÂ and the possible loss of landing slots in the U.S if they don't continue to hand over the data, or legal action on data protection grounds in the E.U. if they do. "It's clear that there has to be an agreement but not one like this," Lambrinidis said. The agreement that was reached during a phone call between German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, E.U. justice and home affairs commissioner Franco Frattini and U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff last Wednesday reduces the fields of data to be shared from 34 at present to 19. These fields include information such as name, credit-card details and travel itinerary. They won't include dietary requirements, which could be used to identify someone's religion. However, it extends the length of time the U.S. authorities can hold the data from three years to 15 years, and it allows U.S. agencies to dip into the databases at their will. In an interview last week, Europe's data protection supervisor, Peter Hustinx, said his main concern was that the E.U. would grant American agencies the right to pull up information about Europeans whenever they want. He called for a push mechanism, meaning that database managers for the airlines would have to pass over the data, instead. Like the temporary accord it replaces, the new agreement promises an eventual switch to a push mechanism. Under the new agreement, U.S. agencies can pull up the data they want until early next year, when airlines will start pushing it instead. However, the DHS maintains the right to pull the information if airlines don't offer up the data promptly. The main concern, however, is that the agreement omits any binding undertakings for U.S. authorities to safeguard European citizens' data. The details of this arrangement aren't in the agreement itself but in an exchange of letters that haven't been made public, Lambrinidis said. Reacting to the agreement last week, Hustinx said he fears the measure could violate European citizens' rights to privacy. In addition to allowing U.S. authorities to keep the data for 15 years, there would be "no limitation to what U.S. authorities are allowed to do with the data," Hustinx wrote in a letter to Schaeuble on Wednesday after the German minister clinched the deal.
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The Transportation Security Administration is trying again to reconcile the privacy rights of non-dangerous airline passengers with the security need to identify potentially dangerous ones.
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Visitors could face digital fingerprinting at airports under plans to beef up border security
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The government ordered U.S. airlines Friday to turn over personal information about passengers so it can test a system for identifying potential terrorists. The move was expected but nonetheless brought protests from civil libertarians worried about invasions of privacy.
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The federal government's latest attempt to improve security checks of airline passengers is prompting privacy concerns here and abroad.