European Security Officials Challenge Traveler-Tracking
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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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Homeland Security promises greater privacy protections for European travelers, contradicting a U.S. push for more data.
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(InfoWorld) - Europeans who visit the U.S. will be required to fill out an online questionnaire two days before they enter the country under a proposal being studied by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department has been discussing the idea internally for about a month, said Hugo Teufel III, chief privacy officer for the DHS, in a meeting with journalists in Paris on Thursday. He could not say when the registration system might be introduced. The proposal will likely increase tensions between the U.S. and Europe at a time when the two sides are already in heated debate over U.S. demands for data about air passengers flying from Europe to the U.S. The U.S. says it needs access to more data to prevent suspected terrorists from entering the country, while European regulators counter that the demands are excessive and worry how the data will be used. The online registration would complement the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, a program disclosed by the DHS in November that assigns a "risk assessment" to people entering and leaving the U.S., to determine the likelihood that they pose a security threat. The registration system would likely require approval by the U.S. Congress before it could be introduced, Teufel said. "It's a fairly new initiative in that we've been discussing it internally for about a month," he added. He offered few other details Thursday, but Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff discussed the proposal earlier this week in an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel. Chertoff said the U.S. wanted to "elevate the security level generally" for foreign visitors, particularly in light of its looser visa requirements for some countries. The online registration "would be similar to what they do in Australia where visa waiver travelers would register online in advance, and they would, therefore, know before they arrive in the United States whether there was going to be a problem with their being admitted," Chertoff told the newspaper. "The registration would have a shelf life of some years. It wouldn't be something you do every trip, you would do it periodically," he added. The DHS will prepare a "privacy impact assessment" on the registration plan, Teufel said Thursday. Such assessments cover issues like how data is used, who can access it and for how long it will be retained. Teufel suggested that the assessment report would be made available to the public, although U.S. law makes exceptions for reports about systems used by the intelligence community, he said. Teufel was appointed by Chertoff in July last year and is responsible for the DHS's privacy policies.
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Internet searches for bomb-making  instructions should be blocked across the European Union, the  bloc&#39;s top security official said on Monday.
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In a bid to improve security, ministers from five EU countries said today they hoped to start digital fingerprinting for passports in 2006, but they split over a German proposal to put illegal migrants in transit camps in North Africa.
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ROME, Feb 9 (IPS) - Several European counties may soon be asked to  explain their "passivity" over illegal renditions by the  CIA through European airspace between 2001 and 2005.
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LONDON - Travelers face new delays and disruption on trips to Britain under government plans unveiled yesterday to tighten defenses against terrorism at airports, rail stations, and major public spaces.
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Privacy chiefs impose deadline Privacy chiefs have given Europe's banks a September deadline for alerting customers that their financial transactions could be tracked by US security agencies. Customers must be warned that even transactions within Europe could be monitored, they said.â¦
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All visitors from Europe and  elsewhere were fingerprinted and photographed upon arrival at  U.S. airports on Thursday as part of a new, heightened effort  by authorities to secure American borders.
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The DHS defends its right to search and seize travelers' possessions, electronics, and digital information at the border. International travelers may want to leave their personal information at home.
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The federal government's latest attempt to improve security checks of airline passengers is prompting privacy concerns here and abroad.
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The EU announces proposals for biometric fingerprinting of visitors from outside the European Union arriving at its borders.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Parliament has delayed a vote on how to react to the U.S.' growing appetite for personal information about European citizens, in order to intensify its opposition. The delay follows a debate Wednesday evening in which the two other European Union lawmaking institutions both hardened their positions on the sensitive issue. The groups are drawing up a strategy for how toÂ renegotiate an agreement, over which they have been divided, with the U.S. over theÂ transfer of European air passenger data. The Parliament opposed the original agreement reached in 2004 to share the data -- 34 facts about every European entering or transiting through America by air, including credit card details and information about how and where a plane ticket was purchased. Even though the European Commission -- the E.U.'s executive branch -- and national governments in the 27 E.U. countries support strict European data protection laws, they negotiated an exemption from the rules in order to allow the U.S. to better protect itself from potential terrorist attacks. The European Parliament took the Commission and the Council of Ministers to the European Court of Justice over the passenger data agreement and forced a re-drafting of the law late last year. This agreement expires at the end of July and the E.U. will soon have to renegotiate the deal. While the Parliament is unlikely now to call for the complete scrapping of the agreement, it may well demand a shorter list of categories of data to be handed over. It may also demand that only U.S. immigration officials be granted access to the information. In a debate at the European Parliament Wednesday, Germanyâs deputy foreign minister, Guenther Gloser warned that negotiations with the U.S. will be âtortuous.â Germany holds the six-month rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc. The European commissioner in charge of justice and home affairs issues, Franco Frattini told Parliamentarians that he has demanded an explanation from his counterparts in Washington D.C. about an apparent misuse of Europeansâ data that flouts both the original passenger rights' agreement as well as its replacement agreed last year. Frattini's concerns focus on the U.S. Automated Targeting System, which has been assessing millions of people since 2002. Some members of the U.S. Congress and privacy advocates believe the program is even illegal under the more lax U.S. data protection laws. "The right to privacy for me is nonnegotiable. It has to be respected," Frattini told the parliamentarians. Frattini's and Gloserâs speeches took many members of the Parliament by surprise, according to one Parliament official actively involved in civil liberties issues. "The MEPs were due to vote on an agreed position regarding the new round of negotiations with the U.S. today, but they have agreed to postpone the vote until the next plenary session in Strasbourg," she said, asking not to be named. The next plenary session is Feb. 12-15. "There is a mixture of joy and skepticism among the parliamentarians after hearing the strong language expressed in defense of Europeans rights to privacy," she said. "It would seem that the Commission and the Council of Ministers are both coming around to the Parliament's way of thinking on this urgent issue." The text is likely to take an even stronger line as a result of the delay, she said. The U.S. has threatened to fine airlines that fail to hand over the records, and to strip them of their landing rights in the U.S. Without any agreement, the airlines will be put in a difficult position: punished if they don't hand over the information, or sued for breaching European data protection laws if they do.
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STRASBOURG, France  - European governments and secret services accepted and concealed secret U.S. flights of terrorism suspects across Europe, the European Parliament said on Wednesday.
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Two civil liberties groups have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, complaining that the agency&#39;s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division has routinely searched many U.S. citizens&#39; laptops and other electronic devices and questioned them about their religious practices and political beliefs.
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A program that offers a special security checkpoint for frequent travelers hasnât rolled out at nearly the pace originally predicted.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Union has reached a preliminary agreement in the long-runningÂ dispute over the handling of personal dataÂ about E.U. citizens flying to the U.S., a European Commission spokesman said Thursday. Franco Frattini, the commissioner for justice and home affairs, together with German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and U.S. secretary for homeland security Michael Chertoff, reached the agreement on Wednesday. However, details wonât be made public until after a meeting of ambassadors for all 27 E.U. countries slated for Friday morning, said Friso Roscam Abbing, Frattiniâs spokesman. The ambassadors will have to sign off on the deal, which observers say is likely to happen. U.S. authorities have been trying to use the renewal of a transatlantic agreement permitting the transfer of European air passengersâ data, known as passenger name records (PNRs), to beef up their powers of surveillance of foreigners entering the U.S. Sharing the dataÂ breaches strict European data protection laws, but the European Commission and national governments in the 27 countries in the E.U. negotiated an exemption from the rules in order to allow the U.S. to better protect itself from potential terrorist attacks. That interim agreement was deemed illegal by the European Court of Justice, and the court gave the E.U. until the end of July to come up with a new accord. Failure to do so wouldÂ leave European airlines exposed to massive finesÂ and the possible loss of landing slots in the U.S if they donât continue to hand over the data, or legal action on data protection grounds in the E.U. if they do. Roscam Abbing declined to comment on reports that the political agreement reached Wednesday allows U.S. authorities to hold onto PNR data for 15 years. âWait until the briefing tomorrow,â he said.