U.S. Orders Airlines to Release Fliers' Data
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TSA will collect domestic passenger records for June 2004; data will be used to test program aiming to hunt for terrorists. -The Washington Post
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The United States and the European Union reached an antiterrorism deal yesterday after months of wrangling over privacy rights, giving American law enforcement agencies continued access to passenger data on US-bound flights. US authorities say the data enable them to notify the airline or European customs officials before takeoff if any of the passengers are on an American wanted ...
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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 Federal Aviation Administration has ordered airlines to inspect wing slats on all newer Boeing 737 aircraft after an initial investigation said a loose part caused a fuel leak and subsequent fire that destroyed a China Airlines 737 last week in Japan.
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The carrier did nothing wrong when it shared passenger data related to the Sept. 11 attacks, the Department of Transportation rules.
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The Transportation Security Administration shifts responsibility for screening travelers from the airlines to the government. The new system, dubbed Secure Flight, seeks to target fewer people and to do so more accurately.
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The U.S. government raised its threat warning to the highest level for commercial flights from Britain to the United States early Thursday in response to a terror plot disrupted in London. Terrorists had targeted United, American and Continental airlines, two U.S. counterterrorism officials said.
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EU ministers on Friday backed plans to collect data on air travellers coming to Europe, a move which could force visitors to provide information three times before entering.
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A Web site commissioned by the TSA to help travelers whose names were erroneously listed on airline watch lists had security issues, a Congressional report says.
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Federal regulators ordered airlines to inspect the wings of more than 700 Boeing jets in response to a fire that destroyed a plane after it landed in Japan last week, officials said yesterday.
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Albeit several days after an official deadline had already passed, negotiators for law enforcement officials in the US and Europe have agreed to resume a controversial program in which the personal data of European airline passengers traveling into the US may now be shared with US officials.
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The federal government said yesterday that it will order airlines to turn over millions of passenger records by November so it can begin testing a vast computer program that will hunt for suspected terrorists seeking to board commercial aircraft.
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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 yesterday.
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(InfoWorld) - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, demanding the agency turn over information about an "invasive" data-mining system used to assess the terrorist threat posed by U.S. travelers. The EFF, an advocacy group focused on privacy and civil liberties, asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for the expedited release of records related to the DHS Automated Targeting System, or ATS, a program DHS unveiled in a November privacy notice in the Federal Register. The EFF filed Freedom of Information Act requests for information on the program on Nov. 7 and Dec. 6. ATS creates and assigns "risk assessments" to virtually all travelers as they enter and exit the U.S. by air or other means, according to the DHS filing. The DHS filing on the program raised objections from privacy advocates, who said ATS could violate federal privacy law and civil rights. ATS might also violate a federal law prohibiting DHS from developing algorithms assigning risks to passengers not on government watch lists, the EFF said. The program, as described, would track tens of millions of travelers, including U.S. citizens, the EFF said. "Individuals have no right to access information about themselves contained in the system, nor request correction of information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, untimely or incomplete," EFF lawyers David Sobel and Marcia Hofmann wrote in their complaint, filed Tuesday in the district court. The U.S. government will retain the risk assessment information for 40 years, according to DHS records. The information will be made available to "untold" numbers of federal, state, local and foreign agencies, the EFF said in a press release. "You don't know what information that assessment comes from," Hofmann said. "You don't know how that information will be used against you." The ATS program for cargo coming into the U.S. has been in place since the early 1990s, and its passenger screening capabilities since the mid-'90s, said DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen. DHS, which was created in March 2003, published the Federal Register notice about the program now after reviewing ATS and finding it had not yet been disclosed to the public, Agen said. The notice was "an effort to be transparent," Agen said. Agen declined to comment on the EFF lawsuit, but defended ATS. It's used to identify potential terrorists and terrorist weapons entering the U.S., he said. DHS is "expected to protect this country" from those threats, he added. "Without [ATS], we'd be virtually blind." The EFF wants to see DHS records that discuss possible redress for people who dispute the ATS assessments, records showing the number of arrests resulting from an ATS screening and records of complaints from people about the assessments. The EFF also wants to know if DHS has looked at the error rates in the government and private databases used in ATS, whether DHS has set up an oversight board to monitor the use of ATS and whether DHS has implemented security measures to protect the system against hackers. "DHS needs to provide answers, and provide them quickly, to the millions of law-abiding citizens who are worried about this 'risk assessment' score that will follow them throughout their lives," the EFF's Sobel said in a statement.
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The nation's top transportation official ordered an investigation of two airlines that canceled hundreds of flights over the holiday weekend because of computer and staffing problems, stranding thousands of travelers.
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Negotiators have reached an agreement on how to transfer information about passengers flying to the U.S. from Europe.
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The government says all U.S. airlines must turn over passenger data so that it can test a planned screening system. The airline industry and others complain that the order will mean massive privacy violations, extra expenses and possible trouble with foreign countries. By Ryan Singel.