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US demands air travellers’ data, read a headline in The Guardian yesterday:

All passengers flying to the US from Britain will have personal information, including credit card details, handed over to the American authorities before they set foot on US soil, under a deal agreed yesterday.

The information a passenger submits to airline computers when buying a ticket - the passenger name record (PNR) - will be freely available to customs, immigration and other agencies in the US, where there are no data protection laws…

Despite fears that the American demand clashed with European data protection laws, the commission complied after the US authorities had threatened to stop flights to America.

Another unfortunate example of Europe being run from the other side of the Atlantic. It’s a shame the Eurocrats didn’t have the confidence to stand up to the US and demand it implements equivalent data protection laws before agreeing to hand over the data.

Did they really ever believe the US government would ban all flights from Europe if they did?

The US has a long history of fighting to protect its economic interests, and it’s popular to believe that a possible forthcoming war in Iraq will be fought for similar reasons. What, then, would the country achieve by cutting itself off from one of its primary trading partner groups, and how quickly would those countries find alternative trading parties that are far easier to deal with?

It would be a backwards step for the US, and Europe should have called its bluff.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 21st, 2003 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Europe, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.