Fergie's Tech Blog

DHS Secretly Agrees to Share Passenger Data in Violation of Agreements

Via The ACLU.

The text of a secret agreement that the Department of Homeland Security executed with the Centers for Disease Control to share airline passenger data confirms what the American Civil Liberties Union had feared, which is that the U.S. government is distributing information that it explicitly promised it would not share. This is very troubling for several reasons.

First, it is continuing evidence that the American government, and especially its security establishment, does not take privacy and data protection seriously.

Second, it undermines the respect and credibility of our government when it makes promises as a result of careful negotiations among different stakeholders and then breaks those promises.

In 2003, the United States and the European Union reached an agreement under which the EU would share Passenger Name Record (PNR) data with the U.S., despite the lack of privacy laws in the United States adequate to ensure Europeans’ privacy. In return, DHS agreed that the passenger data would not be used for any purpose other than preventing acts of terrorism or other serious crimes. It is now clear that DHS did not abide by that agreement.

posted by Fergie @ 5/08/2006 10:36:00 AM