Slashdot Mirror
EU Court Blocks Passenger Data Deal with U.S.
Reinier writes "The BBC reports that the European Court of Justice has ruled the airline data agreement with the United States is illegal. The 'agreement' required airlines to share 34 items of personal data of their passengers with American authorities at least fifteen minutes before take-off of any flight to the US. The Court of Justice examined the agreement after the European Parliament objected. A PDF of the ruling is available online."
Article 25 of the EU Directive can be found on a number of sites and states that non-member countries may be provided with member data in the case of need. It's quite vague (standard law-talkin' guys strategy) so I could see it being read either way--entirely open ended!
My work here is dung.
This is what courts standing up for individual privacy rights look like.
Note how the US played the "Terrorism" card, and the courts didn't immediately fold.
You may wish to send this news item to your Attorney General.
Or you may wish to remain asleep.
Whatevers good with you.
Does anyone think that US will start banning flights or threaten to remove financial aid if the data isn't shared? Would a European country give in to the US or obey the court ruling?
I think this is going to be a sticky mess since the rule of law isn't being respected in the US now and US attitudes towards foreign courts has always been "screw you, mate!"
Hell, this could open the floodgates for any kind of crazed nut-case.
Mustafa Pasta?
Red Flag! Red Flag!
Basically, the main problem of the database-war between the USA and the EU is, that the EU guarantee to its citizens certain rights concerning their data, like not having it transferred to third parties, the right to review the data about oneself and some limited rights to have the data erased. To prevent clever corporations to circumvent those regulations by shipping the data outside the EU, there's a directive that personal data can only be shipped to countries, that have similar data-protection rights (so called safe havens). As you can imagine, the USA isn't really too interested in giving its own citizens data protection rights from corporations and the gouvernement and even less on granting those rights to foreigners. Thus, no data transfer of personal data of EU-citizens to the USA.
At least all the relatives still acted surprised when we told them the name.
Well, the point isn't to preotect you from getting into legal databases, the point is that a citizen you have certain rights to the data in those databases. And no, those rights don't allow you to have your criminal record deleted immediately or forbid the gouvernement to collect data about you.
These rights are more to prevent the gouvernement to sell this data to the next direct marketeer, which will use it to make personalised adds along the road you drive every morning, or to have pharmacies sell your drug purchase history to your employer.
Why just the other day I heard the US president talking about the "Global War on Tourism".
At least I think that's what he said. I understand that to show his support for legal immigration, President Bush often pretends to struggle with the pronounciation of simple English words.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
These are the 34 items, taken from the DHS document at http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/CBP-DHS_P NRUndertakings5-25-04.pdf which also describes how easily the data can be distributed, and how "deleted after 3.5 years" doesn't really mean what it says, but may mean that your data goes into a file marked "deleted, honest, and reely hard to read because it's raw data" and kept for 8 years or more.
1. PNR record locator code
2. Date of reservation
3. Date(s) of intended travel
4. Name
5. Other names on PNR
6. Address
7. All forms of payment information
8. Billing address
9. Contact telephone numbers
10. All travel itinerary for specific PNR
11. Frequent flyer information (limited to miles flown and address(es))
12. Travel agency
13. Travel agent
14. Code share PNR information
15. Travel status of passenger
16. Split/Divided PNR information
17. Email address
18. Ticketing field information
19. General remarks
20. Ticket number
21. Seat number
22. Date of ticket issuance
23. No show history
24. Bag tag numbers
25. Go show information
26. OSI information
27. SSI/SSR information
28. Received from information
29. All historical changes to the PNR
30. Number of travelers on PNR
31. Seat information
32. One-way tickets
33. Any collected APIS information
34. ATFQ fields
The US doesn't give "financial aid" to Europe. Instead, Europe and Asia are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the US to keep the US economy afloat (it's not called "financial aid", but "loans and investments", but the end result is not that different). They are doing this because the US is an important export market for Europe and Asia and the world economy would collapse if they didn't do this.
So, the US has some credible economic threats against Europe, but withdrawal of "financial aid" isn't it. The US threat is more like "we can commit economic suicide and take you with us"; it's a threat better exercised with great care.
Kosher doesn't mean it was blessed. It means the food doesn't contain any forbidden items, such as improperly-slaughtered meat, unkosher meats or fish (eg, pork, shellfish, etc), and so on. I think there's a bit of confusion because kosher slaughtering (shechitah) does require someone with ordination to do it, because of potential complexities and problematic situations - indeed, this is what the bulk of a proper rabbinical ordination covers in material.
Halal is apparently similar, but less strict on the number of "inherently un-Halal" items (for instance, I believe Muslims can eat shellfish). I'm no expert, but I've been told that kosher is a subset of Halal - so Muslims who can't find Halal food can rely on kosher certification in a pinch. I don't think they're supposed to do that as the first option, though, which is understandable (after all, their own authorities should be the one making the call).
You can get foods which are both kosher and Halal - for instance, the My Own Meals brand (they do instant meals and MRE-esque stuff) has a good kosher certification, and at least some sort of Halal certification.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Yes, that sums it up quite well. And given the choice, trusting the gouvernement seems more reasonable, as they already have certain monopols (law making, law enforcement, military power). So if your gouvernement becomes corrupt to a point that even basic trust isn't justified any more, your personal data will be your least concern. Another feature of gouvernements is that it keeps the level of corruption rather equal across the branches. So if you still have a few branches you trust, there's a good chance you can trust the other branches as much.
On the other side you have the private sector, where every corporation does as it thinks it can get away with. If one oversteps the boundary, they'll declare bankrupt and the same people start another corporation with a different name and the same game. Self-regulation has been proven many times in the past not to work, a very popular example for this is boiler safety in the UK and US in the late 1800s. If the major concern is the protection of weak individuals against corporations, asking the industry to play fair and nice is naïve, if so much money can be made by not playing nice. Also corporations will have a hard time being more trustworthy than the gouvernement, which can threaten the people working in the corporation. Never underestimate the persuavie power of free roaming death-squads.
To balance things out, the private sector works far better if the goal is effiency to deliver products and services. So if you want cheap and efficient data protection, go to the private sector, if you want trustworthy data protection, stay with the gouvernement.