I have been following this story about what sort of data the USA is demanding that airlines must supply about its passengers for some time. The EU has been challenging this requirement over the past two years for a number of reasons, including insisting that the USA should be sent the data rather than them retrieving it from EU airline databases. Data protection advocates are very concerned as to who will have access to this data, once it reaches the US coast.
Opponents insists that some 1,500 agencies will have access to this data and are concerned that it may be misused by them and eventually fall into none security agency hands. The latest chapter in this story can be found here. .
Although the article does list more information about the data that has been requested by then US authorities, I thought it would be clearer if represented in a table. The so called Passenger Name Record (PNR) will contain 34 individual items of information about you covering…
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PNR
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Passenger Name Record (PNR)
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My Notes / Comments
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|---|---|---|
| Information about you | ||
| 1 | Passengers Name. | Needs to match exactly what is on your passport |
| 2 | Full postal address. | Including Postcode |
| 3 | Date of Birth. | Needs to match exactly what is on your passport |
| 4 | Passport Number | |
| 5 | Country of Citizenship. | |
| 6 | Sex. | |
| 7 | Country of Residence. | |
| 8 | US Visa number including date and where issued | What happens traveling on the Visa Waiver program is not clear. |
| 9 | Address while in the USA. | If it is a hotel then make sure the Zip code is included. |
| 10 | Telephone contact numbers. | UK and USA |
| 11 | Your email address. | Yet another opportunity to receive spam! |
| 12 | Airline frequent flyer number and number of miles collected. | Will their be enough room for holders of multiple cards? |
| 13 | Address on Frequent Flyer account. | Probably needs to match your home address given in field 2 above. |
| 14 | Your history of not showing up for flights. | The number of flights that you’ve missed! Did you know that the airline we’re collecting this info about you already! |
| Information about your flight booking | ||
| 15 | Date of flight reservation. | |
| 16 | Date of travel | |
| 17 | Date ticket was issued. | |
| 18 | Travel agency name. | |
| 19 | Travel agency agents name. | I wonder what they would have to say about this? |
| 20 | Billing address used by the travel agency to invoice you. | Probably needs to match your home address given in field 2 above. But good chance that it will not, in the case of business travel! |
| 21 | How was the ticket paid for. If by credit card include card number. | We are told by many data agencies not to give out your credit card information, so why does this need to conflict with that advice. However, why do they not want the address of the credit card holder? Do they already have that?. |
| 22 | The Flight ticket number. | |
| 23 | Which organisation issued the flight ticket. | Complicated in some cases of charter tickets |
| 24 | Was the ticket purchased at the airport just before the flight? Yes/No? | |
| 25 | Is this a real booking? – Is the passenger on a wait list/standby list. | |
| 26 | Ticket pricing information. | |
| 27 | Ticket Locator code in the airline reservation computer. | |
| 28 | History of any changes that have been made to the reservation | |
| Information about the flight itself | ||
| 29 | Passenger allocated seat number. | |
| 30 | Passenger seat information – Window / Aisle. | |
| 31 | Passenger luggage tag numbers. | |
| 32 | One way or return ticket. | |
| 33 | Special requests including special meals requested, wheelchair required, help for an unaccompanied child |
If you have ordered an Halal or Kosher meal this will not be recorded, but if you ordered a vegetarian meal it will be recorded! This is because the US says that they don’t want to collect ethnically identifiable information!
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| Information about passengers itinerary | ||
| 34 | Any other flight booked on same trip, additional accommodation information, car rental information, any rail reservations or tours booked. Any information about any groups you are traveling with including who purchased the tickets for the group |
In other words a method of tracking your movement across the USA during your stay there. |
As you can see, it’s a lot of information that is required to be transferred to the US authorities.
Do you feel comfortable about this? What do you feel about this? Comments welcome.
Links related to this post:
What data British Airways requires – known as Advance Passenger Information if you fly with them.
Computer Weekly reports that SITA has gone live with a system for filtering sensitive passenger PNR information.
News item from Managing Information about the SITA deal.
Another news article on the subject from FT.com
Tags: Passenger Name Record (PNR), US Immigration, Data Protection
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Beasley's Place 
Lord Patel has been following this unilateral surrender of passenger data for some time adn links to your excellent and details list in postings today.It is evident that having prepared a Navigation Order by the device of a regal Order in Council – disturbing Her most Excellent Majesty on her holidays at Balmoral to “patch” round any problems by the brreakdown in agreements between EU/US negotiators, the UK Gubment have, as usual been happy to breach the united nature of the negotiations.This does of course provide airlines operating from UK airports a competitive advantage – and also conceals the details currently sought and provided to the US. It is interesting that the BA site is somewhat economical with the truth about what information they provide on the website page you point to.It is interesting that press reports so far, mention the US seek in their negotiations “further and better particulars” in any future agreement but do not mention what they are. …. fingerpints ?Lord Patel finds it worrying that personal information is so casually dispersed by UK legislators and elected representatives with little or no Parliamentary supervision.That SITA (a Swiss company) is becoming an established intermediary in this process, free from EU legal control gives further cause for concern about data privacy and protection.Tom Marten, SITA vice president for government and security business, said SITA acted as an intermediary between the airline and the receiving government.He said, “We extract the PNR data from the airline’s reservations and departure control systems and push it across our secure network after the sensitive fields of information have been filtered out. <>None of the PNR data is saved on our system once it has been exported.<>”How can the traveller, who has no contract with SITA, who are based outside the EU be certain that this is actually what happens ?The situation is wholly unsatisfactory…. see FRONTEX, IDENT1 etc.,
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