Washington, D.C. (August 31, 2022) – A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines a June ruling by the European Union’s highest court that threatens well-established procedures for monitoring airline passenger records used in the fight against international terrorism and serious crime.
Airlines are required by law in Europe, the U.S., and many other countries to transmit Passenger Name Records (PNR) to security authorities before takeoff. The court’s decision limits how European Union member states examine, archive, and share these records among themselves, but it will also have a negative impact outside of Europe, including on U.S. border security.
Phillip Linderman, a Center fellow and author of the report, and a retired State Department official, writes that having this information on incoming travelers available for analysis and screening before they even reach immigration control is a significant security tool. Archiving these records provides a treasure trove of travel history that is highly valuable in connecting the dots in the fight against the movement of terrorists and criminals across national borders.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has, according to Linderman, “shortsightedly restricted the use of passenger records to immediate threats that help respond to a match on a watchlist or what is — in American parlance — an emerging probable-cause situation. In the name of extreme data-privacy protection, the CJEU has foolishly turned a blind eye to the role that PNR plays in fostering long-term and strategic assistance to security services in foiling terrorists and serious criminals.”
According to Linderman, the court’s decision should give the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) motivation to prioritize implementing exit controls, so CBP can gather its own data and biometrics directly on foreign travelers who depart the U.S. (instead of relying on PNR or passenger manifests for exit data) and could make possible the immediate electronic linkage of all entry-exit records. With time, the power of these entry-exit records archived in modern biometric databases would greatly exceed the security currently provided through PNR, in view of the coming EU limitations. |
