Transatlantic Cooperation on Travelers’ Data Processing: From Sorting Countries to Sorting Individuals

The Migration Policy Institute has released a second study in partnership with the European University Institute on ways in which the United States and Europe can address major immigration challenges facing policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. The report, Transatlantic Cooperation on Travelers’ Data Processing: From Sorting Countries to Sorting Individuals, examines the post-9/11 programs and agreements implemented by US and European governments to identify terrorists and serious transnational criminals through the collection and processing of increasing quantities of traveler data.

Authors Paul De Hert and Rocco Bellanova detail how governments, which once focused their screening primarily on a traveler’s nationality (“sorting countries”), increasingly are more directly examining personal characteristics (“sorting individuals”). While such data processing is supposed to help governments maintain more effective control over cross-border movement without hampering mobility, data sharing and data processing raise a host of legal and political questions related to individuals’ privacy and data-protection rights. This informative report examines the agreements the United States and European Union have struck over Passenger Name Record (PNR) data, as well as ongoing transatlantic information-sharing agreement negotiations and the European Commission’s efforts to achieve an EU-wide framework. Several issues arise from governments’ use (and sometimes misuse) of travelers’ data, including: use of sensitive personal information for purposes other than counterterrrorism and transnational crime control; and travelers’ right to judicial redress and compensation if the data are misused.

With the United States and the European Union engaged in negotiations that have surfaced their differences on data protection and privacy, the authors suggest those differences are less about principles than about different legal and institutional structures and different approaches to implementing these principles. As such, it may be difficult to negotiate common procedures and processes, particularly in areas of judicial redress and data retention and scope of collection.

KJ