EU approves air passenger data transfers to Australia

A new agreement on the transfer of EU air passengers’ personal data to the Australian Customs Service has been approved by the European Parliament.

The data will be used to prevent terrorist offences and serious transnational crime. It will be retained by the Australian authorities for a maximum of five and a half years, with the agreement remaining in place for seven years.

Passenger Name Record (PNR) data collected by air carriers includes, inter alia, names, addresses, passport numbers and credit card details. Under Australian law, air companies are obliged to send it to the Australian Customs Service prior to passenger departure. The new agreement aims to bring data transfers into line with EU data protection rules.

“We give a positive assessment on a number of points, in particular the limitation of the purpose definition. It has been considerably tightened and it includes only the fight against terrorism and serious transnational crime. I think this is a very important achievement,” said rapporteur Sophia in´t Veld in a debate preceding the vote. “However,” she added, “there are also a couple of remaining concerns, the most fundamental point being that the necessity and the proportionality of the mass collection and storage of data has been demonstrated only partially and not sufficiently.”

The Australian Customs Service will retain passenger PNR data for the purpose of preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting terrorist offences or serious transnational crime. After the first three years, all information which could be used to identify a passenger would be ‘depersonalized’ meaning that data such as the passenger’s name or her/his contact information would be masked out.

To prevent any accidental loss or unauthorised disclosure of data, PNR data will be held in a secure environment, with high-level systems and physical intrusion controls, and be permanently deleted after five and a half years.

For more information
www.europarl.europa.eu