US to store airline passengers' data for 15 years to check terrorism

Washington, May 26 (ANI): To check terror and illegal immigration, a draft agreement between the United States and the European Union has revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security will store data of passengers who fly between the US to Europe for fifteen years.

The data to be collected includes 19 separate items relating to each airline passenger, including their billing details, contact numbers, baggage details, the names of those they are travelling with and their itinerary, The Guardian reports.he 15-year retention period is likely to prove controversial as it is three times the five years allowed for in the EU's PNR (passenger name record) regime.

A German green party member of the European parliament's civil liberties committee, Jan Philip Albrecht has objected to the agreement saying blanket retention of personal data for more than five years violates the fundamental constitutional principles of European states.

The agreement seeks to downplay privacy concerns, as the individuals' identity would be dormant database after five years. But the agreement allows the authorities to retrieve the data at any stage.

It gives the right to file review petition in the US federal court to people, wrongly identified as a threat and outlines procedures in the event of anticipated data losses or other unauthorized disclosure.

The US Senate had earlier passed a resolution saying it "simply could not accept" any watering down by European ministers of data- sharing, describing it as "an important part of the layered defences against terrorism".

But the scheme is subject to the approval of the European parliament, which said the data should, under no circumstances, be used for profiling. (ANI)