On the 21st of April the EU Council adopted the Passenger Name Records Directive, a security mechanism which enables law enforcement and national security agencies to access the personal data of everyone flying into and outside of the EU. This includes addresses, names, credit card information and details on accompanying passengers, even minors.
READ MOREOn 2 December 2015, the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties (LIBE) Committee endorsed a directive on “the use of passenger name record (PNR) data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime” (EU-PNR). It seems, therefore, that the long journey of the EU-PNR directive – initially proposed in 2011 – is coming to its end, as the European Parliament (EP) is expected to hold a final vote in February 2016. However, this directive still seems strongly contestable – and contested – on the grounds that it jeopardizes EU citizens’ fundamental rights to privacy and data protection (Art. 7 and 8), while its effectiveness in fighting terrorism remains unclear
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