Sarah speaking about the Australia-EU PNR agreement (Newham Borough Liberal Democrats)

Newham Borough Liberal Democrats <info@libdems.org.uk>

Sarah speaking about the Australia-EU PNR agreement

October 20, 2008 12:30 PM
By Sarah Ludford (on behalf of the ALDE group) in European Parliament
Originally published by Sarah Ludford MEP

Mr President, I gather there is a new rule, at least for the Council presidency, that they do not turn up on Mondays! As someone who comes to Strasbourg only under protest, I would quite like that rule to apply to me.

As the rapporteur said, the schemes for using PNR data are unclear and legally insecure and risk looking like a surveillance state for its own sake. My particular concern is the practice of data mining, and behavioral and identity profiling. Apart from the questions of legitimacy and effectiveness, I worry about what happens to a person singled out for attention.

This could be because they had an associate of interest to the police. Vice-President Barrot says that enforcement action cannot be taken solely on the basis of automated processing, but what happens to the original singling out of someone as being of possible interest? We need to have an absolute assurance that that trace is deleted.

If data are shared and stored, the dangers of a nasty fate, as happened to Maher Arrar, rendered to torture for seven months after being picked up at JFK Airport, cannot be regarded as fanciful.