Passengers check in an AirAsia flight at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta December 28, 2014. Indonesia called off until first light a search for an AirAsia plane with 162 people on board that went missing on Sunday after pilots asked to cha
Passengers check in an AirAsia flight at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta December 28, 2014. Indonesia called off until first light a search for an AirAsia plane with 162 people on board that went missing on Sunday after pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather during a flight from Indonesia's Surabaya city to Singapore. Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501, an Airbus 320-200 carrying 155 passengers and seven crew, lost contact with Jakarta air traffic control at 6:17 a.m. (2317 GMT on Saturday). No distress signal had been sent, said Joko Muryo Atmodjo, an Indonesian transport ministry official. Reuters/Pius Erlangga

Under its counter-terrorism plans, the European Commission will soon force passengers flying to and from Europe to submit a long list of personal details. To be stored up to five years, the data will seek many personal details including the meal preferences of passengers and the flights they have missed.

The European Commission has already introduced the directive. When made operational, it will force air travelers to fill in at least 42 separate pieces of information. Though details like nationality or frequent flyer information will not bother the passengers, questions on meal preference or the number of one-way tickets bought may puzzle many, the Guardian reported.

Consensus Decision

The EU plans to store the information for five years and would share the data with security personnel upon demand. The European Commission defends the move saying it is necessary to combat terrorism. The proposal has been endorsed by interior ministers across the European Union. The EU ministers came to a consensus on the matter when they gathered in Paris recently, for the ‘Je suis Charlie’ march.

According to the report in RT News, the proposal would create a pan-European ‘super database,’ with information on tens of millions of air travellers, shared amongst the 28 EU countries.

However, many human rights groups are sceptical of the move and they call it as an attempt of blanket harvesting personal information and shrewd incursion on personal privacy.

Violation of Privacy

Jan Philipp Albrecht, vice chairman of the European parliament’s civil liberties committee blasted the move and said: “the European Commission’s plans are an affront to the critics of the European Parliament and European Court of Justice who have said that data retention without any link to a certain risk or suspicion is not proportionate.”

Albrecht called it an open breach of fundamental rights and effort at blanket retention of passenger data. He said, more than a full take of PNR data, it was essential to focus on suspects and risk flights. He noted that Paris attacks have shown the fallacy of mass retention of data,when it comes to fighting jihadis.

Many observers feel that the decision of the European Commission is a U-turn from the ruling made by the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee in April 2013, which rejected the Commission’s proposal to recode PNR data. The Civil Liberties panel had said airlines were free to collect PNR data, during check-in. In 2011, the European Commission demanded air carriers to provide EU countries with data of passengers who were entering or leaving the region.

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