Europe laid out strict conditions on Tuesday for the exchange of airline passenger data with the United States, Canada and Australia, insisting it should be restricted to terror and criminal probes.
The European Union's executive arm adopted proposals on swapping passenger name record (PNR) data with third countries in an effort to ease concerns about privacy rights.
The European Commission proposals follow the resumption in August of a banking data sharing scheme with the United States that had been suspended for months over privacy concerns raised by the European parliament. But the US government is less willing to make concessions on passenger data, EU diplomats say.
A deal on passenger data is crucial for European airlines since the transfer of such information is a condition for flying to the United States, a country still marked by the 2001 plane suicide attacks in New York and Washington.
Provisional PNR agreements with the United States and Australia are in operation, but the European parliament has postponed a vote on them as lawmakers have demanded modifications. (AFA)
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As usual, the US says "jump" and all we, obedient and docile sheep, do is ask "how high". Enough already with this pretext of 'war on terror'. The biggest terrorist nation is the US!