European Parliament to vote on transfer of PNR data to the USA

Consideration and a vote on the draft European Parliament resolution against PNR data transfers to the USA, as recommended for approval by the LIBE Committee, has been placed on the draft agenda for the Europarl plenary session on Wednesday, 31 March 2004, in Strasbourg.

Statewatch, citing EUpolitix.com and internal Europarl documents, reports on the intense lobbying being carried out by the USA, and by factions within the EU, in support of a deal to authorize the already ongoing USA access to reservation data collected in the EU, and to find (in the face of plain facts to the contrary) that the non-protection from disclosure or misuse of travel data in the USA somehow satisfies EU legal standards of "adequacy" of data protection.

But the latest proposal, which is being presented to the council of EU governments as a way to try to bypass the Parliament, still rests on the so-called Undertakings which the USA Department of Homeland Security has promised to publish (but hasn't published yet) in the Federal Register.

As anyone who has read the Constitution knows, mere publication in the Federal Register does not, and cannot, give the "Undertakings" any legal significance in the USA: international treaties involving the USA must be ratified by the Senate before they come into effect. Members of the European Parliament, and of other EU and national government bodies, should think twice before finding that a draft treaty -- not yet introduced, much less ratified, in the Senate, and thus not subject to being invoked as binding in any USA legal proceeding -- provides anyone with any legally enforceable rights at all, much less "adequate" protection for privacy rights in PNR data.

Aside from the fact that the Undertakings are legally meaningless and completely unenforceable (at least in the USA) unless and until they are ratified as a treaty by the Senate, which neither the Undertakings nor the DHS have ever mentioned as a possibility, the Undertakings continue to contain, and to be based on, materially and demonstrably false and misleading claims about the nature of the data contained in airline reservations (PNR's).

As I noted in my earlier detailed analysis of the draft Undertakings, and of "Attachment A" to the Undertakings containing the list of PNR data elements to be authorized for access by the USA, the factual misrepresentations are so extreme as to betray either gross technical incompetence or deliberate intent to mislead.

That should come as no surprise: the claims made by the DHS about its proposed CAPPS-II airline passenger profiling and surveillance system have likewise been based on a profoundly inaccurate and misleading representation of what data is contained in PNR's, and how and by whom it is collected and transmitted.

European and other legislators abroad, still stinging from having been misled by the USA about the alleged factual basis for the invasion of Iraq, should -- and probably will -- exercise much more due diligence both in investigating the factual claims about PNR data in the Undertakings, and in auditing whether (as I've previously reported that it has not) the USA has actually complied, to date, with the restrictions the Undertakings claim that it has placed on its access to other PNR data.

USA to world musicians and artists: "Keep out!"

Artists from all over the world are being refused entry to the US on security grounds.
(The Guardian, UK)

The insanely cumbersome process of entering America [as a performing artist] now goes something like this: first, the manager or producer or venue who wants to book a foreign artist must petition one of four USCIS [US Customs and Immigration Service, part of what used to be the INS] service centres. They must prove the artist is unique, extraordinary or renowned, and that he or she intends to return to their home country after their work is done.

If the petition is accepted, it is then sent to the artist in their home country, and the artist in turn brings it to the US consulate, where he or she is fingerprinted and interviewed. After the interview, the waiting begins, as the consulate sends the application to the Department of Homeland Security and "all interested agencies". It may take seven weeks, it may take seven months, but - and here the Kafkaesque institutional absurdity really takes hold - the law says that visas can be applied for, at the earliest, only six months in advance. Waits of up to 10 months are not uncommon.

Nor are visa applications that are never returned. "A case can disappear into the ozone," says Ginsburg. The entire process normally runs from $2,000 to $4,000 per artist, depending on lawyers' fees, and that does not include travelling expenses to and from consulates. In Iran, there is no American consulate, so someone like Kiarostami must travel to Syria and back - twice.

I guess all this means that if you're in the USA, and want to hear or see world music and art first-hand, you'll just have to go travel yourself to find it, since the USA won't let it come to you.

One more reason to travel, if you needed one.