We are taking legal action against the mass processing of passenger data!

The European PNR Directive (Directive 2016/681) requires airlines to automatically transfer their passengers’ data to government passenger data centers, called Passenger Information Units. Data records are centrally stored and can be accessed by numerous authorities.

The data records are then automatically processed and compared with both established international databases (such as Europol, Interpol etc.) and so-called “patterns”, specifically created based on known flight patterns of past perpetrators. Thus, every European passenger, approximately 170 million yearly in Germany alone, are subjected to mass surveillance without any factual basis of suspicion whatsoever. Each individual, whether previously suspected of a crime or not, can thus be subjected to stigmatizing investigations, just for coincidentally having similar flight patterns to past offenders. This randomized way of identifying new suspects in the mass of previously unscrupulous passengers constitutes a new form of dragnet search. Due to the measure’s dubious reliability many passengers will be affected by false results of opaque automatic data evaluation programs and fall victim to stigmatizing police measures as a result. Moreover, it is equally possible to transmit the data to both other EU member countries and non-EU member countries. This amounts to mass surveillance of passengers in air traffic.

The Society for Civil Rights – Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte e.V. (GFF) – and epicenter.works – Plattform Grundrechtspolitik support plaintiffs in their proceedings before German and Austrian courts. The aim is to trigger referrals enabling the overturning of the current form of passenger data storage by the European Court of Justice (CJEU). In January 2020, the District Court of Cologne, Germany, indeed submitted to the CJEU the question whether the PNR Directive violates fundamental rights.

GFF is a Berlin-based NGO and conducts strategic litigation for fundamental and human rights. Epicenter.works is a data protection and civil rights NGO based in Vienna with a focus on data retention.

We thank the Digital Freedom Fund for supporting this project.

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