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Travelers to Europe May Face Fingerprinting
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For several years, the United States has required that airlines that fly into the country transmit detailed passenger data before the flight's arrival. In November, the European Commission, the E.U.'s executive arm, issued the same proposal. The United States is working on an electronic travel authorization system, requiring travelers from countries where visas are not required to visit here to submit identification and travel details before departure. Now the commission is proposing something similar.
Armed guards in plainclothes already sit on flights to and from Europe and within Europe, but the United States wants to be able to put air marshals on many more flights from Europe, DHS spokesman Knocke said. The Bush administration is negotiating this with individual European states.
European privacy advocate Simon Davies said European officials are "blindly following" the United States "without the slightest commitment to openness or accountability."
The problem with border fingerprint systems is that their success rate diminishes as they grow, said Davies, director of the London-based Privacy International. "Adding a hundred million fingerprints of dubious quality on top of an inaccurate database will exponentially increase the failure rate," he said.
About 13 million U.S. citizens fly from the United States to Europe each year, according to the International Air Transport Association. David Stempler, president of the Potomac-based Air Travelers Association, said he has no problem with the proposal, given that the United States requires something similar. "So what's good for the goose is good for the gander," he said.
But Susan Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which represents 2,500 business executives in the United States and abroad, said that such a database poses the risk of abuse. "Unauthorized access to info of this nature could reveal executive travel patterns," she said. "It's another way to know what you're doing and where you are going."
Anderson reported from Paris. Staff writer Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.
