ACLU Seeks Information on Secret Data-Sharing Agreement Between Homeland Security and CDC (4/21/2006)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org Secret Agreement May Be Violating Privacy and Recent
European
Union Pact, ACLU Says
NEW YORK—Responding to the revelation that the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) has reached a secret agreement to share airline passenger data
with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Civil
Liberties Union today said it has asked the CDC to disclose details of the deal.
“The tracking of data on airline passengers, which can amount to building
lifetime dossiers on Americans, has been a hotly debated issue for many years –
and now we find out that two government agencies may have agreed, behind the
public’s back, to share data,” said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s
Technology and Liberty Project. “These agencies have no justification for
instituting a major new data-sharing arrangement on this issue, with all of its
implications for privacy, and keeping it hidden from public scrutiny and
debate.”
The ACLU’s request for information was filed today as a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request for a copy of the memorandum and related
information.
Disclosure of the secret agreement comes at a time when the CDC is proposing
controversial regulations that would require the airlines to collect and turn
over a broad array of personal information on air travelers. In formal
comments about the draft regulations submitted in March, the ACLU called the
proposal “a coercive data grab that will allow the unregulated data surveillance
of hundreds of millions of Americans.” The surveillance of airline
passengers through data collection has also been debated in the context of the
government’s failed “CAPPS II” program and its current “Secure Flight” program –
both of which purport to protect against terrorism by collecting information on
millions of travelers.
The agreement was disclosed in comments on the CDC’s draft regulations by the
Air Transport Association of America, which said that a written Memorandum of
Understanding between the two agencies reportedly includes “provisions for data
sharing, including allowing CDC access to passenger information.”
That deal, Steinhardt said, appears to violate an agreement between the
United States and the European Union over the sharing of European passenger
data. Under the agreement, the European Commission found that U.S. privacy
protections were “adequate” to protect the privacy of Europeans under the E.U.
legal standard (a finding that is currently being challenged by the European
Parliament in the European Court of Justice). In return, DHS agreed that
the passenger data would not be used for any purpose other than preventing acts
of terrorism or other serious crimes.
“Once again, we are seeing that DHS cannot be trusted to exhibit restraint in
the handling of personal information,” said ACLU Legislative Counsel Tim
Sparapani. “They collect information, say they’ll use it for one purpose,
and then they turn around and use it for another.” Added Steinhardt, “This
provision violates not only the agreement with the European Union, but a core
principle of privacy that is recognized around the world.”
The ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request to the CDC is online at: www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/25243lgl20060421.html
The ACLU’s comments on the proposed CDC information-collection regulations
are online at: www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/25244leg20060421.html
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