How much do we care about governments knowing when, where to, and possibly with whom we travel?
Many of us today are used to giving away a lot of information concerning their private lives on social networks, but what if it were possible to get part of that information directly from the airlines we travel with?
Today, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament rejected a proposal which the Commission put forward in 2011 and which aims to "oblige air carriers to
provide EU countries with the data of passengers entering or leaving the
EU, for use in preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting
serious crime and terrorist offences."
The vote was relatively close (30-25) and anti-terrorism is a strong counter-argument, so the proposal's story does not finish here. We will see where the balance between privacy and control will be struck, in the end.
