PNR Deserves More Privacy Safeguards Say French Representatives

France’s Assemblée Nationale believes that some issues still need to be resolved regarding the Proposal for a Council Framework Decision of November 6, 2007 on the use of Passenger Name Record (PNR) for law enforcement purposes, COM(2007) 654.

Among the issues that still need to be debated and resolved, according to the French representatives, are:

- Full respect for fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and the right to data protection, which must be respected at every step of the collection and processing of data;

- Data conservation must be reduced to a reasonable period, that is, between three and six years;

- Sensitive data must be subject to specific safeguards, regardless of whether it will be ultimately decided whether or not they can be used, partially or totally, in pending investigations or prosecutions;

- Stricter rules should be obtained regarding data transfers to third countries, so that a Member State cannot be a source of leakage of masses of raw data to a third State.