AS4 supports law-enforcement to fight terrorism

Have you heard of the EU Passenger Name Record Directive?  

On 27 April 2016, the European Parliament and the Council adopted the EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive.

The atrocious terrorist attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015 and Brussels on 22 March 2016 showed again that Europe needed to scale up its common response to terrorism. The Directive is an important contribution to the EU joint efforts to fight terrorism and serious crimes, such as human and narcotic trafficking.

CEF eDelivery AS4 supports these efforts by contributing to the implementation of the PNR Directive.

Criminals and terrorists increasingly operate across borders and their activities often involve international travel. The Directive requires airlines to transmit passenger data to law enforcement authorities for all international flights to and from the EU.

PNR data to fight terrorism

When booking their flights, passengers provide airlines with basic information such as contact details and means of payment. This PNR data provided by passengers and collected by airlines will be transferred to dedicated Passenger Information Units (PIUs) in the respective EU Member State. The PIUs will then analyse the PNR data to detect suspicious travel patterns, identify high-risk passengers and facilitate the investigation, prosecution and unravelling of criminal networks. The Directive also includes robust privacy and data protection safeguards ensuring full compliance with the right to data protection.

How does CEF AS4 facilitate the Directive?

The AS4 technical specification offers a secure exchange protocol for Member States and businesses. The rules implementing the Directive specify the data formats and transmission protocols to be used by airlines when transferring PNR data to PIUs, and promotes the use of AS4 as a secure exchange protocol.

The rules state that

 “Industry and Member States should be encouraged to take the necessary measures so that AS4 becomes in the following years the reference protocol for the transmission of PNR data by air carriers to Member States’ PIUs.”

A review of the application of these rules will take place in April 2021 to consider the possibility that proprietary products be replaced by open standard transmission protocols.

Since 25 May 2018, the PNR Directive is being actively implemented in the Member States. The Commission remains strongly committed to promote the use of AS4 to the largest extent possible. The CEF eDelivery team offers training sessions and deployment support of the CEF eDelivery Components to public authorities. Support is also available to other stakeholders, such as airlines, that want to reuse Domibus, the European Commission sample implementation of the AS4 profile.

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