In March 2020, Frank van der Linde entered the immigration line for EU citizens at Schiphol International Airport in Amsterdam. Linde, a Dutch citizen and human rights lawyer, was returning home from outside the European Union, and the immigration officer asked him several questions about his trip. Linde thought it was a random check; A few minutes later, he was cleared for entry. But unbeknownst to Linde, his answers were recorded and shared with a Dutch prosecutor, who was gathering information about Linde’s movements.
The officer was informed of Linde’s arrival that day by a seemingly innocuous act that happens when you board a plane en route to the United States, most of Europe, and anywhere in the world – detailed about every passenger between airlines. Exchange of Personal Data. and governments. The data, which has been retained about you for years, is increasingly valuable to technology companies that are experimenting with using algorithms that can decide who is allowed to cross international borders.
Linde, who speaks publicly about homeless rights, anti-racism and pacifism, was first secretly flagged by Dutch police in 2017 as a person of interest under an Amsterdam municipality’s counter-terrorism program. . In July 2018, Linde had a “weird feeling” that she was being watched; He would eventually sue the government more than 250 times under freedom of information laws to uncover the extent of the surveillance. Although Linde was removed from the city’s watch list in 2019, later receiving a personal pardon from Amsterdam’s mayor, the investigation continued. When Linde came to know that the police had put his name on the international Travel warningHe wondered if they were also using his travel data to track him.
In October 2022, Linde requested his flight records from the government. The data, called a Passenger Name Record (PNR), is a digital trail of information related to an airline ticket purchase. PNR records are sent by most commercial airlines to the destination country approximately 48 to 72 hours prior to departure. Although PNR records may seem innocent, they contain a lot of sensitive personal information, including the passenger’s address, cell phone number, date of flight booking, where the ticket was purchased, credit card and other payment information, billing address, baggage Information, frequent flyer information. , general comments related to passengers, intended travel date, complete itinerary, names of accompanying passengers, travel agency information, historical ticket changes, and more.
In December 2022, two years after Linde passed through Schiphol, the Dutch PNR office, known as the Passenger Information Unit, handed Linde 17 travel records. They said they had not shared his data with others, but Linde was suspicious. He quickly filed an appeal. In March 2023, the Dutch government admitted that it had in fact shared Linde’s PNR details with border police three times, including before the March 2020 flight, when immigration officials secretly asked for the information. was gone (They also shared an additional seven flight records that they claim they discovered on just one second search.)
As Linde reviewed his PNR records, he was surprised to find that the government had some of his travel data wrong—some flights were missing, and in four cases, the government had records of flights he never took. were For example, a PNR record from 2021 states that Lynde traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland; Linde says he reserved the ticket, but changed his plans and never got on the plane. “What do companies do with data?” Linde asked as she scrolled through copies of PNR records on her laptop. “If commercial companies help analyze the wrong data, you can draw all kinds of conclusions.”
