US seeks to persuade EU deputies to back terror data deal

BRUSSELS — A senior US Homeland Security officer was travelling to Strasbourg Monday to urge the European parliament not to scupper an air passenger data deal which Washington says is vital in the fight against terror.The United States is keen to avoid another reverse following European Union lawmakers' decision last month to block a deal allowing US authorities to access Europeans' bank transfer data, also used in anti-terror probes."I want to have a conversation (with the European deputies) about privacy protection," Mary Ellen Callahan, Chief Privacy Officer at the US Homeland Security Department, said in Brussels prior to her talks at the EU parliament seat in Strasbourg, France on Tuesday."The PNR (passenger name records) was useful in detecting one third of the potential terrorists the US identified last year," she said. "These are concrete, specific results."Callahan will point to the results of a recent US review of the PNR.That report, published last month, proclaimed that the US Customs and Border Protection Department "continues to comply" with the terms of a US-EU deal on the data sharing and has even taken measures to tighten up the system to ease continuing privacy fears.The EU and the United States struck a provisional deal in 2007 on the transfer of personal information about passengers flying from Europe to the United States for use in Washington's "war on terror."The agreement provides the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with 19 categories of data about air travellers which it may store for 15 years and share with other law enforcement agencies under certain conditions.However last week the European parliament's civil liberties committee proposed postponing a vote of the full parliament on the data handover system.The committee's rapporteur Sophie In't Veld said "let's postpone the vote and use the time that would give us to devise a standard approach for the transfer of PNR data to third countries," setting "minimum conditions" for all such deals.In't Veld is proposing the parl

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