The arguments over passenger data information sought by the US from EU travellers are strong . . . both for and against, writes Tom Clonan
There remains considerable unease around the fledgling long-term agreement between the European Union and the United States which affords US intelligence and security agencies unlimited access to detailed Passenger Name Record (PNR) information about the millions of people from the EU - including Irish citizens - who fly to the US.
Groups such as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties have expressed legitimate concern over issues of data protection and privacy.
There are many, however, in the defence and intelligence communities - on both sides of the Atlantic - who would argue that fears within the EU over the right to privacy should be balanced against real and ongoing security concerns relating to the threat posed by militant Islamists living in or transiting through Europe.
Last weekend, US secretary for homeland security Michael Chertoff and the interior ministers of Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Poland attended an anti-terrorism conference hosted by the German interior minister Wolfgang Schauble at Werder, 50km southwest of Berlin.
At the conference there was evidence of a growing consensus among the EU's major security partners that Europe's collective response to the threat of militant Islamists, particularly those with EU citizenship, was not adequate.
In Dublin last week, prior to the conference, Chertoff alluded to the threat to the EU and the US posed by militant Islamists based in Europe.
Speaking at the Irish Institute of European Affairs (IIEA) on Thursday, Chertoff (a former US Appeals Court judge, famous in the US for tackling organised crime and in particular, Mafia don John Gotti during the 1980s) repeated his view that there remained a significant "strategic threat [ from militant Islamists] for the EU as well as the US".
"You don't have to be a soothsayer to predict another attack within the EU or the US," he maintained.
A central theme of Chertoff's address to the IIEA was how the Bush administration had recognised the requirement to harmonise and co-ordinate state and federal agencies within the US to deal with the threat posed by ideologically-driven terrorist cells.
The purpose of this co-ordination, according to Chertoff, was to target clandestine militant Islamist terror cells - many of whose EU or US members have no prior criminal convictions or intelligence profile when they are at their most vulnerable, that is to say, when their members must face state border controls at the planning stages of terrorist operations.
"We must be willing, as nations, to operate in concert and collectively, and to integrate our security perimeters to create a safe space for trade and travel balanced with security," Chertoff told The Irish Times.
In support of this concept of an integrated, seamless so-called biometric border, Chertoff cited instances in which visitors to the US were denied access on the basis of suspicious credit card and travel patterns identified through the exchange of PNR data.
In one case, the fingerprints of a male Middle Eastern traveller who was briefly detained and then deported at O'Hare Airport in Chicago - under the PNR screening system - were subsequently found on the steering wheel of a truck bomb which killed more than 100 people in Baghdad.
In citing such examples and linking the activities of jihadis in Iraq and elsewhere to apparently foiled terrorist attacks in the US, Chertoff argued that the ends justified the means in terms of what he called "quantum leaps in security surveillance saving lives".
The amount of data on private Irish citizens - including the fingerprints of all of those visiting the US - currently being transmitted to US intelligence agencies, includes more than 30 information fields including name, date of birth, telephone number and credit card details.
This unprecedented information flow may well have unanticipated negative consequences for Irish citizens travelling to the US.
When challenged in Dublin last week on the right to privacy or anonymity on the part of EU and US citizens, Chertoff replied: "When we as citizens seek to interact in the world, say enter an aircraft or a public building, I don't think you have the right to anonymity."
Critics of the PNR data exchange - particularly Irish citizens mindful of the relatively recent incorrect use of forensic evidence to convict innocent Irish men and women wrongfully of terrorist offences in Britain - will likely remain sceptical and uneasy about Washington's desire to collect and collate vast swathes of electronic and biometric information on EU citizens.
On the other hand, Europe's uneven and badly co-ordinated security infrastructure, which lacks an overarching federal structure - with some member states such as Ireland unable to secure its borders or monitor movements of people within its jurisdiction - will probably continue to facilitate the activities of groups such as al-Qaeda.
Tom Clonan is The Irish Times Security Analyst. He lectures in the School of Media, DIT