Inside the Black Box of Predictive Travel Surveillance

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 immigration officials asked him a series of questions about his trip. Linde thought it was a random check; A few minutes later, he was cleared to enter. But unbeknownst to Lind, his answers were recorded and shared with a Dutch public prosecutor, who was gathering information on Lind’s movements.

The officer was informed of Lind’s arrival that day by a seemingly innocuous act that happens whenever you board a flight in the United States, much of Europe and increasingly anywhere in the world – the exchange of detailed personal information about each passenger between airlines. and government. Data held about you for years is increasingly valuable to technology companies that are testing algorithms that can determine who is allowed to cross international borders.

Linde, who has been outspoken about homeless rights, anti-racism and pacifism, was secretly flagged by Dutch police in 2017 under the Amsterdam municipality’s anti-terrorism program. In July 2018, Lind had a “weird feeling” that she was being watched; He would sue the government more than 250 times under the Freedom of Information Act to reveal the extent of the surveillance. Although Linde was removed from the city’s watchlist in 2019, after later receiving a personal pardon from Amsterdam’s mayor, the investigation continued. When Linde learned that the police had put his name on the international Travel WarningHe wondered if they were using his travel data to track him.

In October 2022, Linde requested his flight records from the government. The data known as Passenger Name Record (PNR) is a digital trail of information related to the purchase of an airline ticket. PNR records are sent by most commercial airlines 48 to 72 hours before departure to the destination country. Although PNR records may seem innocuous, they contain highly sensitive personal information including the traveler’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 passenger comments, intended travel dates, full travel itinerary, names of fellow travelers, travel agency information, historical change tickets, and more.

In December 2022, more than two years after Linde passed through Schiphol, the Dutch PNR office, called the Passenger Information Unit, handed over 17 travel records to Linde. They said they didn’t share his data with others, but Linde was suspicious. He quickly filed an appeal. In March 2023, the Dutch government admitted it had shared Lind’s PNR details with border police three times, before the March 2020 flight, when immigration officers were ordered to secretly extract the information. (They also shared an additional seven flight records that they claim they discovered only in a second search.)

When Linde reviewed her PNR records, she was surprised to find that some of the travel information the government had on her was incorrect—some flights were missing, and in four cases, the government had records of flights she never took. For example, a PNR record from 2021 states that Linde traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland; Linde said she reserved tickets, but changed her plans and never boarded 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 come to all kinds of conclusions.”