Our security vs our privacy?

It was with a somewhat subdued sigh of relief that we heard the news that Osama bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist in the world, was killed in the early hours of a Monday morning two weeks ago.

Although one should not rejoice at loss of human life, as a figure embodying so much hatred and violence, bin Laden’s passing is nevertheless a sign that progress has indeed been made in combating terrorism. Let’s face it, zeroing in on one single person who could have been anywhere in the world was even more difficult than finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

However, it is also a reminder of the long road we still have ahead in the quest for safety and security.

In its 2010 report on the fight against terrorism, the European police agency, Europol, made it clear that the threat of terrorism in Europe remains high and that terrorism is being perpetrated in ever more creative ways. So terrorism is still an issue we have to continue to deal with in the years to come.

And when we see the consequences of a terrorist attack – the death, the suffering and the fear instilled in society – our mind promptly turns to ask if anything could have been done to avert the act. Where were the authorities?

Why didn’t they stop the act in time? Is there a risk of this happening to me or to my loved ones? Will the perpetrators be brought to justice?

There is agreement that everything possible should be done to fight terrorism and save lives. And it was careful investigation and intelligence that led to bin Laden’s capture and this highlighted the importance of using “intelligence” to fight the terrorist threat. But collecting intelligence also has its drawbacks. It may compromise our privacy as the authorities scrutinise personal information about us, about what we do and where we go.

For some this may not be a cause for concern so long as their safety is better assured.

But for others it may well be, especially if information is abused or ends up used for the wrong purposes.

So, on the one hand we want more security and we want the state to do more to protect us but on the other we still want to preserve our privacy and the state to keep its nose out of our personal business.

No one wants to live in a Big Brother state and rightly so.

So does your security have to come at the expense of your privacy?

This is a subject I follow closely as the EPP’s coordinator on justice and home affairs and I am pushing the line of a balanced approach. I believe there is a way in which we can increase our security without compromising privacy.

In the European Parliament we are carrying out an evaluation of the instruments we have available to gather intelligence for the purposes of countering terrorism. We want to see how they can be improved and we are also working on introducing new instruments.

One of these instruments is an agreement to transmit data concerning financial transactions in Europe to the United States since the US has the capacity to process this data, typically bank transfers, to trace terrorists and terrorist activity.

We approved an agreement to allow this transfer of data. But we included a series of safeguards to protect privacy.

For instance, we set a strict limitation so that the data can only be processed for the purposes of countering terrorism.

We made sure Europol is involved in order to see that requests for data made by the US to Europe are justified. And, on my suggestion, we created the post of an EU officer, based in Washington, who would oversee the process to make sure the information is really being processed within the parameters of the agreement. We also laid down rules for the period of time data can be retained before it is deleted and we also included a complaint mechanism for people who feel aggrieved because of the way in which their data was used.

Another instrument concerns the use of PNR data or passenger name records. PNR is information provided by passengers and collected by air carriers in order to process reservations and to check-in passengers.

This information too has proven to be useful in collecting intelligence. At the moment we are in the process of negotiating new agreements to share PNR data with Canada, the US and Australia. And we envisage tough data protection safeguards in this case too.

Achieving a balanced position has not been a walk in the park as we have political groups that often underestimate the importance of security and adopt a hard line approach on privacy that nullifies the security gains. So balancing the European Parliament’s position is not easy.

We know that terrorism knows no borders and this is why a unified European approach is needed.

But we can only guarantee both our security and privacy if we understand they should not be played off one against the other.

Dr Busuttil is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.