In March 2020, Frank van der Linde stood in the immigration queue for European Union citizens at Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport. Linde, a Dutch citizen and human rights advocate, was returning home from outside the EU, and the immigration officer asked him a series of questions about his trip. Linde thought it was a random test; After a few minutes, he was allowed in. But unbeknownst to Linde, his answers were recorded and shared with a Dutch prosecutor, who was gathering information about Linde's movements.
The police officer was alerted to Linde's arrival that day through a seemingly innocuous act that happens any time you board a flight to the United States, much of Europe and increasingly around the world. – exchange of detailed personal data about each passenger between airlines. and governments. Data kept about you for years is increasingly valuable to tech companies that are experimenting with using algorithms that can decide who is allowed to cross international borders.
Linde, who has been publicly outspoken on homeless rights, anti-racism and pacifism, was first secretly flagged by Dutch police in 2017 as a person of interest in an anti-racism program. terror of the city of Amsterdam. In July 2018, Linde had a “weird feeling” that she was being followed; 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 apology from the mayor of Amsterdam, the surveillance continues. When Linde learned that the police had put his name on an international list travel warninghe wondered if they were using his travel data to track him.
In October 2022, Linde asked the government for his flight records. The data, known as the Passenger Name Record (PNR), is a digital conduit of information related to airline ticket purchases. PNR records are sent by most commercial airlines to the destination country approximately 48 to 72 hours before departure. Although PNR records may seem innocuous, they contain highly sensitive personal information, including addresses, mobile phone numbers, flight booking dates, where tickets were purchased, credit card and other payment information, Billing address, baggage information, frequent flyer information. , general comments regarding passengers, intended travel dates, full travel itinerary, names of accompanying passengers, travel agent information, historical changes to tickets, etc.
In December 2022, more than two years after Linde crossed Schiphol, the Dutch PNR office, known as the Passenger Information Unit, handed over 17 travel records to Linde. They claim they haven't shared his data with others, but Linde remains suspicious. He quickly filed an appeal. In March 2023, the Dutch government admitted that it had in fact shared Linde's PNR details three times with border police, including before the March 2020 flight, when staff Immigration was instructed to secretly exploit information. (They also shared seven more flight records that they claimed they only discovered during their second search.)
When Linde reviewed his PNR records, he was surprised to see that some of the travel data the government had on him was inaccurate – several flights were missing, and in four cases, the government has records of flights he never took. For example, a PNR record from 2021 indicates Linde traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland; Linde said he booked a ticket but changed his plans and never got on the plane. “What do companies do with data?” Linde asked as he flipped through copies of PNR records on his laptop. “If the commercial companies that help analyze the data are not accurate, you can draw all kinds of conclusions.”