Tag: passenger name records

More passenger data collected

1. July 2021

The German Federal Criminal Police Office regularly records so-called PNR (Passenger Name Records) on flights. This includes, among other information, date of birth, names, e-mail addresses, possible frequent flyer numbers or the means of payment used. The aim of the screening is to help track and prevent terrorist offences and serious crime.

Last year, the quantity of these passenger data collected increased significantly. A total of 105 million data records were collected by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on passengers taking off or landing in Germany. Approximately 31 million passengers are affected by this, including those who have flown more than once. It is to be highlighted here that the number of passengers has fallen by 75 % compared to 2019 due to the corona pandemic.

In 2019, however, around 78 million passenger records of almost 24 million passengers were processed. Subsequently, 111,588 persons were checked with the police’s wanted persons database. The number of “technically positive” search hits was 1960, which corresponds to 0.082 per thousand.

In 2020, after a comparison with the police wanted persons database, 78,179 person transactions remained in the network. The number of positive search hits increased to 5347, which, nevertheless, still only corresponds to 0.2 per thousand. This number is again largely a matter of errors.

Various lawsuits against this dragnet investigation are already before the European Court of Justice. In particular, it is accused that the dragnet investigation is not proportionate. In particular, it affects uninvolved persons. The state should rather take a targeted approach in these cases and not a generalised one.