US, EU eye anti-terrorism data-protection pact

WASHINGTON, USA: The European Commission hopes to begin talks with the United States this year on an agreement to protect personal data transferred across the Atlantic to track down terrorists and other criminals, Commission Vice President Viviane Reding said on Friday.

The new "umbrella" pact would cover a terrorist finance tracking agreement with Washington approved on Thursday by the European Parliament, as well as a provisional accord covering passenger records, Reding said.

"We need ... a general agreement which covers all kind of data transfers of today and of tomorrow," she told reporters after meetings with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

Reding holds the portfolio for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship on the European Commission.

She said she hoped to get a mandate from EU justice ministers in October to begin talks on the new pact, which both sides want to conclude by the end of 2011.

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The EU wants the new accord to guarantee EU citizens who think their data has been misused in the United States the ability to get redress, and to set up an independent U.S. authority that would control use of the data, she said.

"We are waiting for them to put on the table what they think is an adequate solution. ... But there is more common ground than there are problems," Reding said.

The EU also needs to build its own system for tracking and analyzing data since it now has to depend on the United States for that, Reding said.

The EU Parliament approved the terrorist finance tracking agreement following weeks of negotiations between Washington and the European Union to improve piracy safeguards, after lawmakers rejected the previous version in February.

The five-year pact will take effect in August, giving investigators access to information collected by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, which records most global money transfers.

Investigators typically request access to chunks of SWIFT records to follow the trail of fundamental pieces of data such as names, account numbers and addresses.

But they lost access to the data when SWIFT moved some of its servers to Europe from the United States over the past year, necessitating a data-sharing deal with the EU.

The revised accord is "not perfect, but it's necessary to consolidate the security of our citizens in the fight against terrorism on both sides of the Atlantic," Reding said.

"We should now take this advance in trust in order to build up solid basic agreements" that would allow both sides to react quickly to terrorist and criminal activities, while providing legal protections for citizens, she said.