Inside the Black Box of Predictive Cruise Control

In March 2020, Frank van der Linde entered the immigration line for European Union citizens at Schiphol International Airport in Amsterdam. Linde, a Dutch citizen and human rights activist, was returning home from outside the EU and an immigration officer asked her a series of questions about her visit. Linde thought it was a random check; After a few minutes, access was granted. But unbeknownst to Linden, his answers were recorded and shared with the Dutch public prosecutor, who gathered information about Linden’s actions.

The officer was tipped off that day in a seemingly innocuous act that happens when you board a flight to the United States, much of Europe and, increasingly, anywhere in the world—the exchange of detailed personal information about each traveler between airlines. and governments. Data stored on you for years is increasingly valuable to tech companies experimenting with algorithms that can decide who is allowed to cross international borders.

Outspoken about homeless rights, anti-racism and pacifism, Linde was first flagged as a person of interest undercover by Dutch police in 2017 as part of the Amsterdam municipality’s counter-terrorism program. In July 2018, Linde had a “strange feeling” that she was being followed; Ultimately, he would sue the government more than 250 times under freedom of information laws to reveal the extent of the surveillance. Although Linde was removed from the city’s watch list in 2019 and later received a personal apology from the mayor of Amsterdam, the investigation continued. When Linde learned that the police had made her name international travel warninghe wondered if they were also using his travel information to track him.

In October 2022, Linde requested the flight records from the government. The so-called Passenger Name Record (PNR) is a digital data trail related to the purchase of an airline ticket. PNR records are sent by most commercial airlines to the destination country approximately 48-72 hours before departure. Although PNR records may seem harmless, they contain highly sensitive personal information, including the traveler’s address, mobile phone number, date of flight booking, place of ticket purchase, credit card and other payment information, billing address, baggage information, and frequent flyer information. does. , general passenger notes, intended travel date, full travel itinerary, names of accompanying travelers, travel agency information, date changes to the ticket, etc.

In December 2022, 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 did not share her information with others, but Linde was suspicious. He soon filed an appeal. In March 2023, the Dutch government admitted that they had in fact shared Linde’s PNR details with border police three times, including in the run-up to a March 2020 flight when an immigration officer was instructed to secretly extract the information. (They also shared an additional seven flight logs, which they claim they found only in the second search.)

When Linde reviewed his PNR records, he was surprised to find that some of the travel information the government had about him was incorrect — some flights were missing, and in four cases there were records of flights the government never took. For example, a PNR record for 2021 states that Linden traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland; Linde says she booked the ticket but changed her plans and never got on the plane. “What do companies do with data?” Linde asked as she scrolled through copies of her PNR records on her laptop. “If commercial companies help analyze data that is wrong, you can make all kinds of conclusions.”