The Ministry of Finance has notified the Passenger Name Record Information Regulations, 2022 (the ‘Regulations’) on 08th August, 2022.
Salient Features
- The notification makes it mandatory for any operating flight to share details of international travellers with a customs agency.
- Among these are details of a person’s ticket — when it was booked, date of travel and billing information — and data about their travel, such as origin, destination, and how many bags they are carrying.
- Also included will be their seat numbers and copassenger data.
- The data exchange between the Airlines and the Customs Systems is through the PNRGOV EDIFACT message format. This is a standard electronic message format endorsed jointly by the World Customs Organisation (WCO), International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and is widely used internationally.
- The objective is to create an advance risk assessment to combat crimes under the excise law and for sharing of intelligence with other law enforcement agencies.
- As safeguards, the notification says such data will be subject to privacy laws in force, avoid certain types of information (like race and religion) and be processed only within a secure system.
- India isn’t the first country to set up such as system. In 2016, the European Union (EU) adopted the PNR Directive for all its member countries. Even before the directive, the EU and the United States (US) signed a pact in 2011 to share PNR records.
- A veritable data dragnet, such systems became expedient in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the terror strikes that followed in parts of Europe later that decade.
- The US operates an even more sophisticated system called the Automated Targeting System.
