|
Dubai: Thomas Marten works for what he calls "a pretty unique company."
Marten is the vice-president for government and security solutions at SITA the non-profit cooperative that handles communications for the world's air transportation industry.
But over the last decade, SITA has started to roll out IT solutions to help handle security. There are two potential driving factors for the demand. "You have, heaven forbid, a terrorist attack like 9/11 that drives the take-up of the solutions. Or, conversely, ... you have an international sporting event like the Olympics that drives take-up of these solutions as well."
However, the new solutions involve the use of a passenger's personal details. That information is at the heart of one of the biggest controversies surrounding the air passenger industry: what kind of personal information about travellers can be transmitted to governments?
The US government decided to implement what Marten calls an Interactive Advancement Passenger Information Service, or Interactive APIS. That system was developed by SITA for Australia prior to the 2000 summer Olympics. He said China also plans to roll out a pilot version of APIS for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in August.
Unlike previous passenger tracking systems, the new Interactive APIS the US is implementing would require personal details to be sent to the US an hour before the flight leaves, instead of 15 minutes after the flight departs.
Under the system, the US government also wants information that the EU considers a violation of its citizens' privacy rights.
Marten, who is a US citizen himself, described the US demands as a "bit of arrogance."
Michael Chertoff, US Secretary of Homeland security, stated last week that the US plans to implement the new system in January 2009.
His statements also included new details on what information the US would require, which has still drawn some criticism, mainly regarding the health information that the US would require.
Marten said SITA, which is owned by the airline industry, had to make sure that "no sensitive data is ever exported from the EU" that could put the airlines in legal trouble.
The US isn't the only country that has given the industry headaches recently. India is rolling out an older version of the APIS system in July.
"The problem with India is that they've borrowed a page from the US playbook, and have adopted a standard which is not a standard," he says.
The Indian government wants the information in XML format. XML is a computer language that allows information to move smoothly over different computer networks.
Using the language makes sense for the Indian government, but no airline is equipped to provide information in that format, Marten says. SITA had to make a "midware" solution to make the systems compatible. Marten doesn't complain about having to make the systems work, on the contrary, he says that's what his company does.
"When we provide this service to governments, that's what we do. We take the data that exists in the 99 different formats and protocols which are on various mainframes and computers, and improve data quality."
|
