In fact he also knows 33 other pieces of personal data about you, if you have taken a flight to the USA any time in the last few years.

How?

Well*, in the wake of 9/11 and as part of their attempt to prevent a repeat, US government agencies insisted on knowing a wide range of pieces of personal information about anyone flying into US airspace from Europe (the so-called Passenger Name Recognition, or PNR, system).

Governments or private organisations within the EU are not allowed to collect that wide a range of information on such a blanket basis - but nevertheless EU governments, through the EU Council, signed an agreement that flights leaving EU countries for the USA would have to collect this information about you and forward it before your flight arrived in US airspace. The system was implemented and has been up and running for several years now.

However the European Parliament protested about the European governments signing up to something which involves them collecting so much information, and last year the European Court indeed ruled that the agreement breached European law.

As a result the US and EU governments have had to renegotiate their agreement, and now seem to have their got their legal ducks a bit more in a row with a new plan. But this still involves the transfer of significant amounts of data to US government agencies - with real question marks about how they use and look after that information.

Isn’t it bizarre that European governments are prepared to go along with the US government knowing more about a wider range of people, on no evidence of wrongdoing, than anyone in the EU, including themselves, is allowed to?

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE) group in the European Parliament has been at the forefront of highlighting the dangers of the system, and especially the lack of safeguards for how all this sensitive information about you and me is handled.

This issue comes up again now because the European Parliament is discussing it again this week. Sophie Int’ Veld MEP, the ALDE’s spokesperson on this in the EP sets out fully the problems with the latest agreement.

Rather typically for things done by the European Parliament, this issue is complex and not well covered or understood - but is hugely important and directly affects any of the EU’s half a billion citizens who fly to the USA.

* as I understand it - if I’ve got any of the details wrong I’d be grateful for any corrections