Prague, July 1 (CTK) – The Czech police will create a special unit to check the data on passengers in air transport, which will have 14 police officers next year and 42 by 2021, according to the documents the government is to discuss soon.
The initial costs of the building of the system and purchase of the equipment for police analysts are estimated at 130 million crowns.
Another 20 million are to be spent on the maintenance and operation of the information system, which will collect the data on millions of passengers, annually.
All EU members will have to form similar special units next year at the latest.
The EU agreed on its directive, sometimes called PNR (Passenger Name Register), last spring.
Thanks to the data from airlines, the security forces are to be able to track down risk passengers in a faster way.
The EU countries are to meet the rules by May 2018 at the latest.
The police unit will process the data from reservation and clearance system of airlines and the information is to be shared by the individual countries.
The data on the passengers are to be used for the checking of passengers before the departure from or arrival to the Czech Republic.
The analysis of the information on the passengers is to help with the struggle against terrorism and other crime.
“The system which will have to be built will basically serve for the identification of the persons who may be implicated in a terrorism crime or a different serious crime, for the identification of so far unknown persons and for the uncovering of past relations between passengers and their movement,” the documents said.
The data on the passengers will be in the system one to two days before the departure and immediately after the end of their flight.
The unit will report to the National Organised Crime Centre. It will cooperate with other police bodies, customs authorities, secret services and the military police.
Last year, over six million people were travelling via Czech airports from the countries outside the EU and in the opposite direction.
It is presumed that in its full operation, the special unit will check roughly 13 million data a year and the figure might rose to around 20 million passengers by 2021.
