and can be retained indefinitely by CRSs, airlines, and travel agencies." Further, CRS-GDS companies maintain web sites that allow almost unrestricted access to PNR data – often, the information is accessible by just the reservation number printed on the ticket. Additionally, "[t]hrough billing, meeting, and discount eligibility codes, PNRs contain detailed information on patterns of association between travelers. PNRs can contain religious meal preferences and special service requests that describe details of physical and medical conditions (e.g., "Uses wheelchair, can control bowels and bladder") – categories of information that have special protected status in the European Union and some other countries as “sensitive” personal data.” Despite the sensitive character of the information they contain, PNRs are generally not recognized as deserving the same privacy protection afforded to medical and financial records. Instead, they are treated as a form of commercial transaction data. International PNR sharing agreements European Union to United States United States–European Union Agreement on Passenger Name Records. European Union to Australia On January 16, 2004, the Article 29 Working Party released their Opinion 1/2004 (WP85) on the level of PNR protection ensured in Australia for the transmission of Passenger Name Record data from airlines. In 2010 the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security was split in two. The resulting bodies were the Directorate-General for Justice (European Commission) and the Directorate-General for Home Affairs (European Commission). On 4 May 2011, Stefano Manservisi, Director-General at the Directorate-General for Home Affairs (European Commission) wrote to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) with regards to a PNR sharing agreement with Australia, a close ally of the US and signatory to the UKUSA Agreement on signals intelligence. The EDPS responded on 5 May in Letter 0420 D845: European Union to Canada The Article 29 Working Party document Opinion 1/2005 on the level of protection ensured in Canada for the transmission of Passenger Name Record and Advance Passenger Information from airlines (WP 103), 19 January 2005, offers information on the nature of PNR agreements with Canada. See also Advance Passenger Information System Flight manifest Machine-readable passport Further reading Farrell, Henry and Abraham Newman. 2019. Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security. Princeton University Press. References External links European Union Freedom of Information Request for Information on PNR Agreements, AskTheEU.org. Guidelines on Passenger Name Record (PNR) Data, iata.org Airline tickets Information privacy Information sensitivity Travel technology