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58-449: When a passenger books an itinerary, the travel agent or travel website user will create a PNR in the computer reservation system it uses. This is typically one of the large global distribution systems , such as Amadeus , Sabre , or Travelport (Apollo, Galileo, and Worldspan) but if the booking is made directly with an airline the PNR can also be in the database of the airline's CRS. This PNR

116-449: A PNR via direct entry into a terminal window (as opposed to using a graphical interface). The following codes are standard across all CRSs based on the original PARS system: The majority of airlines and travel agencies choose to host their PNR databases with a computer reservations system (CRS) or global distribution system (GDS) company such as Sabre , Galileo , Worldspan and Amadeus . Some privacy organizations are concerned at

174-426: A business goal. Depending on the severity of consequences, a violation of non-disclosure may result in employment loss, loss of business and client contacts, criminal charges or a civil lawsuit, and a hefty sum in damages. When NDAs are signed between employer and employee at the initiation of employment, a non-compete clause may be a part of the agreement as an added protection of sensitive business information, where

232-430: A company´s claim is valid. Classified information generally refers to information that is subject to special security classification regulations imposed by many national governments, the disclosure of which may cause harm to national interests and security. The protocol of restriction imposed upon such information is categorized into a hierarchy of classification levels in almost every national government worldwide, with

290-604: A new set of "digital rights" for EU citizens in an age when the economic value of personal data is increasing in the digital economy. In Canada, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) regulates the collection and use of personal data and electronic documents by public and private organizations. PIPEDA is in effect in all federal and provincial jurisdictions, except provinces where existing privacy laws are determined to be “substantially similar”. Even though not through

348-559: A person's SSN or SIN , credit card numbers, and other financial information may be considered private if their disclosure might lead to crimes such as identity theft or fraud . Some types of private information, including records of a person's health care , education, and employment may be protected by privacy laws . Unauthorized disclosure of private information can make the perpetrator liable for civil remedies and may in some cases be subject to criminal penalties. Even though they are often used interchangeably, personal information

406-462: A reservation on the service of a particular airline company, the GDS system routes the request to the appropriate airline's computer reservations system. A mirror image of the passenger name record (PNR) in the airline reservations system is maintained in the GDS system. If a passenger books an itinerary containing air segments of multiple airlines through a travel agency, the passenger name record in

464-470: A strategy of 'direct selling' to their wholesale and retail customers (passengers). They invested heavily in their own reservations and direct-distribution channels and partner systems. This helps to minimize direct dependency on GDS systems to meet sales and revenue targets and allows for a more dynamic response to market needs. These technology advancements in this space facilitate an easier way to cross-sell to partner airlines and via travel agents, eliminating

522-496: A technical point of view, there are five parts of a PNR required before the booking can be completed. They are: Other information, such as a timestamp and the agency's pseudo-city code , will go into the booking automatically. All entered information will be retained in the "history" of the booking. Once the booking has been completed to this level, the CRS will issue a unique all alpha or alpha-numeric record locator, which will remain

580-764: A travel agent and if the travel agent is connected to Amadeus GDS, the PNR in the Amadeus GDS would contain the full itinerary, while the PNR in KLM would show the Amsterdam to London segment along with the British Airways flight as an onward info segment. Likewise, the PNR in the Lufthansa system would show the New York to Frankfurt segment with the British Airways flight as an arrival information segment. Finally,

638-820: A variety of global distribution systems ( Sabre , Galileo , Amadeus , and Worldspan ) sources and lets travel agencies create custom business rules to validate reservation accuracy, monitor travel policies, perform file finishing, prepare itineraries/invoices and process ticketing. Quality control software is used for such functions as ensuring reservations are formatted properly, checking for lower fares and watching for seat availability, upgrades, waitlist clearance, and taking advantage of back to back ticketing opportunities. When customized, such tools allow agencies and corporate accounts to monitor virtually any information in global distribution system passenger name records. Accelerating such tools also creates opportunities for customer relationship management. (a) Mid-office automation

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696-423: Is a reservation system used by the service providers (also known as vendors). Primary customers of GDS are travel agents (both online and office-based) who make reservations on various reservation systems run by the vendors. GDS holds no inventory; the inventory is held on the vendor's reservation system itself. A GDS system will have a real-time link to the vendor's database. For example, when a travel agency requests

754-400: Is a significant and ever-growing field in computer science. The term computer insecurity , on the other hand, is the concept that computer systems are inherently vulnerable to attack, and therefore an evolving arms race between those who exploit existing vulnerabilities in security systems and those who must then engineer new mechanisms of security. A number of security concerns have arisen in

812-441: Is also changing the face of domestic and international politics. Cyber-warfare and cyber espionage is becoming of increasing importance to the national security and strategy of nations around the world, and it is estimated that 120 nations around the world are currently actively engaged in developing and deploying technology for these purposes. Philosophies and internet cultures such as open-source governance , hacktivism , and

870-525: Is called the Master PNR for the passenger and the associated itinerary. The PNR is identified in the particular database by a record locator . When portions of the travel are not provided by the holder of the master PNR, then copies of the PNR information are sent to the CRSs of the airlines that will be providing transportation. These CRSs will open copies of the original PNR in their own database to manage

928-460: Is key to increasing the touchless rate of online adoption . Global distribution systems in the travel industry originated from a traditional legacy business model that existed to inter-operate between airline vendors and travel agents. During the early days of computerized reservations systems flight ticket reservations were not possible without a GDS. As time progressed, many airline vendors (including budget and mainstream operators) have now adopted

986-471: Is limited to the people with different roles, thus in essence requiring establishment of the "sensitive data domain" model and mechanisms of its protection. Some of the domains have a guideline in form of pre-defined models such as "Safe Harbor" of HIPAA, based on the research of Latanya Sweeny and established privacy industry metrics. Additionally, many other countries have enacted their own legislature regarding data privacy protection, and more are still in

1044-402: Is often desired by both the airlines and the travel agent to ensure efficient travel. This includes: In more recent times, many governments now require the airline to provide further information included assisting investigators tracing criminals or terrorists. These include: The components of a PNR are identified internally in a CRS by a one-character code. This code is often used when creating

1102-401: Is protected by information privacy laws , which outline limits to the collection and use of personally identifiable information by public and private entities. Such laws usually require entities to give clear and unambiguous notice to the individual of the types of data being collected, its reason for collection, and planned uses of the data. In consent-based legal frameworks, explicit consent of

1160-424: Is sometimes distinguished from private information, or personally identifiable information . The latter is distinct from the former in that Private information can be used to identify a unique individual. Personal information, on the other hand, is information belonging to the private life of an individual that cannot be used to uniquely identify that individual. This can range from an individual's favourite colour, to

1218-431: Is the control of access to information or knowledge that might result in loss of an advantage or level of security if disclosed to others. Loss, misuse, modification, or unauthorized access to sensitive information can adversely affect the privacy or welfare of an individual, trade secrets of a business or even the security and international relations of a nation depending on the level of sensitivity and nature of

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1276-457: Is the intentional disclosure of sensitive information to a third-party with the intention of revealing alleged illegal, immoral, or otherwise harmful actions. There are many examples of present and former government employees disclosing classified information regarding national government misconduct to the public and media, in spite of the criminal consequences that await them. Espionage , or spying, involves obtaining sensitive information without

1334-422: Is useful to facilitate global reach using existing network and low marginal costs when compared to online air travel bookings. Some GDS companies are also in the process of investing and establishing significant offshore capability in a move to reduce costs and improve their profit margins to serve their customer directly accommodating changing business models. Sensitive information Information sensitivity

1392-765: 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 : I am writing to you in reply to your letter of 4 May concerning the two draft Proposals for Council Decisions on (i)

1450-593: The CRS-GDS companies "function both as data warehouses and data aggregators, and have a relationship to travel data analogous to that of credit bureaus to financial data.". A canceled or completed trip does not erase the record since "copies of the PNRs are ‘purged’ from live to archival storage systems, 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,

1508-542: 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. On January 16, 2004, the Article 29 Working Party released their Opinion 1/2004 (WP85) on

1566-487: The GDS system would hold information on their entire itinerary, while each airline they fly on would only have a portion of the itinerary that is relevant to them. This would contain flight segments on their own services and inbound and onward connecting flights (known as info segments) of other airlines in the itinerary. For example, if a passenger books a journey from Amsterdam to London on KLM, London to New York on British Airways, and New York to Frankfurt on Lufthansa through

1624-595: The PC of the Customs PAU officer concerned and are not entered into Australian databases. 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

1682-456: The PNR in British Airways' system would show all three segments, one as a live segment and the other two as arrival and onward info segments. Some GDS systems also have a dual-use capability for hosting multiple computer reservation systems; in such situations functionally the computer reservations system and the GDS partition of the system behave as if they were separate systems. Mid-office automation captures Passenger name record data from

1740-631: The Proposal is reduced to a single day. Such a deadline precludes the EDPS from being able to exercise its competences in an appropriate way , even in the context of a file which we have been closely following since 2007. 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

1798-617: The United Kingdom . In some developing countries, trade secret laws are either non-existent or poorly developed and offer little substantial protection. In many countries, unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a criminal offence, and may be punishable by fines, prison sentence, or even the death penalty, depending on the severity of the violation. For less severe violations, civil sanctions may be imposed, ranging from reprimand to revoking of security clearance and subsequent termination of employment. Whistleblowing

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1856-490: The amount of personal data that a PNR might contain. While the minimum data for completing a booking is quite small, a PNR will typically contain much more information of a sensitive nature. This will include the passenger's full name, date of birth, home and work address, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card details, IP address if booked online, as well as the names and personal information of emergency contacts. Designed to "facilitate easy global sharing of PNR data,"

1914-489: The business. Confidential information is used in a general sense to mean sensitive information whose access is subject to restriction, and may refer to information about an individual as well as that which pertains to a business. However, there are situations in which the release of personal information could have a negative effect on its owner. For example, a person trying to avoid a stalker will be inclined to further restrict access to such personal information. Furthermore,

1972-439: The business. Such information may include trade secrets , sales and marketing plans, new product plans, notes associated with patentable inventions, customer and supplier information, financial data, and more. Under TSCA , CBI is defined as proprietary information, considered confidential to the submitter, the release of which would cause substantial business injury to the owner. The US EPA may as of 2016, review and determine if

2030-527: The conclusion and (ii) the signature of the Agreement between the European Union and Australia on the processing and transfer of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data by air carriers to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. We understand that the consultation of the EDPS takes place in the context of a fast track procedure. However, we regret that the time available for us to analyse

2088-534: The dependency on a dedicated global GDS federating between systems. Also, multiple price comparison websites eliminate the need of dedicated GDS for point-in-time prices and inventory for both travel agents and end-customers. Hence some experts argued that these changes in business models might have led to the complete phasing out of GDS in the Airline space by the year 2020. On the other hand, some travel professional experts demonstrate that GDS still continue to offer

2146-401: The details of their domestic life. The latter is a common example of personal information that is also regarded as sensitive, where the individual sharing these details with a trusted listener would prefer for it not to be shared with anyone else, and the sharing of which may result in unwanted consequences. Confidential business information (CBI) refers to information whose disclosure may harm

2204-406: The employee agrees not to work for competitors or start their own competing business within a certain time or geographical limit. Unlike personal and private information, there is no internationally recognized framework protecting trade secrets , or even an agreed-upon definition of the term “trade secret”. However, many countries and political jurisdictions have taken the initiative to account for

2262-565: The flexibility and bulk buying capacities for airline consolidators to reach travel agents that individual airline systems are not able to provide customer segments with wider choices. Their argument is, individual airline distribution systems are not designed to interoperate with competitors systems. Lufthansa Group announced in June 2015 that it was imposing an additional charge of €16 when booking through an external global distribution system rather than their own systems. They stated their choice

2320-559: The individual is required as well. The EU passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), replacing the earlier Data Protection Directive . The regulation was adopted on 27 April 2016. It became enforceable from 25 May 2018 after a two-year transition period and, unlike a directive, it does not require national governments to pass any enabling legislation, and is thus directly binding and applicable. "The proposed new EU data protection regime extends

2378-494: 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

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2436-444: The information. This refers to information that is already a matter of public record or knowledge. With regard to government and private organizations, access to or release of such information may be requested by any member of the public, and there are often formal processes laid out for how to do so. The accessibility of government-held public records is an important part of government transparency, accountability to its citizens, and

2494-414: The intended recipient only the anomaly becomes apparent when the additional tag "Not within windowed area" is also used. Data privacy concerns exist in various aspects of daily life wherever personal data is stored and collected, such as on the internet , in medical records , financial records , and expression of political opinions . In over 80 countries in the world, personally identifiable information

2552-487: The level of PNR protection ensured in Australia for the transmission of Passenger Name Record data from airlines. Customs applies a general policy of non-retention for these data. For those 0.05% to 0.1% of passengers who are referred to Customs for further evaluation, the airline PNR data are temporarily retained, but not stored, pending resolution of the border evaluation. After resolution, their PNR data are erased from

2610-407: The method of communication or access. For example, Protectively Marked "Secret" Eyes Only or Protectively Marked "Secret" Encrypted transfer only. Indicating that the document must be physically read by the recipient and cannot be openly discussed for example over a telephone conversation or that the communication can be sent only using encrypted means. Often mistakenly listed as meaning for the eyes of

2668-478: The most restricted levels containing information that may cause the greatest danger to national security if leaked. Authorized access is granted to individuals on a need to know basis who have also passed the appropriate level of security clearance . Classified information can be reclassified to a different level or declassified (made available to the public) depending on changes of situation or new intelligence. Classified information may also be further denoted with

2726-477: The nature of PNR agreements with Canada . Global distribution system A global distribution system ( GDS ) is a computerised network system owned or operated by a company that enables transactions between travel industry service providers , mainly airlines, hotels, car rental companies, and travel agencies . The GDS mainly uses real-time inventory (e.g. number of hotel rooms available, number of flight seats available, or number of cars available) from

2784-426: The permission or knowledge of its holder. The use of spies is a part of national intelligence gathering in most countries, and has been used as a political strategy by nation-states since ancient times. It is unspoken knowledge in international politics that countries are spying on one another all the time, even their allies. Computer security is information security applied to computing and network technology, and

2842-613: The portion of the itinerary for which they are responsible. Many airlines have their CRS hosted by one of the GDSs, which allows sharing of the PNR. The record locators of the copied PNRs are communicated back to the CRS that owns the Master PNR, so all records remain tied together. This allows exchanging updates of the PNR when the status of trip changes in any of the CRSs. Although PNRs were originally introduced for air travel, airlines systems can now also be used for bookings of hotels , car rental , airport transfers, and train trips. From

2900-429: The process of doing so. The confidentiality of sensitive business information is established through non-disclosure agreements , a legally binding contract between two parties in a professional relationship. NDAs may be one-way, such as in the case of an employee receiving confidential information about the employing organization, or two-way between businesses needing to share information with one another to accomplish

2958-401: The recent years as increasing amounts of sensitive information at every level have found their primary existence in digital form. At the personal level, credit card fraud , internet fraud , and other forms of identity theft have become widespread concerns that individuals need to be aware of on a day-to-day basis. The existence of large databases of classified information on computer networks

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3016-462: The same regardless of any further changes made (except if a multi-person PNR is split). Each airline will create their own booking record with a unique record locator, which, depending on service level agreement between the CRS and the airline(s) involved, will be transmitted to the CRS and stored in the booking. If an airline uses the same CRS as the travel agency, the record locator will be the same for both. A considerable amount of other information

3074-475: The scope of the EU data protection law to all foreign companies processing data of EU residents. It provides for a harmonisation of the data protection regulations throughout the EU, thereby making it easier for non-European companies to comply with these regulations; however, this comes at the cost of a strict data protection compliance regime with severe penalties of up to 4% of worldwide turnover." The GDPR also brings

3132-408: The service providers. Travel agencies traditionally relied on GDS for services, products and rates in order to provide travel-related services to the end consumers. Thus, a GDS can link services, rates and bookings consolidating products and services across all three travel sectors: i.e., airline reservations, hotel reservations, car rentals. GDS is different from a computer reservation system , which

3190-485: The unified sensitive information framework, the United States has implemented significant amount of privacy legislation pertaining to different specific aspects of data privacy, with emphasis to privacy in healthcare, financial, e-commerce, educational industries, and both on federal and state levels. Whether being regulated or self regulated, the laws require to establish ways at which access to sensitive information

3248-414: The values of democracy. Public records may furthermore refer to information about identifiable individuals that is not considered confidential, including but not limited to: census records, criminal records , sex offender registry files, and voter registration . This includes business information that is not subjected to special protection and may be routinely shared with anyone inside or outside of

3306-483: The violation of commercial confidentiality in their criminal or civil laws. For example, under the US Economic Espionage Act of 1996 , it is a federal crime in the United States to misappropriate trade secrets with the knowledge that it will benefit a foreign power, or will injure the owner of the trade secret. More commonly, breach of commercial confidentiality falls under civil law, such as in

3364-400: Was based upon that the costs of using external systems was several times higher than their own. Several other airlines including Air France–KLM and Emirates Airline also stated that they are following the development. However, hotels and car rental industry continue to benefit from GDS, especially last-minute inventory disposal using GDS to bring additional operational revenue. GDS here

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