The EU is set to agree new anti-terrorism measures that will insist on every member statecollecting 19 different pieces of information on people flying to or from non-EU countries.

While your two-week hol in Spain won’t be affected, visiting any of the 166 non-EU countries in the world (167 depending on your position on Taiwan) will come under the new scheme.

The final proposals (which member states have to ratify) mean anyone setting off or landing in any EU country will have their name, address, phone number, email, credit card details, travel itinerary, ticket and baggage information collected and stored by that country. Basically all the information your travel agent, ticket booker or air carrier would have collected about you.

Instead of that data being kept only by the collecting agency for the purpose you gave it (eg to buy a plane ticket), it can be passed on to any EU country that asks for it at any point up to 13 years after you travel.

Whilst the EU measures may not yet be in place, the pressure to have them up and running quickly comes from the US.

From January 1, 2008, that same data can already be shared between EU countries and the US under a letter of agreement reached between the EU and the US signed in July 2007. An agreement that allows the US to store passenger information for up to 15 years.

Significantly, the US will also be allowed to share that information about you with any third country that asks, regardless of whether you plan to travel there.

Technical systems are already being set up to enable the US Department of Homeland Security to simply tap into the data banks held by airlines which store the information. US agencies will then be able to add any other information they may have, including sensitive information such as ethnicity, trade union membership, or criminal records, to the airlines data and the whole file can be shared with any agency or country the US sees fit.

The agreement between the US and EU was reached without the involvement of elected MEPs. Seven days after the letter of agreement was signed, the US asked the Council of the European Union to agree that the letter, and all related documents, be kept secret for ten years.

One of the reasons being given for the new EU PNR (Personal/Passenger Name Record) scheme is that it will bring the European Union countries in line with the system brought into operation in the US following the 9/11 attacks and is “necessary for the purpose of preventing and fighting terrorist offences and organised crime”.

But why does the EU have to be brought into line with the US? Perhaps to give legal weight to the letter of agreement signed in July 2007 on exchange of PNR data? It may also be to force airlines to deliver the technical changes needed to allow the EU and US to freely access the passenger data collected by the airlines?

No-one would want to be seen as being anti any measure to stop us being blown up by terrorists or kidnapped by sex traffickers, but it’s worth remembering that EU member states have been collecting passport information, flight and travel details on everyone who lands in their country since the Directive of 2004, brought in after the Madrid train bombings.

The UK and Spain are also already collecting advanced passenger information (API) at the point of booking a flight from anyone from a changing list of target countries, using the data to monitor passenger names against secret security agency ‘watch lists’.

However, under the new measures more data can be collected than is on the traveller’s passport (eg email and credit card details), other information about the traveller can be added by third parties, and, whereas under the 2004 Directive data was deleted 24 hours after the plane had landed unless the traveller was under suspicion, now it will be held for 13 years regardless.

Bear in mind also that around 50 million people from over 130 countries are already subject to a visa system requiring them to apply for a visa and go through security checks before travelling to the UK, EU or US. While SIS II – a system for listing and exchanging details on people on a global watch list (eg expelled asylum seekers, criminal and terrorist suspects) is already in development.

And none of this stopped the 2005 London bombings, the 2005 and 2006 Egypt terror attacks, the 2007 Glasgow airport attack, or the thousands of attacks by individuals on fellow countrymen since 9/11.

The overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks this century have been carried out by people who have not had to hop on a plane to get to their target.

Even the US State Department, reporting that terrorist attacks worldwide shot up by 25 percent in 2006 with 14,000 attacks claiming over 20,000 lives, acknowledged that two-thirds of the bombings were in Iraq.

Ninety percent of the most costly terror attacks in terms of lives lost last year took place in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Collecting email addresses and credit card numbers of white English families holidaying in Florida isn't going to do anything to stop that bloodbath. Which has to make you wonder what else that mountain of new information is going to be used for over the next 15 years?