When governments negotiate visa-free travel, they should be talking about passports, security checks and rules of entry. They should not be trading in the personal data of people who have done nothing wrong.
What bothers me is the very principle of such a trade. A citizen hands their data over to the state because the state needs it for a particular purpose: identity documents, travel, public services. That does not give the government an unlimited right to pass the data on every time it can gain a political advantage in return.
Security matters, of course. It is also the word that can justify almost anything. There is a difference between a targeted check on a person where a concrete reason for suspicion exists, and opening up the data of millions of people wholesale. The first can be a legitimate security measure. The second turns every citizen into a potential suspect, and the agreement now being negotiated falls into the second category.
The part I find hardest to accept is that an ordinary person has practically no voice in a decision like this. Nobody asks them whether they agree, what information may be handed over, who will have access to it, or how long it will be kept. They are only told that the agreement is supposedly necessary and advantageous.
Visa-free travel is pleasant. But it is not free if the price is the privacy of an entire society. A more comfortable journey across a border is not a sufficient reason for personal data to be turned into diplomatic currency.
A government is supposed to protect its citizens, not to negotiate with their data. Privacy is not a reward that the state may let us keep only when that happens to suit it. It is a right, and rights are not for trading.
