Net Results: The ongoing dispute between the US and EU over access to passenger flight records was theoretically resolved, at least in the short term, two weeks ago, writes Karlin Lillington.

An agreement has been reached that supposedly bridges the two perspectives: that of the US, which wants access to the up to 34 fields of information contained on each passenger's computer records for its "war on terrorism", and the EU, which has in place strict laws on accessing and using personal data of this sort.

An arrangement to hand over such data for all passengers heading from the EU into the US was reached back in 2004, much to the consternation of the European Parliament, which wondered, among other things, why data from here was going there but US citizens would not have to surrender their own data when they came here.

Maybe Europe does not want such data, or maybe there are not any prospective terrorists based in the US, waiting to fly into Europe. Whatever the situation, eventually the Court of Justice blocked this transfer of data, saying it had been introduced on the "wrong legal basis".

The US then threatened to eliminate access to US airports for European carriers, and to exclude EU citizens from the US. Obviously, no one wanted to see anything this draconian happen, and talks between the sides began.

Hence, the recent rapprochement. Nearly a week after a resolution deadline set by the European Court of Justice, US officials, the European Commission and the Council of Justice Ministers spent a nine-hour video conference call hammering out a stopgap measure that would last until July 2007, when a permanent arrangement will need to be created.

But the whole situation is nothing if not murky. No one knows what that agreement is, says Jeanne Kelly, a partner at Dublin law firm Mason Hayes & Curran, which advises companies on data privacy issues. All we have been told is that the agreement will "ensure an equivalent level of protection of passengers' personal data in line with European standards on fundamental rights and privacy," according to an EU statement.

How such protection is going to be provided on information - which can include everything from names, dates, passport numbers, credit card numbers, addresses and phone numbers, all of which can be handed on to a range of US agencies - isn't explained, she says.

Going by recent press coverage, the airlines weren't overly concerned with the privacy issue to begin with. One spokesman for SAS told the San Francisco Chronicle ahead of the deal that the concern would be to implement an agreement that would cause the least inconvenience and cost to passengers and airlines.

Like many people, I am more concerned about what my information is going to be used for, why it is being collected, and how accurate that information is in the first place.

As a frequent flyer and regular long-haul traveller, my experience with airlines has been that they sometimes have a hard time managing the basics, so I don't feel all that satisfied that my private information is being managed in the same pipeline. And while you might think this all doesn't really affect me anyway, as a US citizen, indirectly it does because the same data sets are being taken for passengers on US domestic flights.

As far as the agreement goes, to date the EU has revealed that from now on the US cannot "pull" passenger information records as it pleases but must ask for them to be "pushed" or sent to them. And we don't know much else except that a more permanent arrangement must be reached by July.

From my perspective, it doesn't seem much of a compromise, but the whole process is so opaque (deliberately so, of course) that discussion is nearly foreclosed. Maybe we will gradually find out more, but I doubt it.

Dave Stewart, RIP

Not long after I started covering technology on a regular basis, I went to some social event or another and found myself talking to an amiable, big, solid man with a shock of prematurely greying hair, an insanely coloured waistcoat over his ample girth and a loud laugh. I remember being cornered for some time after it emerged that I used Apple Mac computers as well as PCs.

Such was my introduction to technology journalist Dave Stewart, who was one of the most unforgettable personalities in the small and friendly circle of those of us who cover the tech beat in Ireland.

We travelled together numerous times to cover Apple events and I always stood in the shadow of his vast knowledge about Apple products, strategy and personalities.

To the shock of many of us who had not realised how ill he had become from the cancer he was diagnosed with last January, Dave died this week. His naturally ebullient and cheerful manner meant that though many of us spoke to him over the past months, he rarely betrayed how serious his illness had become.

Instead, during one call, Dave had me laughing with his complaint that he was furious to have missed the satellite broadcast of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote at MacWorld in January because at that precise moment he was awaiting his initial test results in hospital.

Sleep gently, big man.