Home affairs cooperation between Hungary and the United States is excellent, Interior Minister Sándor Pintér told the Washington correspondent of the Hungarian news agency MTI.
Mr Pintér is paying a two-day visit to the capital of the United States where on Monday he had talks with Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Admiral Michael Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), and also paid a visit to the CBP National Targeting Center in Virginia, an institution concerned with issues related to border protection and counter-terrorism.
The Hungarian Interior Minister signed an „act of cooperation” with Jeh Johnson. Mr Pintér said: pursuant to the signed document, Budapest and Washington will later cooperate in the fight against terrorism. This primarily relates to rendering more difficult the travels of foreign terrorist fighters and to the sharing of terrorist intelligence, but also extends to other significant security issues, such as organised crime.
Mr Pintér stressed: such cooperation had already existed between the United States and Hungary. However, the document now signed will not just renew this cooperation, but will also open up new paths, thanks to the advancement of technology.
„These new paths primarily represent the instant sharing of information in specified areas, and real-time information sharing facilitates the detection of acts of terrorism and terrorists. This is one of the most important parts of the cooperation”, the head of the Interior Ministry highlighted.
As part of another important area of cooperation, the two countries will share with one another the records which they respectively send to Europol and Interpol. This will also facilitate intelligence work, as anticipated.
Mr Pintér pointed out: pursuant to the agreement now signed, Hungary will also make preparations for resolving the problems that are related to stolen or lost passports. In this context he said: the standing practice in the European Union, including Hungary, is that if someone reports the theft of their passport and the passport is later found, the document may be used thereafter. The United States, however, does not consider this a safe solution for carefully considered reasons as they take the view that these passports must not be used again because the details of the passports are entered in the warrant systems. As a result, the situation may arise that an innocent individual is detained because the authorities believe that his or her passport is forged. The possibility may equally emerge that criminals abuse the data of the document, the Interior Minister argued.
In answer to the question as to whether Hungary will adopt this US practice, Mr Pintér told MTI: the two countries will sign an agreement on this in the future. With the signing of the document on Monday, they merely created the foundations for future cooperation.
He stressed: „task forces will later explore the legal rules, upon the entry into force of which we shall comply with the new practice”. The Minister added: he takes the view that the operation of the warrant systems in relation to passports justifies the practice that once a passport is registered as lost or stolen, it should be withdrawn from use definitively.
Mr Pintér highlighted: this is a cooperation scheme that has now been placed on new foundations.
„I believe that the real-time sharing of information will render this cooperation even more effective”, the Minister said.
He added: for the purposes of instant information sharing, the parties have yet to work out the method of data transmission, and to provide for the availability of appropriate data transmission speed and security. As he said, this data transmission security is comprised of two elements: in order for the transmission of all data, you need an appropriate bandwidth, and it is extremely important that only those should have access to the data to whom it is sent.
On Tuesday Mr Pintér will meet with William Brownfield, Assistant Secretary of State of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the US Department of State, and James Comey, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).