Travelers Face Greater Use of Personal Data

On the other hand, Rosenzweig said, such data might be important if U.S. authorities learn of an alert about passengers who request wheelchairs hiding bombs in leg casts, or a warning about a threat to a political gathering, or a health emergency affecting people with communicable diseases such as tuberculosis.

Mostly, Rosenzweig said, it is threats that authorities have not thought about that worry them. "We are just not going to bind ourselves not to have full access to information that might be in Passenger Name Records if there is a severe predication and reason to do that," he said.

Under the new accord, which will take effect in August and continue through July 2014, Europe allowed the United States to extend how long it can store data -- to 15 years from 3 1/2 years. Beginning in January 2008, airlines will be required to send, or "push," data from their reservation systems to the Homeland Security Department 72 hours before a flight departs, expanding an existing "pull" system in which the department retrieves information from carriers.

Washington won the authority to share data liberally within the government and with third countries at the discretion of Homeland Security officials, but agreed to E.U. demands to limit its uses to counterterrorism, probes of serious crimes, public health emergencies and flights from custody.

The United States reduced the number of fields from which it will collect information about each passenger, from 34 to 19, but expanded the amount of data covered by some fields. Washington assured the European Union that its citizens will continue to have the same administrative protections as Americans to obtain information collected about them and to seek to correct errors.

Although Homeland Security has said it will move passenger information to "dormant" status after seven years and "expects" to erase it after 15 years, it notified the E.U. that expiration of data will be subject to "further discussions."

Dutch lawmaker Sophia in't Veld, the European Parliament's standing rapporteur on Passenger Name Records, said the agreement gives a green light to U.S. authorities to use confidential information for unstated purposes. Stavros Lambrinidis of Greece, vice chairman of the parliament's civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee, warned that it allows extra data collection not just in counterterrorism cases but for "a vast and in some cases unidentified number of crimes. So we have function creep."

U.S. officials said the agreement with Europe -- which has stronger data-protection laws than many countries, including the United States -- is likely to serve as a template for similar U.S. agreements covering travelers from Asia, South America and other regions, and for Europeans to set up their own, similar system.

Staff writer Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.