U.S., Europe near deal on trading air passenger information

— -- The United States and the European Union are nearing completion of an updated agreement for sharing information about airline passengers.

The governments have agreed since 2007 to share information that enables the United States to compare names of European travelers against watch lists.

But the latest agreement, negotiated in the past year, aims to better balance privacy concerns in the collection of information that U.S. officials routinely use in terror investigations.

The European Commission approved the agreement Wednesday. Ministers of the 27 member countries will be the next to consider it, followed by a vote in the European Parliament.

"It's not a done deal yet, but we are halfway through and are quite confident that we will have a successful conclusion," Cecilia Malmström, the European Union's Commissioner for Home Affairs, said after meeting last week with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The passenger-name records cover 19 pieces of data when a traveler buys a ticket, including the itinerary, means of payment and contact information. Key parts of the agreement initialed by negotiators last week include:

•Requiring airlines to provide information about passengers to the Department of Homeland Security for sifting, rather than allowing the government to pull the information directly from airline reservation systems.

•Allowing U.S. investigators to use the information only for crimes punishable by at least three years in prison.

•Masking personal identification data such as name and contact information after six months. After that, data would be stored for 10 years for suspects in most serious crimes and 15 years for terrorists. The existing agreement has a blanket 15-year limit without any removal of identifying details.

Chris Calabrese, legal counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, says, "There are definitely some positive new elements in the agreement." But he says the length of time data are stored remains far longer than the week the U.S. government keeps it for the secure-flight program. "In terms of retention limits, that sort of jumps up and smacks you in the face," he says.

The quality of data is also a concern if people are delayed by being incorrectly linked to a criminal. U.S. officials say passengers will be able to fix incorrect information, but Calabrese is skeptical about how easy that will be.

Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology, says passengers might not be aware of being flagged on a watch list, and it can be difficult to straighten things out. "How do you know you have a problem?" he says. "You go through several miserable hours trying to clear it up."

U.S. officials have described the data as vital to protecting against terrorism. Passenger-name records were used 3,000 times in investigations during 2008 and 2009, according to David Heyman, assistant secretary for policy at Homeland Security. The information helped identify attempted New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi; attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad; and David Headley, accused in the 2008 Mumbai attack.