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Under a new deal, airlines flying from the E.U. must submit passenger lists before takeoff. The U.S. can the use personal data to search for terrorism suspects, and keep the data for 15 years. Ashley Milne-Tyte reports.

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Lisa Napoli: The euro slipped a bit against the dollar today, but the U.S. is still a paradise for European visitors this summer. Except that next week, they’ll have to give up more information than they might like to travel here.

Here’s Ashley Milne-Tyte on a data-sharing deal between the U.S. and Europe that was signed off on Thursday.


Ashley Milne-Tyte: Under the new deal, airlines flying from the E.U. to the U.S. must submit their passenger lists to U.S. authorities at least 15 minutes before the plane takes off. The U.S. is allowed to use or mine a host of personal data on passengers if they suspect the person of having links to terrorism.

That constitutes a compromise, says David Field of Airline Business magazine, because the Europeans have always worried about how else the U.S. might use all that personal information.

David Field: The Europeans fought very hard to reduce the number of pieces of data, so that people would not get into being interrogated over not paying their child support.

But they’ve agreed to let the U.S. store passenger data for up to 15 years, rather than three-and-a-half. The deal does not sit well with civil liberties groups on either side of the pond, and Field says the two sides will probably keep battling over privacy, despite this new agreement.

In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.