Information gathered about passengers travelling to the United States is crucial in combatting international terrorism, a US top security official said Monday, pressing Europe to increase its data exchange with the US, according to DPA. "We are all safer if we operate in a world in which intelligent use of information allows for more focussed efforts in determining who is a threat," US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said after a meeting with European Union lawmakers and officials. The US and the 27-member EU are currently negotiating a permanent pact on the controversial sharing of key air passenger data which Washington requires from airlines as part of heightened security measures after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. "We need to make sure that we have to provide the civilized world with appropriate tools to identify new security threats," Chertoff told a news briefing in Brussels. The US has called for more data-sharing, claiming that European privacy concerns had unreasonably hampered its counter-terrorism activities in the past few years. Under the current interim pact, European air carriers are obliged to give US authorities up to 34 pieces of information on each passenger aboard America-bound flights. The data includes credit card numbers, travel itineraries, addresses and telephone numbers. Washington has warned that airlines which failed to share passenger data would face fines of up to 6,000 dollars per passenger and a possible loss of landing rights. Chertoff said that the US wanted to make sure that a new agreement, which has to be clinched by the end of July, would ensure a "sufficient period of time" for the storage of data, arguing that terrorists were planning their plots over several years. He also said that the US was working on new legislation under which foreign air passengers travelling to the US would be required to feed their data into an online database days ahead of the trip. This new scheme would enable the US "to inform people in advance if there is going to be a problem in allowing them to travel," Chertoff said.
