Travelers generally prioritize finding cheap airplane tickets, cheap auto rentals and great prices on discount hotel rooms. Now security concerns are leading the U.S. government to ask other countries and airlines to provide personal and criminal information regarding people scheduled to fly to the U.S.
About 23 million people a year fly to America from Europe. The Homeland Security Department has asked European countries to provide detailed information about people planning to travel to the U.S. prior to their boarding flights, including their phone numbers, frequent flier numbers and credit card numbers.
Homeland Security claims that by standardizing the information they receive from different countries this information will be more useful in indentifying travelers with terrorist ties before they fly.
Homeland Security has an agreement with the European Union that grants it access to records that show passenger 19 categories of information for anyone flying to the U.S. from the European Union. Currently not all airlines collect data in all these categories.
Many security experts see collecting detailed passenger information prior to flight as far more important than airport scanning. You dont have to worry about terrorists fooling airport security if prior research has identified potential terrorist who are then not issued boarding passes or are intercepted going through security.
Homeland Security is trying to share information with European countries including criminal records and terrorism links for international passengers. Currently the U.S. has such agreement with 13 countries, but is trying to secure accords with 20 others whose citizens can visit the U.S. without visas.
The sticking point in reaching agreements with certain European Union countries is concern over violating their citizens right to privacy