The Department of Homeland Security has created a list with 39 items of information it wants to be provided about every foreign passenger intending to to fly to the United States. The Europeans don't object to 19 of them.

.... What does bother them are requests for items like all forms of payment information, the passenger's billing address and e-mail address, and some vague catch-all categories like "general remarks."

Under the Aviation and Security Act of 2001, the United States government expects airlines to collect this information before the flight departs, so that Customs officials can check for potential security threats before takeoff. They also want Customs to store the information for up to seven years. If airlines do not comply they face fines or could lose their landing rights in the United States.

"We should shy away from caricatures such as Big Brother, but there is a fear that steadily more data on E.U. citizens, innocent or not, is being stored electronically in Washington, and people don't like that," Mr. Bolkestein said in an interview.