European passengers travelling to the US could have their credit card transactions and e-mail accounts inspected by American authorities under a new deal signed between the EU and Washington, according to a report by UK broadsheet The Daily Telegraph.
The EU agreed in October to hand over detailed information about passengers flying to the US to American authorities as part of efforts to trace and cut off terrorist financing.
Under the agreement, US authorities have the right to access up to 34 separate pieces of "passenger name record" information, which includes credit card details, names and e-mail addresses.
But according to the Telegraph report, the data will be made available for dealing with 'serious crimes' as well as for combating terrorism.
Details of the agreement were published by the UK's Department for Transport after a Freedom of Information request.
Human rights group Liberty condemned the move, claiming it was a "complete handover of the rights of people travelling to the United States".
Organisations wishing to access the data would normally have to apply for a court order or subpoena, but this would depend on what data was wanted, says the Telegraph.
The US government has agreed to "encourage" US airlines to make similar information available to EU governments, but has not compelled them to do so.
The move follows last year's news that the Bush administration was using emergency powers to secretly scrutinise suspect transactions sent over the interbank Swift network.
Swift came under fire from Belgian and EU officials following disclosure of the programme and in November an independent European data committee found that the Belgium-based interbank network violated European data protection laws by passing details of banking transactions to the US government.