US privacy officials have made advances to Richard Thomas, Britain's information commissioner, about formulating an international data protection law for the era of globalisation.

The US has been pushing for more widespread data sharing between governments so it can track people it thinks are not safe to travel. But privacy officials in Europe have already hindered US attempts to routinely collect intelligence from foreign commercial databases, such as the passenger name records it takes from airlines and the bank data it took from the Belgian firm SWIFT.

US officials are fed up with being derided for having privacy laws that are too feeble restrain an administration prepared to put individual privacy before its mission to pacify the world

The Register UK