EU and Japan started negotiations of an agreement on passenger name record (“PNR”) while EU-CANADA PNR negotiations are concluding. Responding to the call from United Nations Security Council, International Civil Aviation Organization is discussing amendments on the PNR to the Standards and Recommended Practices on Facilitation. In these bi-lateral and global circumstances, what should be desirable outcome of negotiations on Japan-EU PNR Agreement and could be broader issues left behind?In this contribution, PNR and the nature of its processing are overviewed (Sect. 2), and their current legal and practical framework in Japan is critically confirmed (Sect. 3). Then Japanese PNR system is compared with the original draft negotiating directive of Japan-EU PNR Agreement with author’s perspective (Sect. 4) and finally global implications for the PNR and importance on (relatively legacy) technology and practice of algorithmic pattern-based search are explored.