Under the agreement, the U.S. and Germany can, for the purpose of advancing criminal investigations and prosecutions, query each other"s fingerprint databases with unknown prints to determine if the other party has information about the print. If a "hit" is received, the querying party will make a mutual legal assistance request for identifying data, and the use of that data is governed by treaty. If no hit is received, then no information is retained.

Additionally, the agreement contains a spontaneous sharing article that can be used to share biographic and fingerprint information about known and suspected terrorists, as well as information about planned attacks or persons trained to commit terrorist acts. Attorney General Mukasey and Secretary Chertoff were visiting Germany for the initialing ceremony and to hold bilateral meetings with their German counterparts.