The Obama administration has loosened its guidelines on how counterterrorism analysts may use non-security-related information about American citizens, the New York Times reports. The new rules, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder on March 22, include a tenfold increase in the amount of time the National Counterterrorism Center can store data and includes measures that will facilitate “data mining” to identify potentially suspicious patterns.

Citing intelligence officials, the Times gives a hypothetical example of how the new rules may be applied: “A person from Yemen applies for a visa and lists an American as a point of contact. There is no sign that either person is a terrorist. Two years later, another person from Yemen applies for a visa and lists the same American, and this second person is a suspected terrorist.” While the old system would require an analyst to request a search of the State Department’s database, “under the new rules, a computer could instantly alert analysts of the connection.”