The new procedures will aid law enforcement officials and the intelligence community in the war on terrorism by ensuring the circulation of data to the proper locations in the government, the department said.
The plans implement portions of the USA Patriot Act, which became law last year after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The information that is being shared concerns U.S. citizens whose names have come up in criminal investigations.
Investigators will be allowed to follow up on terrorism-related information if intelligence agencies and the Justice Department determine that the person is an agent of a foreign power.
The person's name will be removed from investigative files in instances where the person is not found to be an agent.
A senior department official said a training program will teach investigators the requirements.
Civil liberties groups have been targeting a different dimension of Justice Department operations for criticism. The department is able to get permission to conduct wiretaps for intelligence-gathering purposes by going to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The legal threshold for getting wiretap permission is lower in intelligence gathering than it is in criminal investigations.
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