Betraying Passengers' Privacy (NYT article)
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Betraying Passengers' Privacy (NYT article)
More than a million passengers of the U.S. airline JetBlue Airways have been unsuspecting guinea pigs in a Defense Department contractor's experiment in mining commercial databases to assess the risk of a person turning out to be a terrorist. The airline admits it violated its own privacy policy when it acceded to the Pentagon's request to give passenger records to Torch Concepts, a private technology business that was ostensibly creating a program to enhance security at military bases.
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JetBlue's surrender of the information amounts to one of the most serious betrayals of consumers' privacy rights by an American business. The 3-year-old airline recognizes that it made "an error of judgment" and has apologized. It is also quick to note that it did not share the information with a government entity, though it is not clear why passengers should feel reassured that it was a private company using the names, addresses and flight information to extrapolate Social Security and other personal data from other sources.
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Plenty of questions remain unanswered about this episode and about the real extent of government involvement. A congressional inquiry may be appropriate, given the scope of the Bush administration's ambitions regarding surveillance. Torch Concepts maintains, and the airline believed all along, that the data was not used in conjunction with the development of the Pentagon's troubled antiterrorism technology project or the Transportation Security Administration's passenger-profiling project. That system will match passenger records with commercial databases, like credit histories. A presentation made by the company to Homeland Security Department officials in February went far beyond issues of security at military bases.
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JetBlue's behavior is a cautionary tale about the promiscuous use of consumer information, and the ease with which government can access information ostensibly in private hands. Privacy groups have rightly asked the Federal Trade Commission to open an inquiry into the JetBlue case. Companies' violations of their own privacy policies, which consumers have relied on, must be treated as deceptive business practices. The airline could have volunteered to help develop a new profiling system by sharing passenger records, but only if it had disclosed that plan.
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This misstep only feeds legitimate consumer fears that companies and governments are too quick to use private data in unauthorized ways. It is worrisome, in this regard, that the Homeland Security Department has already backtracked from its original vow to use its passenger-profiling program only to fight terrorism. There is now talk of turning it into an all-purpose law-enforcement tool. For its part, in addition to ascertaining what actually took place, Congress may also need to consider new legal protections for consumers' privacy.
.
JetBlue's surrender of the information amounts to one of the most serious betrayals of consumers' privacy rights by an American business. The 3-year-old airline recognizes that it made "an error of judgment" and has apologized. It is also quick to note that it did not share the information with a government entity, though it is not clear why passengers should feel reassured that it was a private company using the names, addresses and flight information to extrapolate Social Security and other personal data from other sources.
.
Plenty of questions remain unanswered about this episode and about the real extent of government involvement. A congressional inquiry may be appropriate, given the scope of the Bush administration's ambitions regarding surveillance. Torch Concepts maintains, and the airline believed all along, that the data was not used in conjunction with the development of the Pentagon's troubled antiterrorism technology project or the Transportation Security Administration's passenger-profiling project. That system will match passenger records with commercial databases, like credit histories. A presentation made by the company to Homeland Security Department officials in February went far beyond issues of security at military bases.
.
JetBlue's behavior is a cautionary tale about the promiscuous use of consumer information, and the ease with which government can access information ostensibly in private hands. Privacy groups have rightly asked the Federal Trade Commission to open an inquiry into the JetBlue case. Companies' violations of their own privacy policies, which consumers have relied on, must be treated as deceptive business practices. The airline could have volunteered to help develop a new profiling system by sharing passenger records, but only if it had disclosed that plan.
.
This misstep only feeds legitimate consumer fears that companies and governments are too quick to use private data in unauthorized ways. It is worrisome, in this regard, that the Homeland Security Department has already backtracked from its original vow to use its passenger-profiling program only to fight terrorism. There is now talk of turning it into an all-purpose law-enforcement tool. For its part, in addition to ascertaining what actually took place, Congress may also need to consider new legal protections for consumers' privacy.
