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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
New York Times
September 20, 2003 JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers By PHILIP SHENON WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 - JetBlue Airways acknowledged publicly today that it had provided a Pentagon contractor with information on more than one million of its passengers as part of a program to track down terrorists and other "high risk" passengers. That data, which was turned over in violation of the airline's own privacy policies, was then used to identify the passengers' Social Security numbers, financial histories and occupations. JetBlue, a three-year-old discount airline, sent an e-mail message to passengers this week, conceding that it had made a mistake in providing the records last year to Torch Concepts, an Army contractor in Huntsville, Ala., for a research project on "airline passenger risk assessment." "This was a mistake on our part and I know you and many of our customers feel betrayed by it," said David Neeleman, JetBlue's chief executive, in an e-mail message that the airline, based in New York, said was sent to about 150 passengers who had written in so far to complain. Mr. Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue, which has been a rare success in the airline industry and has prospered because of its reputation for low fares and consumer friendliness, insisted that none of the passenger information was shared with the government. "The sole set of data in Torch's possession has been destroyed," he wrote. "No government agency ever had access to it." Privacy rights groups expressed astonishment that JetBlue had shared so much passenger information with a contractor, describing the privacy breach as among the most serious reported by any American company in recent years. JetBlue's announcement comes at a time when many civil liberties groups are warning that privacy rights are becoming victims of the government's struggle against terrorism and the desire of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for quick access to customer information that has traditionally been closely held by corporations. The airline said it had provided Torch Concepts with records on about five million individual itineraries, reflecting the travels of about 1.1 million passengers in 2001 and 2002. The records, it said, would have included the passengers' names, addresses and phone numbers but not credit card numbers or government identification numbers commonly collected from travelers like passport numbers. A lawyer for Torch Concepts, Richard Marsden, said that the passenger records provided by JetBlue were destroyed by the contractor earlier this week after the existence of the project was reported by Wired News, a technology-news Web site. "It's all been destroyed in the last 24 hours," he said in a telephone interview. But privacy advocates said further investigation was needed. "Five million is a big number," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "JetBlue passengers have reason to be very upset. Will the data be destroyed? Will there be some compensation for the passengers?" Mr. Neeleman said that the passenger information was turned over last year as a result of an "exceptional request from the Department of Defense to assist their contractor, Torch Concepts, with a project regarding military base security." He said that JetBlue was told that "this project had no connection with aviation security." The Pentagon, which was still largely shut down because of Hurricane Isabel, had no immediate comment on the issue. Torch Concepts, which describes itself in promotional material as a "content-management and information-mining" company, was hired by the Army more than three years ago to determine how information from public and private records might be analyzed to help defend military bases from attack by terrorists and other adversaries. While the company has insisted that the Army study was never intended to be used to improve security at civilian airports, there was clearly discussion within the company of whether its research might be of use to the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for airport security. In a study prepared in February and released at a symposium sponsored by the Homeland Security Department, Torch Concepts said that "several data elements have been identified which best distinguish normal JetBlue passengers from past terrorists." The report said that after receiving the passenger information from JetBlue, Torch Concepts matched the passenger names against a variety of databases that it had purchased from Acxiom, a large consumer research company. "For approximately 40 percent of the passengers," the report said, the Acxiom databases provided additional "demographic information," including a passenger's Social Security number, occupation, income, gender and home- and car-ownership history, as well as the number of adults and children living in the passenger's household. Mr. Marsden said the company and its study had no link to the Pentagon's broad electronic surveillance project known as Terrorist Information Awareness, which has drawn harsh criticism from Capitol Hill and from privacy groups in recent months who consider it an effort to intrude on the rights of Americans in the name of counterterrorism. Nor, he said, was there any link between the Torch Concepts' project and a huge government passenger-screening program that is now being developed by the Transportation Security Administration. The government's antiterrorism program, the second phase in a effort known as the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, has also been criticized by privacy advocates as overly intrusive. Gareth Edmondson-Jones, a spokesman for JetBlue, said in a telephone interview that the decision to provide the passenger information to Torch Concepts was a clear violation of the company's own policy. "We have the strongest privacy policy in the industry, which clearly says that we don't supply customer data to third parties," he said. Asked if Mr. Neeleman or other senior executives had approved the sharing of the passenger information, Mr. Edmondson-Jones said he did not know, adding that there had been no discussion of disciplinary action against anyone at the company for the policy breach. "That's not even come up," he said. "We made the decision as a company, at whatever level it was done." He suggested that the decision to turn over the passenger information to the contractor was motivated by the airline's concern with security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "In a post 9/11 word troubled by security issues and terrorists, we had a special request from the Department of Defense to assist in a military project," he said. "The decision was made to assist." |
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
For more information on this outrage, see:
http://www.dontspyon.us/jetblue.html Fly Jetblue, find yourself on a nofly list or extra security check list. Jetblue's fares come at a price. "citizen" wrote in message ... New York Times September 20, 2003 JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers By PHILIP SHENON WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 - JetBlue Airways acknowledged publicly today that it had provided a Pentagon contractor with information on more than one million of its passengers as part of a program to track down terrorists and other "high risk" passengers. That data, which was turned over in violation of the airline's own privacy policies, was then used to identify the passengers' Social Security numbers, financial histories and occupations. JetBlue, a three-year-old discount airline, sent an e-mail message to passengers this week, conceding that it had made a mistake in providing the records last year to Torch Concepts, an Army contractor in Huntsville, Ala., for a research project on "airline passenger risk assessment." "This was a mistake on our part and I know you and many of our customers feel betrayed by it," said David Neeleman, JetBlue's chief executive, in an e-mail message that the airline, based in New York, said was sent to about 150 passengers who had written in so far to complain. Mr. Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue, which has been a rare success in the airline industry and has prospered because of its reputation for low fares and consumer friendliness, insisted that none of the passenger information was shared with the government. "The sole set of data in Torch's possession has been destroyed," he wrote. "No government agency ever had access to it." Privacy rights groups expressed astonishment that JetBlue had shared so much passenger information with a contractor, describing the privacy breach as among the most serious reported by any American company in recent years. JetBlue's announcement comes at a time when many civil liberties groups are warning that privacy rights are becoming victims of the government's struggle against terrorism and the desire of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for quick access to customer information that has traditionally been closely held by corporations. The airline said it had provided Torch Concepts with records on about five million individual itineraries, reflecting the travels of about 1.1 million passengers in 2001 and 2002. The records, it said, would have included the passengers' names, addresses and phone numbers but not credit card numbers or government identification numbers commonly collected from travelers like passport numbers. A lawyer for Torch Concepts, Richard Marsden, said that the passenger records provided by JetBlue were destroyed by the contractor earlier this week after the existence of the project was reported by Wired News, a technology-news Web site. "It's all been destroyed in the last 24 hours," he said in a telephone interview. But privacy advocates said further investigation was needed. "Five million is a big number," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "JetBlue passengers have reason to be very upset. Will the data be destroyed? Will there be some compensation for the passengers?" Mr. Neeleman said that the passenger information was turned over last year as a result of an "exceptional request from the Department of Defense to assist their contractor, Torch Concepts, with a project regarding military base security." He said that JetBlue was told that "this project had no connection with aviation security." The Pentagon, which was still largely shut down because of Hurricane Isabel, had no immediate comment on the issue. Torch Concepts, which describes itself in promotional material as a "content-management and information-mining" company, was hired by the Army more than three years ago to determine how information from public and private records might be analyzed to help defend military bases from attack by terrorists and other adversaries. While the company has insisted that the Army study was never intended to be used to improve security at civilian airports, there was clearly discussion within the company of whether its research might be of use to the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for airport security. In a study prepared in February and released at a symposium sponsored by the Homeland Security Department, Torch Concepts said that "several data elements have been identified which best distinguish normal JetBlue passengers from past terrorists." The report said that after receiving the passenger information from JetBlue, Torch Concepts matched the passenger names against a variety of databases that it had purchased from Acxiom, a large consumer research company. "For approximately 40 percent of the passengers," the report said, the Acxiom databases provided additional "demographic information," including a passenger's Social Security number, occupation, income, gender and home- and car-ownership history, as well as the number of adults and children living in the passenger's household. Mr. Marsden said the company and its study had no link to the Pentagon's broad electronic surveillance project known as Terrorist Information Awareness, which has drawn harsh criticism from Capitol Hill and from privacy groups in recent months who consider it an effort to intrude on the rights of Americans in the name of counterterrorism. Nor, he said, was there any link between the Torch Concepts' project and a huge government passenger-screening program that is now being developed by the Transportation Security Administration. The government's antiterrorism program, the second phase in a effort known as the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, has also been criticized by privacy advocates as overly intrusive. Gareth Edmondson-Jones, a spokesman for JetBlue, said in a telephone interview that the decision to provide the passenger information to Torch Concepts was a clear violation of the company's own policy. "We have the strongest privacy policy in the industry, which clearly says that we don't supply customer data to third parties," he said. Asked if Mr. Neeleman or other senior executives had approved the sharing of the passenger information, Mr. Edmondson-Jones said he did not know, adding that there had been no discussion of disciplinary action against anyone at the company for the policy breach. "That's not even come up," he said. "We made the decision as a company, at whatever level it was done." He suggested that the decision to turn over the passenger information to the contractor was motivated by the airline's concern with security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "In a post 9/11 word troubled by security issues and terrorists, we had a special request from the Department of Defense to assist in a military project," he said. "The decision was made to assist." |
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 17:41:02 GMT, Dick Locke
wrote: On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 06:46:00 GMT, (citizen) wrote: JetBlue Airways acknowledged publicly today that it had provided a Pentagon contractor with information on more than one million of its passengers as part of a program to track down terrorists and other "high risk" passengers. That data, which was turned over in violation of the airline's own privacy policies, was then used to identify the passengers' Social Security numbers, financial histories and occupations. Excuse me for replying to my own message, but it appears that Axciom has different privacy policies for different data bases. I dug deeper and found this: Quote InfoBase and SentricxSM Reference Products—Acxiom develops and maintains databases containing information about many individuals and households in the U.S. for reference purposes and provides online links to other information provider services for use by qualified businesses and government agencies for lawful and ethical purposes. These databases are developed from many different sources, including: Public Record and Publicly Available Information—Telephone directories; real property recorder and assessor information; historical drivers license information; current drivers license information, where allowed by law; historical motor vehicle information; current motor vehicle information, where allowed by law; deceased information; and other suppression information Data from Other Information Providers—Telephone companies, surveys, questionnaires and consumer-provided contact information These databases and access to other information provider services include financial information, Social Security Number and other related information where permitted by law. This information is provided only to qualified businesses primarily in the finance, insurance, mortgage, real estate and retail industries for the purpose of verifying information about customers, issuing mortgages, speeding transactions, employment screening and reducing the chance of fraud. Other reference databases are provided to government agencies for the purposes of verifying information, employment screening and assisting law enforcement. Unquote Scary group, this Axciom. I asked them to comment on whether providing data to a DOD subcontractor conflicts with this privacy policy. Hmmm, they are in Little Rock AK, home of you know who and spouse and you know who else. |
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
Dick Locke wrote:
I've taken off my tinfoil hat and something still looks wrong. Americans should have taken off their patriotic glasses before the patriot act was passed. They should have taken off their patriotic glasses before the USA invaded Iraq without any UN mandate. Those patriotic glasses made americans blind to reality. The USA administration knew that and used this to pass its own orwelian agenda through all levels of government without any opposition, except from other countries who were then dismissed as whatever insults Bush made to so many countries. It is too late now. The USA wants that "total information awareness" thing and will get it. This Jetblue thing is just another test. The USA government conveniently forgot international law, they forgot the constitution. They set about to build a military state that all all controls over the population with the pretense that such measures were necessary to prevent terrorism. And the blinded americans not only beleived this, they not only supported this, but they labeled anyone opposing those moves as anti-patriotic. This is why any democratic candidate that supported the invasion of irak and the patriot act should automatically be dismissed from the leadership race. the senior officials in the Bush administration didn't have those blinding patriotic glasses on, they were fully aware of the lies and abuses to human rights they were perpetrating. The democrats who supported them have 0 excuse. There was strong opposition from everywhere in the world and the democrats had no excuse not to see what was really going on. In a state where the press is supposed to be so free, how come the USA military told the press corps that the only reporting they would support is from vetted reporters and that they would not garantee that any non-vettted reporter would not be shot at ? (It isn't just the al-jazeera offices in bagdhad that were bombed, but the USA also killed other "free" reporters, including some from Britain if I remember correctly. When USA policies result in Amnisty International putting its own people in front of USA INS offices because too many people who was lawfully inside the USA were captured by INS officials and sent to jails without any charge, and in those jailes they were tortured (by definition, depriving any prisoner of sleep by keeping bright lights on 24 hours a day is torture), when USA policies reult in such actions, how come the USA public didn't rise up ? The whole "right to bear arms" should have been put into action here. When you have a rogue government that makes so many abuses, the american public should have risen and demanded the government be thrown out. But no !, the american public and media applauded the government's moves and insulted anyone opposing such moves. Well you get what you support. You supported a totalitarian government, now you have a totalitarian state who disregards privacy, jails people without valid charges, disregards international treaties (but still expects other countries to abide by them when it is convenient for the USA) etc. It is amazing that the americans did not wake up to what is happening and that they supported their government at a time when their own government was attempting to do exactly what the old communist and/or dictatorial governments were doing. Sorry, but the USA is no longer in ANY position to tell other countries about human rights. If Bush is thrown out, it will be most interesting to see if his replacement will have the guts to tear down all that totalitarian stuff or whether this will continue. |
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 14:13:18 -0400, Charles Whitney
wrote: Dick Locke wrote: I've taken off my tinfoil hat and something still looks wrong. Americans should have taken off their patriotic glasses before the patriot act was passed. They should have taken off their patriotic glasses before the USA invaded Iraq without any UN mandate. Hey, pal, many of us did! Much good it did us, with the cowardly Congress giving Bush (actually his handlers) all the anti civil liberties legislation they lusted after, obscenely taking advantage of our national tragedy. Those patriotic glasses made americans blind to reality. Not all of us,pal! But who listened to us, in that ***kissing Congress that's supposed to represent us! Does anybody remember that there were only TWO votes in Congress against the cooked-up Tonkin Gulf Resolution that got us into Vietnam? Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening. Take a look at Daniel Ellsberg's site: http://www.ellsberg.net/writing/chapter1.htm Account of the supposed attack and Pentagon/Administration reaction from one who was there. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme goddam chose! -- Wesley Clark for President www.DraftWesleyClark.com |
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 18:02:54 GMT, Dick Locke
wrote: [...] Hmmm, they are in Little Rock AK, home of you know who and spouse and you know who else. Major, major non sequitur. Any child molesters living in your village? Pot. Kettle. -- Wesley Clark for President www.DraftWesleyClark.com |
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
Dick Locke wrote:
No kidding...just checking to see if the right wing-nuts have a monopoly on humorlessness. Disappointed to see they don't.... It is abundant on both sides of the fence, I'm sad to say. Sadder still to admit that I think slightly moreso on the left side. miguel -- Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu Site remodeled 10-Sept-2003: Hundreds of new photos, easier navigation. |
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JetBlue Gave Defense Firm Files on Passengers
On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 03:01:09 GMT, Dick Locke
wrote: On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 18:50:43 GMT, - wrote: On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 18:02:54 GMT, Dick Locke wrote: [...] Major, major non sequitur. No kidding...just checking to see if the right wing-nuts have a monopoly on humorlessness. Disappointed to see they don't.... Humourlessness my fanny. Too many campers around who think exactly like the message to which I responded. Abject apologies for not having been able to read your "mind". -- Wesley Clark for President www.DraftWesleyClark.com |
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