Airlines Cough Up Passenger Data

U.S. airlines turned over a month's worth of passenger data Tuesday to Homeland Security officials, who want to test a massive, centralized passenger-screening system.

The Transportation Security Administration ordered America's 72 airlines to turn over their June 2004 domestic passenger flight records by Tuesday afternoon. The airlines had initially questioned the order because of privacy concerns, but they all complied.

The agency wants the records -- which can include credit card numbers, phone numbers and health information -- to test a system called Secure Flight. Currently, passengers are screened by the airlines, which check itineraries against a set of watch lists provided by the government. The TSA hopes to reduce the number of people flagged incorrectly by performing the checks itself using an expanded, centralized terrorist watch list.

Privacy advocates contend that the list-based system is ineffective and that passengers with names similar to suspected terrorists would still be snagged under the new system.

The TSA plans to evaluate the system over the next 90 days in hopes of rolling out the system in the spring.

Congress, however, has barred the system from airports until the Government Accountability Office certifies that the system is effective and not overly invasive.

This is not the first time airlines have turned over passenger data to help test an antiterrorism screening system, but it is the first time that the transfers were not secret.

Following successive revelations that JetBlue Airways and American Airlines had secretly turned over passenger data to the government or its contractors, TSA chief Adm. David Stone told Congress in June that five of the nation's largest airlines and two airline reservation centers turned over sensitive passenger data to TSA contractors in 2002.

Those revelations led the TSA to cancel CAPPS II, Secure Flight's more ambitious predecessor.

Even though the airlines still have concerns about privacy and the possible effects of Secure Flight on day-to-day operations, they are complying, said Doug Wills, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the airlines' trade organization.

"We don't have all the information we need (to fully evaluate Secure Flight)," Wills said. "Having said that, what we have here is a test based on historical data designed to find out what works and what doesn't work, not a live thing that is going to impact operations."

The TSA wanted to use commercial databases to verify passenger identities in the test phase, but Congress blocked it from doing so until the GAO certifies that passenger privacy will be protected. Two Homeland Security investigations of the earlier data transfers' legality are still ongoing, including one by the department's Inspector General Clark Kent Irvin, who has been one of the TSA's harshest critics.

By Ryan Singel 11.24.04
Wired News
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