JetBlue Gives Away Passenger Info To TSA?

Old Ben Franklin writes "In September of 2002, JetBlue Airways secretly gave the Transportation Security Administration the full travel records of 5 million JetBlue customers. This sensitive travel data was then turned-over to a private security contractor for analysis, the results of which were presented at a security conference earlier this year and the analysis then posted on the Internet." This comes after Wired News's recent article on this matter, explaining that "...the proposed government system to prevent terrorism by color-coding airline passengers according to their risk level will be tested using old passenger itineraries from JetBlue", but quoting a TSA spokesman as saying that "currently only fake passenger data was being used."

Comments

Re:Color Coding

[BiggerIsBetter]

Actually, I think the color Green is the root of all evil. But you're probably right.

Re:just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

Red passengers would more likely be x-rayed prior to boarding. Baggage would of course be x-rayed and hand searched if it is found necessary.

And turbans are actually not on the list of warning signs. Beards of a certain type are including the Uday short and Osama long styles. Sihks aren't the ones the TSA is after.

Dear Racial Profiling Advocate,

[clambake]

You are ignorant. I'm not being rude, I'm being honest. Profiling is less secure then random sampling. It's mathematical FACT.

The reason it is less secure is because it's hackable. By that I mean, if you can reverse engineer the algorithm they use to determine who is to be searched, you can break it. All you would have to do is go a few hours early for your next flight with a pen a paper and sit in front of the gate. As you sit there you tally who gets searched (what do they look like, what are they wearing, etc.) and who doesn't. Do that for a month and you now have all the data you need to find the "perfect" terrorist.

For example, if you see that white teenage girls almost never get searched, then your next recruit will be a naive white girl you meet at a sorority mixer. She'll bring in the weapons for you and boom, you have your next terrorist attack, and it's much less probable that you'll get caught.

A random sample, even despite the 12 year olds and grandmothers, is inherantly more secure becuase you can't find a way to guarantee that you won't be searched with the right racial candidate. It is impossible to reverse engineer.

Why red and green...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Red is the colour of blood and, since the time of cavemen, has been the accepted colour for danger.

Green is the colour of most safe to eat plant-life (most ripe vegetation is green, dead vegetation tends to go black, etc), hence it's the natural choice to indicate safety.

Look around you everywhere, this red/green usage is almost universal. Traffic signs, emergency vehicles, motor sports, etc.

"Nuts to adopt yet more color codes"? I don't think so - red = bad and green = good is something that even small kids can understand. Why would you want to get away from the simplicity of that?

Re:Why red and green...

[zakezuke]

Red is the colour of blood and, since the time of cavemen, has been the accepted colour for danger.

Red I confuse with brown and or green, esp iron oxide. When I think of danger, like a car wreck, i say shit... then i'm likely to do it. Human blood has an earthy tone, esp when exposed to air. Very low contrast on black making it totally useless to use red letters on a black background. Just can't see it.

But red berries are not blood colored at all, go figure. Nor is a blood orange, nor a stop sign. Stop signs typicaly are a mix of red delicious apple with just a touch of american mustard, and a touch of real mustard.

The only crayon that resembled the color of human blood was indian red, which from my understanding is an earthly clay with iron oxide. I was probally one of the reasons they renamed that color, cause dispite my ability to see the diffrence, I made all my native americans indian red colored. After all, the crayon said indian.

http://www.michiganapples.com/reddelicious.html is an immature one, or one grown below the 45th, or the photographer just got the color wrong.
http://www.nyapplecountry.com/reddelicious .htm is the color of a typicaly picked one.

Review: Blood looks nothing like a Apple nor a Stopsign. Blood looks like iron oxide, rust colored. [Good color vision, just not what you see]

Green is the colour of most safe to eat plant-life (most ripe vegetation is green, dead vegetation tends to go black, etc), hence it's the natural choice to indicate safety.

Green I sometimes confuse with red, more often then not orange, sometimes even grey. Ripe vegetation is orange to me, much like an "orange", bright healthy grass. Basketballs are "green" in the traditional sence, as in the color of dry grass. Really dead grass is grey. Rotten grass well turns brown.

Review. Living safe plants are orange, dying ones of green, dead ones are grey, rotten ones are brown. Orange = saftey by these standards.

Look around you everywhere, this red/green usage is almost universal. Traffic signs, emergency vehicles, motor sports, etc.

No sorry, I can't see it, as I said I'm colorblind specificly red-green color blind. It's not as if I can't memorize color codes, understand their rational, I just can't see it. Traffic lights I look at their position, in most cases I know the diffrence between the bottom light and the top light, the contrast is high enough in my eyes to make that judgement. I had a cop stop me because I stopped at one of those new fangled "blue lights" which don't seem to be very green even in people who have decent color vision. Single blinking lights are a bother though, amber flashing vs red flashing I couldn't tell the diffrence. San Joes is a bother because they use amber street lamps, which at night I can't tell which light is attached to traffic control [red yellow green] and which light is to light up the street [red, amber, whatever].

Further, when you put colors in print, they do not nessicarly conform to any real absolute standard. As in, what might look like red to printer and red to your majority population might might look "green" to someone like my self who is "red green" colorblind, or even brown, brown being a muck of colors and red also being a muck of colors to accent the primary red to look more realistic.

The DOL [Department of Licensing] at one time had a hardcopy display of traffic signal which in theory they used at one time to test people if they knew the meaning of the diffrent colors, and let me tell you their choice for red green yellow looked more like brown, brown, and blue. Traffic lights for the most part I'm dead on, as the green typicaly used is super bright, faids the color of near by plants, and a major contrast from the dull red. But in print, anyone be the judge. To this day, I still have NO clue what colors that sign was, which is fine because I look at lights.

Emergency vehicels, well I guess th

RESPONSE FROM JETBLUE

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I wrote a letter to David Neeleman and recieved this in response. I thought it was a nice gesture, and personally I like JetBlue. Every airline has its weakness' - most don't make a big fuck up like this though.

CUT CUT CUT

Thank you for writing to me so that I have an opportunity to apologize
to you personally and set the record straight.

Most importantly, JetBlue has never supplied, nor will supply, customer
information to the Transportation Security Administration, or any
government agency, unless we are required to do so by law -- not for
CAPPS II or for any other purposes, whatsoever.

However, I regret that, more than a year ago, we responded to an
exceptional request from the Department of Defense to assist their
contractor, Torch Concepts, with a project regarding military base
security. This project had no connection with aviation security or the
CAPPS II program and no data files were ever shared with the Department
of Defense or any other government agency or contractor.

We provided limited historical customer data including names, addresses
and phone numbers. It DID NOT include personal financial information,
credit card information, or social security numbers.

Torch further developed this information into a presentation, without
JetBlue's knowledge, for a Department of Homeland Security symposium.
We regret that this presentation included the personal information of
one customer -- although the customer's name was not used. Again, we
had no knowledge of this presentation until two days ago and we were
deeply dismayed to learn of it.

The sole set of data in Torch's possession has been destroyed; no
government agency ever had access to it. With Torch's help, we are
continuing to make every effort to have the Torch presentation with the
one customer's information removed from the internet.

This was a mistake on our part and I know you and many of our customers
feel betrayed by it. We deeply regret that this happened and have taken
steps to fix the situation and make sure that it never happens again.

I am saddened that we have shaken your faith in JetBlue but I assure you
personally that we are committed to making this right.

Sincerely,

David Neeleman

Chief Executive Officer