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JetBlue Gives Away Passenger Info To TSA?

Posted by simoniker on from the eye-in-the-sky dept.

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."

4 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. US is forcing this with international flights by dmon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The United States has long pressured European airlines to submit passenger information in order to prevent the arrival of terrorists in the country."

    "This information will include names, travel routes, credit card numbers, and possible special meals."

    full article

  2. Where's the Data on Passenger Risk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the idea is to test whether CAPPS II can accurately determine the risk level of a potential flyer, I don't see how they can accomplish this with data from old passengers. Don't they also need data on how much each of those passengers ended up BEING a RISK?

    I don't know how you'd even begin to come up with such data. But if you can't figure out how much of a risk each passenger actually was, how can you see whether this correlates with the risk score CAPPS spits out? As far as I can see, this massive breach of passenger confidentiality will do nothing to test the efficacy of CAPPS.

    (As far as I know, no terrorist acts have been committed on JetBlue, so all passengers who have flown on JetBlue should have been given the "Green" CAPPS rating. Hence once they feed this passenger data through CAPPS, it better spit out low risk for everybody. Otherwise, this profiling obviously isn't working.)

    1. Re:Where's the Data on Passenger Risk? by rpjs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't they also need data on how much each of those passengers ended up BEING a RISK?

      Seems to me that the dataset they should be testing this against is UA and AA's passengers for September 11th, 2001. If the system doesn't spot the hijackers, it isn't working properly.

  3. Re:Similar thing happened to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Haha! Yeah, recently I flew out of SeaTac. I walk up to the ticket counter and start chatting up the counter people. They tell me that I've been flagged for the secret squirrel line. Heavy sighs and eye rolling, etc. So I get my ticket and meander over to the Starbucks booth to get a $5 airport mocha. I've got plenty of time and I'll hit the super secret security line in a little bit.

    Then it dawns on me... if I were a terrorist with a big ol' fruitcake bomb in my carryon or a plastic shiv down my sock, I'd just calmly walk out of there since they've told me that I'm slated to be searched. The only way they'll ever actually CATCH anyone with this stupid dual-line flagging approach is if they stop telling all those terrorists that they're going to search them ahead of time. Plus, once the CRAPPS II sticky status flag stuff is in place, all a terrorist has to do is fly once or twice without any boxcutters to get their status flag and know with high probability what they can expect on their next flight.

    What a bunch of feebleminded doughnut-chomping rentacop government bureaucracy maroons we've got running this show. The only domestic terrorists I'm afraid of at this point are John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge.