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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."
I flew them earlier this year. After already being on the plane 15 minutes at the gate a guy comes on board, calls my name, and escorts me off. Apparently they had marked me for the double-secret security scanning and failed to do it at the security checkpoint. No problems, really, and I was back on the plane about 10 minutes later in plenty of time for departure. Of course, my carry on bag was left in the overhead compartment the whole time I was off the plane.
It was the security folks who failed to do the extra scanning at the checkpoint, but it was Jet Blue's guy who got me off the plane. He didn't know and didn't care that I might have already snuck something onto the plane. If Jet Blue wants to help fight terror in the skies they'd better re-think their priorities. Paying lip-service to security is a long tradition in commercial aviation. Just think about this: if there was no law passed mandating crash-proof cockpit doors, most airlines wouldn't have put them in.
I don't know about this -- this seems a little specious to me.
I'm not saying that I don't beleive that it's impossible that JetBlue gave/sold their passenger list, but the article doesn't give any corroborating evidence other than the old "they deny it, it must be true." The file they linked to as a copy of data put up on the web also seems to be empty, so I couldn't look at what this data was. Regardless, how did they figure out that this was JetBlue's data? I'm also wondering if JetBlue even has had 5 million customers -- perhaps they meant 5 million transaction records?
I'm all for privacy, free speech, blah blah blah, but this seems pretty alarmist and reeks of, what's the term... conspiracy theory. This just doesn't add up.
Just my two cents, go ahead and flame me.
"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
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.)
Can anyone tell me why they let known Airline Terrorists fly at all??
There is some interesting data-mining being done in the document. Correlating several databases together gives you a good profile of the people on the plane, but it doesn't give you an idea if someone is a terrorist. Like the presentation sais, Find a needle in a haystack, without knowing what the needle looks like If you don't know what it looks like you won't find it. What you do find is anamolous behaviour that points to interesting people to check.
Finding these people largely depends on how much they differ from the ordinary profile. Ordinary here is middle income suburbanite. So low income ghetto dwellers get singled out time and time again. Yes they might be out of the ordinary, but it doesn't mean that they will blow up the plane.
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How To Fly Without ID. I wonder if this will still work... and if so for how much longer.
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.
You have the actual label on your boarding pass effectively saying that you are suspect? Ubelievably cynical! Even in late Soviet Uinon, where I happened to live good part of my life, authorities avoided to humiliate the citizens so openly. (And mind you, USSR wasn't exactly the place where personal freedoms were flourhising).
I sympathise you, and wish you best of luck. Hopefully your country will recover the freedoms and sanity that its dwellers were so proud of.
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