Northwest Gives Personal Data to NASA

Tree writes "Following four months on the heels of JetBlue's confession that they released passenger data to the Feds against their stated privacy guidelines, the Washington Post is reporting that Northwest has now admitted that they've done the same thing during a time period when they said they weren't. Nice. They were once my favorite airline."

Comments

It's the lying that hurts...

[blackdefiance]

Like my parents used to say... "It's not that we're so angry that you did [insert bad thing here], it's that you lied to us about it.

Re:It's the lying that hurts...

[buelba]

Depending on what happens to Northwest's stock price on Tuesday, this one may really hurt. Under the Securities Act of 1934 and rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder:

It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of the mails or of any facility of any national securities exchange,
To employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud,
To make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, or
To engage in any act, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person,
in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.

In practice, what this means is that if a company (whether or not through a director or officer) lies about something material to the stock price, people who buy during the period of market manipulation (essentially, from the date of the lie until the truth is revealed) can recover for their damages (generally but not always what they paid minus the "true value" of the stock when they bought it).

Setting the "true value" of a stock on a given date, absent the market manipulation, is obviously an excursion into the hypothetical. One strong indicator, however, is how much the stock falls when the truth is revealed. So watch Northwest when the market opens and, if it falls a lot, expect to see securities lawsuits as well as privacy lawsuits.

Re:It's the lying that hurts...

[I Be Hatin']

In practice, what this means is that if a company (whether or not through a director or officer) lies about something material to the stock price, people who buy during the period of market manipulation (essentially, from the date of the lie until the truth is revealed) can recover for their damages (generally but not always what they paid minus the "true value" of the stock when they bought it).

In practice, what this means is people who buy during the period of market manipulation can be part of a class action suit, from which they'll receive a few pennies, and the lawyers representing them will receive several million dollars.

And before you start to think that I'm just being cynical, my part of the recent Schwartz-CitiBank $27 million dollar class action suit was a credit on my bill for $0.09. The lawyers got $9 million.

So watch Northwest when the market opens and, if it falls a lot, expect to see securities lawsuits as well as privacy lawsuits.

And even if it doesn't fall a lot, expect to see securities and privacy lawsuits brought by civic-minded **cough** lawyers.

Privacy Implications

[barenaked]

So what will you when every toll road you travel on by car passes your travel details automatically to law enforcement based on your license plate? Or when one day every intersection has a camera collecting this kind of information? Or when there's a camera doing face recognition on every street corner, evaluating whether you are a terrorist or not? Will you just stay at home all day? I think a more proactive stance is needed here. Getting the general public to understand the privacy implications of these systems so they stop voting for people that put them in place is probably a lot more effective.

Re:Privacy Implications

[0123456]

"Getting the general public to understand the privacy implications of these systems so they stop voting for people that put them in place is probably a lot more effective."

But over 50% of the population have _already_ figured out that there's no difference between voting for the control-freak Democrat candidate or the control-freak Republican candidate, and don't vote for either.

Re:Privacy Implications

[Endive4Ever]

And the pity is that the small-c conservatives get shouted down in the Republican party. The whole goal of that branch of conservativsm is to take away the power of government. The 'silent majority' you speak of would have their voice in said 'movement' although sadly once a 'cut back government' type gets elected, he seems to always find new things he wants government to do.

Re:Privacy Implications

[bennomatic]

Unfortunately, the general public has a mentality that these sort of tools are only used against criminals. "If you don't do anything wrong," they say, "you have nothing to fear from these things."

It's long been understood by leaders from the smallest tribes to the most bloodthirsty dictatorships that these sorts of means of control can be put in place by demonizing a small enough sector of society that a majority is willing to go along with the program.

Not a good idea

[calmdude]

With airlines not doing so well these days, I don't think it's a very good idea for them to piss their customers off...

Of course, even if they lose 30% of their customers, the government will subsidize them for that 30%. Ahh...the wonders of...capitalism?

Airlines in an impossible position

[Anonymous Coward]

To those who make jokes about "Martian Immigration" and the like, remember that it's the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The agency has a large role in promoting aviation safety.

On a separate point, remember that an airline that is pressed by the Government to violate its passengers' privacy is likely in an impossible position: "turn over your passenger records, or we have the security people strip-search all your passengers at the gate and we start safety inspections on every one of your planes 5 minutes before departure. You'll never have a customer again."

They probably all did this...

[stefanlasiewski]

I'd bet that nearly all of the of the major Airlines have done this. Northwest and JetBlue just happened to get caught...

surprise, surprise...

[tuxette]

Privacy policies in the US aren't worth the bandwidth they waste. And they will continue to be worthless unless they're backed by strong national (not just state) privacy legislation similar to the Norwegian Personal Data Act or the EU Personal Data Directive.

That way, people don't have to be worried about "loopholes" in privacy policies such as the one indicated in a NYT article on the same subject:

The company said in a statement: "Our privacy policy commits Northwest not to sell passenger information to third parties for marketing purposes. This situation was entirely different, as we were providing the data to a government agency to conduct specific scientific research related to aviation security and we were confident that the privacy of passenger information would be maintained."

According to for example Norwegian law, this transfer would be unlawful unless the data subjects consented to the transfer.

Re:Somebody needs to get their story straight

[geekoid]

"Somebody should ask Dick Anderson, what exactly did he mean by his statement? I"

why not you?

Re:For a good reason

[geekoid]

everybody has something to hide.

If you don't agree, please post all you credit card numbers, with expiration dates, checking account number, with routing information, all logon and passwords to any thing you have. If you have nay children, please post there names birthdate, secret words, and schedules. Please post you employeer, employee number, annual salary/income.

Also please put a web cam in every room of your house so we can watch whatever you do. Be sure to post your drivers liscense information, all ID numbers.

So, you still got nothing to hide?

They lied. Someday people are going to get Fried.

[leoaugust]

Pure, and simple lying.

• An article in the following day's St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press said: "Northwest Airlines will not share customer information, as JetBlue Airways has, Northwest chief executive Richard Anderson said Tuesday in brief remarks after addressing the St. Paul Rotary."
• Northwest officials responding to the JetBlue incident. "We do not provide that type of information to anyone," Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch was quoted as saying in the New York Times on Sept. 23.

They lied.

Their sorry excuse ?

"Northwest Airlines had a duty and an obligation to cooperate with the federal government for national security reasons," the airline said.

It sounds just like what Adobe was saying when they got busted for the Currency Detection Algorithms that they had added as (semi) spyware. And then of course we find out that many other Graphics Programs Vendors had done the same ...

Their sorry excuse ?

Adobe had a duty and an obligation to cooperate with the federal government for national security reasons.

Really makes you wonder how many of these Corporations are already in-bed-with-the-feds ...

Is it already 1985 ?

Re:For a good reason

[jeffkjo1]

And the government, and the people within it, have never misused their powers or information that has been provided to them.

Nixon jumps out at me, for some reason here.

Since I submitted this first -

[teamhasnoi]

and I live in Minnesota, I had done quite a bit of reading on this. Apart from Northwest justifying it by saying, "We don't sell information to marketers - but this wasn't for marketing..", I find the most asnine thing to be NASA wanting to 'give the information back'.

Now, this info is on 5 CDs. How can *anyone* believe that it stayed on those CDs, and din't make the rounds from FBI to NSA to CIA to DHS to whatever other 3 letter acroymn that is supposed to 'protect us'?

That information is everywhere you don't want it to be - and you won't know what they're doing with it until it bites you in the ass.

I guarantee that this will be abused - everything else has, why would this be anything different.

I wonder if good ol' boy George would be allowed to fly if the CAPPS2 system had access to his military AWOL status, his DUI, his credit scores, and his drug abuse.

Oh, wait. Invasive and ineffective programs like these are only for the 'commoners'.

PIPEDA

[temojen]

In Canada, the airlines would be liable for damages from every customer for this (assuming there was no regulation requiring them to share the information).

IANAL

PIPEDA

Re:For a good reason

[tuxette]

Well, my travel habits are personal and the airline tickets I buy are between me and the airline only. My shopping habits are personal, what I read is personal, who I associate with is personal, etc. For others, including and especially the government, this information is none of your fucking business.

If the government/police want information on my habits, they better damn well be using it in connection with a real investigation on me, with specific charges. And this information had better damn well benn obtained via court order.