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

How about a database of privacy violaters?

[Genghis9]

Somewhat akin to that project at MIT (Government Information Awareness) detailing public figures, there should be one for public companies noting when, where, what.

Then it should be easy to boycott and avoid them.

Air travel isn't what it cracked up to be

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

They were once my favorite airline.

With all the paranoid hoops the feds make travelers jump through to board an aircraft, I must admit my favorite airline is Amtrack these days, for shorter journeys.

Somebody needs to get their story straight

[Quixote]

From the article:
.... news media quoted 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.

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."

Somebody should ask Dick Anderson, what exactly did he mean by his statement? If that is not a bald-faced lie, then I don't know what is.

I hope the shareholders hold this guy accountable.

As the former owner of a Nortwest Frequent Flyer card (which I just cut up on reading this story), I'd just like to say "sayonara!" to Northwest. It was not the sharing of the data that was bad; it was lying about it and the "cross my heart, swear to God we don't do that" that pissed me off.

I can understand the need for exploring new security options. How hard would it have been to anonymize the data? Just run it through a one-way hash function, and you can provide the data without invading anyone's privacy.

This ineptitude and lying really irritates me.

With codesharing it's hard to avoid the bad ones

[wike]

I had a flight last week on Delta (not my favorite airline either) but when I showed up to the airport and had problems with Delta's (we don't want to talk to you so we make you deal with a machine) self-check in kiosk I found out that I was actually flying on Northwest. Huh? Apparantly even though I booked Delta, they codeshare with Northwest. I wonder if my passenger information is now in Northwest's database.

Re:Northworst?

[ari_j]

At least you have options. I lived in North Dakota for 21 years, and Northworst essentially has a monopoly there. I had to drive 2 hours to get on a damn DC-9 to Minneapolis (another of NWA's hubs, along with Detroit and Memphis) and take a transfer from there. While in college, I was prone to drive the 4 1/2 hours to Minneapolis and fly Frontier or Sun Country from there.

That said, I flew a Northworst/KLM combination flight to Athens and back. KLM is no comparison to Northworst - wonderful service; attractive, friendly stewardesses; better seats; and more. If you have to spend 2 hours on Northworst to get 10 hours on KLM, do it.

But for domestic flights that go over or near Denver en route, I now prefer Frontier. Especially with their revamped fleet of Airbuses. I recently flew with them on a plane that had only been in service for 2 weeks since it was brand new, replete with DirecTV in every seat-back. (I didn't pay the $5 because I had a book, but I watched the moving map a lot.) A little more expensive than other 'budget' airlines, but worth it in terms of service and comfort.

If you switch to US Airways...

[mellonhead]

...be sure to wake up prior to initial approach:

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/01/17/Tampabay/Snippy_ flight_attenda.shtml

Re:Not NSA but NASA?

[_Sprocket_]

Interesting how a seemingly unrelated government entity can become part of the story.

NASA shares its expertise in different ways. I worked with an engineer who normaly developed various tools for use in space (one of his favorite was an emergency device used in case an astronaut got seperated from the structure during EVA). He also worked on a university research project to help develop a continuous flow heart pump.

Re: on the vote

[King_TJ]

Well, yes, and quite a few of us have also learned that it runs much deeper than just a simple decision made by the current president.

There's a REAL good chance that no matter who becomes president, this sort of thing will continue. The leaders of govt. organizations (you know, the typical 3 letter bureaus like the FBI, CIA, IRS, NSA, ATF) want more tools at their disposal to do their jobs -- "privacy" be dammed.

The president simply can't wave his hand or sign a piece of paper and make all of this go away. All of those groups serve useful purposes and nobody's likely to just abolish them completely while in their term of office.

While it IS true that the lines are quite blurred between "Democrat" and "Republican" nowdays - it's simple-minded thinking to blame these "big brother" issues squarely on the president, no matter what their supposed allegiance is politically. You've got all those senators and congressmen getting paid off/bribed to vote one way or the other, and legislation being written with sneaky, unrelated legal changes constantly trying to be snuck through. You've got huge power struggles between governmental agencies, and lots of "behind the scenes" bargaining for the "lesser of two evils" that the general public never sees when we ask "Why the h*ll did the president just sign THAT into law??"

All we can really do is speak out loudly and often when we see these injustices happen - so they can't just start running everything right past us.