more on AP: Federal Agency Collected Extensive Personal Data About Airline Passengers Despite Pledge

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lee Tien <tien () eff org>
Date: June 22, 2005 4:27:25 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] AP: Federal Agency Collected Extensive Personal  
Data About Airline Passengers Despite Pledge


Dave,

Remarkably, I think the AP story understates the extent of the
privacy violations by TSA and its contractor.

According to TSA's revised "system of records" notice and privacy
impact assessment, they didn't just get more data about June 2004 air
travelers.
http://www.tsa.gov/public/interweb/assetlibrary/ 
Secure_Flight_SORN_PIA.pdf

They took 42,000 of those names and for each "created up to twenty
variations of a person's first and last names"  -- then submitted
both the 42,000 real names and an extra 240,000 new names to three
commercial data brokers (Acxiom, InsightAmerica, and Qsent).

TSA didn't say how many of these 282,000 names yielded commercial
dossiers.  But it's clear that personal information about many tens
of thousands of people who didn't even fly in June 2004 must have
been turned over.

This goes way beyond a "routine" change in the official definitions.

Note that under the Privacy Act, willful violation of the law
regarding "systems of records" notices is a criminal misdemeanor.  5
U.S.C. § 552a(i)(2) ("Any officer or employee of any agency who
willfully maintains a system of records without meeting the notice
requirements of subsection (e)(4) of this section shall be guilty of
a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000.").  I'm not aware of
any prosecutions under this provision, however.

Lee

At 3:33 PM -0400 6/22/05, David Farber wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: eekid () aol com
> Date: June 22, 2005 2:12:31 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: AP: Federal Agency Collected Extensive Personal Data About
> Airline Passengers Despite Pledge
>
>
>
> AP: Federal Agency Collected Extensive Personal Data About Airline
> Passengers Despite Pledge
>
>
> WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal agency collected extensive personal
> information about airline passengers although Congress told it not
> to and it said it wouldn't, according to documents obtained Monday
> by The Associated Press.
>
> A Transportation Security Administration contractor used three data
> brokers to collect detailed information about U.S. citizens who flew
> on commercial airlines in June 2004 in order to test a terrorist
> screening program called Secure Flight, according to documents that
> will be published in the Federal Register this week.
>
> The TSA had ordered the airlines to turn over data on those
> passengers, called passenger name records, in November.
>
> The contractor, EagleForce Associates, then combined the passenger
> name records with commercial data from three contractors that
> included first, last and middle names, home address and phone
> number, birthdate, name suffix, second surname, spouse first name,
> gender, second address, third address, ZIP code and latitude and
> longitude of address.
>
> EagleForce then produced CD-ROMS containing the information "and
> provided those CD-ROMS to TSA for use in watch list match testing,"
> the documents said.
>
> According to previous official notices, TSA had said it would not
> store commercial data about airline passengers.
>
> The Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits the government from keeping a
> secret database.
>
> "I'm just floored," said Tim Sparapani, a privacy lawyer with the
> American Civil Liberties Union. "This is like creating an FBI file,
> not just some simple check, and then they're storing the data."
>
> TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield said the program was being developed
> with a commitment to privacy, and that it was routine to change the
> official definition of a system of records during a test phase.


--
**********************************
... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could
someday facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier


Lee Tien
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA  94110
(415) 436-9333 x 102 (tel)
(415) 436-9993 (fax)
tien () eff org



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