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."

It's terrible when information is handled this way

[Ratface]

Typical - the first step probably seemed perfectly reasonable to JetBlue - I mean what could be safer than a Security Administration huh?

But then the records get given to a private firm and like Chinese Whispers, the privacy implications are completely forgotten.

I notice the exact same effect at work. I explain the ethical implications of not spamming to my boss. He then exlpains to clients that it's fine for them to send information to existing client lists. They then come and ask us to send mail to a list they have bought in from a 3rd party supplier!

I guess that problems like this are going to crop up more and more as we give up more and more of our personal data to large companies.

George Dubya working as airline security:

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Actually the new coding system will have two labels:

1. Has No WMD's - safe passenger

2. Has No WMD's but with no evidence or any link whatsover to recent terrorism, we want you to think he has WMD's so lets haul him off the airplane for a near nuclear anal probing where we will find no WMD's and call in the UN to clean up after us when we can't handle the mess we made anymore. - safe Arab passenger

My father in law was branded as number 2 recently - with his tan from working in africa for months, they thought he was middle eastern, when he pulled his shirt open to expose his untanned white skin, the guards laughed at their 'mistake', stopped searching him and let him carry on.

Now if you Americans would stop pissing off people around the world, you wouldnt need all these colour schemes.

JetBlue Passenger

[JWSmythe]

As one of JetBlue's first passengers, when the seats were still new and the TV's weren't working yet, I'm upset by this. I flew them in the first weeks they were flying, and then frequently afterwards, because the planes were nice, the service was good, and the rates were cheap. Now I'm even more screwed than normal, I'm deep in the belly of the CAPPS II system. Bastards.

It was very nice of them to include the SS#, address, and date of birth. I recognize some of the addresses on pg 20 of the PDF, it would be almost trivial to find out the names to go with those, and use them in identity theft.

I wouldn't do it, but I might anonymously mail a printout of the pdf to them.

US is forcing this with international flights

[dmon]

"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 [helsinki-hs.net]

Where's the Data on Passenger Risk?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Always a downside

[panurge]

Identity theft.

All schemes like this increase the chance that evil people will target low risk travelers for identity theft.

Scenario: terrorists identify suitable target in fairly remote location. Break in, force target to purchase tickets over the internet, disclose PIN numbers to credit cards etc., kill target and catch plane. It takes a bit more organisation and time, but these people seem to have plenty of that. You can't even rely on those sneaky people to be darker shades of brown: the white English-speaking world has shown an ability to produce home-grown bombers, in the US, Northern Ireland and the UK.

If this is going to be a substitute for airport security (and I suspect it will be) all I can say is, fortunately I rarely need to travel by plane nowadays.

Re:It's a joke

[kfg]

Ah, but you see someone getting searched. That's the point really. It looks like they're doing something. The Boy Scouts even think it's kinda cool and don't sue or nothin'.

It's kinda like the "Blue Line," where the cops don't go into the bad neighborhoods because that's where all the crime and dangerous people are, but they make sure they're well seen cruising the ritzy neighborhoods so the residents there feel "safe."

Granny gets a little annoyed when they take away her crochet hooks and so she starts sneaking plastic ones in inside her Suphose, but hey, that just proves she really is terrorist scum, doesn't it?

In the meantime most real terrorists could work around the system if they really wanted to. They always have. They always will. That's the one grim reality no one really wants to look in the eye.

And what do you do about the terrorist on a bicycle? Even the Israelis haven't been able to crack that conundrum with half a century of trying.

You could try to put a cop in everyone's pocket, but the recursive nature of that is somewhat daunting. Not to mention the fact that it wouldn't even work.

The world isn't a safe place.

Bummer, huh?

KFG

Re:It's a joke

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Timothy McVeigh didnt park the truckload of explosives in front of a school, he blew up a government building, and if i recall his attack was just as horrible as the pentagon attack.

show me how racial profiling will stop that from happening again .. and before you answer think about the americans caught in Iraq recently who were helping Iraqi's fight against the american occupation.

Re:Where's the Data on Passenger Risk?

[rpjs]

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.

Re:Similar thing happened to me...

[sigxcpu]

The whole thing is a joke:

Problem: someone with a knife took over a plane and crashed it.

There were three places he could have been easily stopped :
1. The knife might have been discovered while he was boarding the plane.
2. An armed security guard could have stopped him while he attempted the takeover.
3. The cockpit door should have been locked.

I would have fixed 2&3.
(but that requires thinking)

This whole ssss business just shows that they are clueless, any perimeter defense can be circumvented or breached. If you want to protect something, focus on the inner layers of protection, investing in the outer ones is much less effective.

Re:It's a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

You Idiot, they don't check everyone to be politically correct, they do it because its smart. Exactly how hard do you think it would be for a worldwide terrorist organization with millions of dollars in backing to make some fake ID papers for some nut job suicider that claim he's a southern Italian named Vito Petrolli, just get him to wear a cross and carry a pocket Bible and in your model of security he just bypasses any rigerous search. People of Arabic decent don't have 100% genuine Arab stamped on their heads so don't assume you could automatically tell an Arab Muslem apart from a Mexcan, Italian, or Indian.

Re:Similar thing happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It's a joke

[WIAKywbfatw]

My eyes never roll back as far as they do when I hear about somebody complaining about "racial profiling". Apparently, these people forgot that all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were young, middle-eastern men, so that's who they should be looking at the closest (aaaand duh).

First of all, the Oklahoma City bombers were all white Americans. The Unabomber was a white American. Clearly, not all terrorists are "young, middle-eastern men". The sooner you get out of that mindset the better.

Using September 11th as an excuse to treat people with darker skin or of middle-eastern origin differently to everyone else is the slippery slope. What next, make them travel on seperate planes? (And, lest we forget, there was plenty of "get that Arab off the plane before you get us off the ground" hysteria amongst a lot of American passengers in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.)

Seperate planes first, seperate neighbourhoods next. Why not just round them all up and put them all in a ghetto now?

What you fail to realise, living with your head in the sand, is that by treating people differently just because of what they look like, where they come from or what faith they follow you rather are doing exactly what Osama bin Laden and other religous fundamentalists (Islamic and Christian) want you to do.

Al Qaeda's main objective on 9/11 wasn't to kill a few thousand people or to blow up some buildings, it's main objective was to promote conflict between Islamic cutures and western ones. The sooner you absorb that information the better.

Re:You're right, it's been done

[clambake]

And, your dupe doesn't even really have to aware that he/she is involved in a terrorist act. The real red-flag guy can walk on the plane with no bags whatsoever to search, and just grab the real goods out of the dupe's bags (secretly stashed in the handle of the bag she "won" along with her free trip to Hawaii from the "radio station" last week (pre set up, of course) when he/she goes to the rest-room.

Re:-1; Flamebait

[hashwolf]

"the terrorists are just a stupid bunch of assholes who want to use fear to affect our daily lives but not actually give a reason on what sorta reforms they are fighting for"

Nobody does something 'voluntarily' without a reason.
If we don't get the reason; blame the media/authorities.

Re:Oops and there's more..

[Ivan Raikov]

The government needs to flag people whose name is Mohammad bin Mohammad, people who have spent modest to extended amounts of time in the Middle East, people who act suspiciously and so on. And all the Slashdot liberals can take your liberal bullshit and shove it, I fucking *WANT* some racial profiling.

Oh, so the terrorists will simply obtain fake documents with white Christian names, and travel through Europe to get to the Middle East, and the government will end up harassing innocent people and letting the terrorists through (like they do now). You sir, are an ignorant, racist redneck. People like you are the reason why we ended up with Asscroft's police state.

Re:Oops and there's more..

[allgood2]

The government needs to flag people whose name is Mohammad bin Mohammad, people who have spent modest to extended amounts of time in the Middle East, people who act suspiciously and so on. And all the Slashdot liberals can take your liberal bullshit and shove it, I fucking *WANT* some racial profiling.

Wow! Talk like this always amazes me; and of course ignores the fact that within the last 5-10 years America has suffered more attacks from "American terrorist"--militant militia and cultist groups and individuals--than from non-native terrorist. It also ignores the fact that Mohammad bin Mohammad is probably not stupid enough to purchase a ticket using that name, while your average American traveler of Middle Eastern descent will.

Of course, this still doesn't change the fact, that I'm more worried about some disgruntled worker with an automatic shooting up a Buger Kind, flea market, or downtown shopping area, than I am about a potential terrorist being on my plane (but except flying home (San Francisco), I rarely fly places terrorist would deem all that important.

Wait until the credit/insurance cos. get this data

[swb]

If you thought misleading or incorrect credit information was hard to change, just wait until the credit people and insurance people get ahold of our "security color coding information" and start using it to alter^H^H^H^H^Hjack up our rates.

There's already been a flap in Minnesota about insurance companies using credit scores to influence auto insurance; they claim a correlation, which is probably there, but someone wisely called "bullshit" and took them to task for using criteria other than someone's actual driving record.

Further ironies abound, since those of us who don't carry a lot of debt and pay of our credit early get reduced credit scores -- and I thought responsibility was rewarded! (Yes, I'm aware that those of us that pay off early fubar the economic plans and machinations of the credit industry, since they plan to make all that interest income off of me).

But just wait until you apply for a loan and find out your interest rate is sky high or your insurance has gone through the roof because you're mistakenly labeled a "security threat". I've already read plenty of horror stories about people that couldn't fly and who spent months fighting the national insecurity apparatus trying to understand why they were considered risks and getting it changed.

I used to think that the foil hat crowd was a little off the deep end with most of their complaints about the collection of information, but now I'm starting to agree -- its gone too far, there are no controls, and its clear that Bu$h and A$hcroft have no compunction about giving this information away to their corporate allies.

Re:Oops and there's more..

[Jagasian]

Lets make them all wear little patches are their sleeves too, so we know they are Muslim.

Re:It's a joke

[Jagasian]

Because most suicide bombers in Palestine/Israel fit the profile you mentioned, in order to bypass Israeli security, terrorists groups started recruiting women. It worked like a charm.

Furthermore, the terrorists in said area also started to use disguises, so that they look like a Jew or a member of the Israeli military.

Again, more real world examples of profiles failing. Profiles hurt the innocent and open up security holes for the bad people to get through.

The real solution is to improve our foreign policy so that people around the world aren't so eager to attack us. It doesn't take much effort to study up a bit on USA foreign policy in the Middle East for the past 100 years. The USA has done bad stuff in Iran, Iraq, Afganistan, Palestine, etc... many years before 911.

The USA continues to do bad stuff in said places... hence people want to attack the USA. Racial and ethnic profiling will only worsen the problem. The solution is found in a better foreign policy.

Re:Similar thing happened to me...

[pmz]

What a bunch of feebleminded doughnut-chomping rentacop government bureaucracy maroons we've got running this show.

A better plan would have been to just replace the passenger cabin air with laughing gas.

So simple, but did they even think about it?

The only domestic terrorists I'm afraid of at this point are John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge.

When fascism (or is it fashionism) is finally in place, you won't be given the chance to worry about them...you'll be much more worried about escaping your own home.

Time to start using the alternatives.

[ninejaguar]

Due to the permament tan I carry, the last couple of years travelling by plane have been rather trying. This article doesn't improve my opinion on the next couple of years. While the government and quasi-governmental agencies control the fastest and most convenient method of travel long distances, they exert unacceptable control over the citizenry.

Maybe, it's time for an alternative [moller.com]?

= 9J =

Re:It's a joke

[pmz]

When I see a bunch of Southern Baptists hijacking multiple airplanes and smashing them into downtown Riyadh or Mecca or whatever, you MIGHT have something to talk about.

So, you didn't see them hijacking your rights with inane laws regarding drugs and sexuality? It doesn't take a bomb to do terrible damage to the freedom of a nation.

Re:Dear Tree-Hugging Moron,

[clambake]

You are either the biggest fucking dumbass ever or a troll. Mathematical fact??? Where's your data?

Learn to use the internet. [mit.edu]

And I know soriety girls are braindead, but I think they would know if a fucking arab was using them as a mule for explosives.

1) You could get someone who looks like the "good" profile, even if they are just acting.

2) You could get a real person who doesn't even have to know that they are carrying anything.

Let me try to clue you in on a little thing we like to call "reality", big guy. Profiling does not mean that the gaurds will only stop dirty, turbin-wearing foreigners. Profiling means that the airport security has enough sense not to strip-search children and grandmothers just because some "random" sampling rule tells them to. Profiling means you fucking stop anyone that looks suspicious. It's common fucking sense, not an act of racism.

You only have a limited amount of resources at an airport terminal. The guard can't search everyone, right? If the guard is searching only "suspiscious" looking people, then it's trivial to get past him.

For example, if the guard only has time to search 10 people every flight, then you get 10 of your terrorist friends to dress up in super-suspiscous clothes, but carry NOTHING dangerous. Then you get your one white terrorist friend to dress in a business suit and carry a suitcase full of x-ray transparent machine guns.

The guard, who is profiling, will choose the 10 suspiscous looking people, and the non-suspiscous person will get in with ease.

Re:Similar thing happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you got away? Free to come back another day, with a different passport?