 Imagine a scenario in which nine of your friends have been saving copies of their digital interactions with you – text messages, emails, etc. Collectively, they created a company that stores that data and then sells it commercially – to government agencies, consumer research outfits, advertisers, and various businesses. Now assume those “friends” are named American Airlines, Delta, Southwest, United, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, Luthansa, Air France, and Air Canada, and suddenly you’re no longer in the realm of imagination. Wired, 404 Media, and The Lever report that these nine members of the air carrier industry co-own a data broker firm and have been selling customer information – passenger names, flight itineraries, and financial details – to various federal agencies. It’s a lot of data – representing about 12 billion passenger flights a year, mostly those purchased through third-party sites like Booking and Expedia. The name of the co-owned data broker is ARC, which simply stands for Airlines Reporting Corporation. ARC has been around since 1985 and was originally conceived as a clearinghouse to settle transactions between airlines and travel agencies. But like so many legacy institutions from the ‘70s and ‘80s, that have long since morphed into full-fledged data brokers in the digital era (and post-9/11 in particular), prefer to conduct business far from the light of day. ARC’s sales contracts with federal customers forbid revealing the source of their data. It’s almost as if they don’t want to get caught doing something technically legal but that would be offensive to their customers. Meanwhile, the clandestine nature of these transactions seems just fine with ARC’s federal data purchasers, which include Defense and Treasury, in addition to ICE and Customs and Border Protection. The Center for Democracy & Technology summed it up this way: “As with many other types of sensitive and revealing data, the government seems intent on using data brokers to buy their way around important guardrails and limits.” In the words of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) the whole arrangement is “shady.” It is understandable that federal and state law enforcement agencies need to gather data from a variety of sources about fliers in regard to specific criminal investigations. The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which passed the U.S. House last year, would make it clear that to track fliers, the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause before sorting through our personal data. And what could be more personal than when and where we go? In the meantime, if you’re worried about what ARC is doing with your data, their long, legalistic privacy policy suggests submitting a “Subject Access Request” at [email protected] to demand its erasure/deletion. (But you can’t escape the data trawl – just be sure to include the last four digits of any credit cards you’ve used to purchase air travel). If you do, we hope you have better luck than the reporters who broke the story. When contacted directly, eight of the airlines failed to reply and one said, in effect, “no comment.” Comments are closed.
|
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed