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JANUARY 28, 2004
By Jane Black Putting a Stop to Fly and Tell It's time for rules spelling out that airlines shouldn't be allowed to share your travel data with anyone without your permission "Some people just know how to fly," boasts Northwest Airlines' advertising slogan. But some people evidently don't know how to protect your privacy. On Jan. 18, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a Washington-based advocacy group, revealed that Northwest (NWAC ) had secretly shared millions of passenger data records with NASA back in 2001. This despite Northwest CEO Richard Andersen saying last September that his airline hadn't -- and wouldn't -- share customer data with the federal government. Andersen made those comments just after the otherwise loveable upstart airline JetBlue (JBLU ) said it had handed over 5 million passenger records to a Defense Dept. contractor -- despite a promise not to share such information. Northwest now claims that its CEO wasn't aware that his security staff had given NASA three months' worth of data to help it develop powerful algorithms that might aid in spotting terrorists. Northwest's breach was yet another example of post-September 11 corporate irresponsibility. Granted, Northwest handed over sensitive personal data in the anxious days soon after 9/11, when airline execs had a reason to be paranoid. Even today, though, "nonconsensual 'sharing' of customer data within the [travel] industry -- and with government agencies -- is the rule, not the exception," argues Edward Hasbrouck, author of the Practical Nomad guidebook and a leading travel privacy advocate (see BW Online, 7/22/03, "Covering the Traveler's Electronic Trail"). That's going to continue until the public learns four important lessons: 1. Many companies still just don't get it. In a brief statement, Northwest claimed that the sharing of data didn't violate its privacy policy, which prohibits only the selling of data to third parties. So it won't sell your private information -- but it will give it to a federal agency that asks nicely. In taking that step, Northwest appears to have overlooked its promise to customers of giving them "complete control" over information they share with the airline. When an outfit I've given my data to hands it over to someone else, that doesn't make me feel in control. At the least, Northwest seems to have violated the spirit of its privacy policy. "Northwest's disregard for its customers' privacy is shocking," says Marcia Hoffman, staff counsel of EPIC, which discovered Northwest's action after requesting documents under the Freedom of Information Act. "If you care about privacy and need to book a ticket, the last place I'd go is Northwest." That remains a subject for debate, and many members of the flying public may not care, given their inclination to trade privacy for security. Yet the Northwest incident does raise this question: Who's in charge of releasing millions of passenger records if not the CEO? According to the documents EPIC released, the person responsible is Jay Dombrowski, head of Northwest's security. Who does he report to? Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch -- the same spokesman who unwittingly misled reporters about Northwest's data sharing -- had no comment beyond the company statement.
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