Airlines Ordered to Expose Data
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The government says all U.S. airlines must turn over passenger data so that it can test a planned screening system. The airline industry and others complain that the order will mean massive privacy violations, extra expenses and possible trouble with foreign countries. By Ryan Singel.
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WASHINGTON -- Everyone who took a commercial flight within the United States in June will have travel information turned over to the government so it can test a new system for identifying potential terrorists, federal officials announced yesterday.
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EFF wants to know how data is used The US Government faces a lawsuit demanding information about the controversial programme which forces airlines to disclose information about European travellers to the US.â¦
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WASHINGTON - Information on passengers who took a commercial flight within the United States in June will be turned over to the government so it can test a new system for identifying potential terrorists.    People will have a chance to tell the government what they think about the plan during a 30-day comment period, federal officials said on Tuesday...
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A Web site commissioned by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to help travelers whose names were erroneously listed on airline watch lists originally had multiple security problems that could lead to identity theft, says a congressional report released Friday.In addition, the TSA awarded the $48,816 contract for the Traveler Redress Web site based on a request for quotes with requirements that only one Web design firm could meet, says the report, released by the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The TSA&#39;s technical lead and author of a request for comments for the project was a longtime friend of the owner of Desyne Web Services and had briefly worked for the Virginia firm, the report says.&quot;This redress Web site had multiple security vulnerabilities: It was not hosted on a government domain, its homepage was not encrypted, one of its data submission pages was not encrypted, and its encrypted pages were not properly certified,&quot; the report says. &quot;These deficiencies exposed thousands of American travelers to potential identity theft.&quot;The TSA press office did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the House report. A receptionist at Desyne said the appropriate person for commenting was not available.The redress Web site went live in October 2006, and blogger Christopher Soghoian, a graduate student in informatics at Indiana University, pointed out security problems there last February. The TSA took the Desyne Web site down that month and now hosts a traveler redress form on its own Web site.&quot;This begs the question: Who are these guys, why don&#39;t they know how to use SSL, and how were they awarded this sweet contract?&quot; Soghoian wrote in February 2006. &quot;Why can&#39;t TSA do a simple form submission themselves?&quot;One of the biggest concerns raised by Soghoian and the House report is that the Desyne Web site did not use SSL encryption on its home page or on its submissions page. Travelers were asked to submit personal information, such as their Social Security numbers and birth dates. The site was not hosted on a government domain, meaning visitors &quot;lost any assurance they were visiting a legitimate government Web site,&quot; the House report says.The House report was also critical of Desyne&#39;s &quot;no-bid&quot; contract to operate the redress Web site. Desyne had done work for TSA since 2004, and as of late 2007, it continued to host the TSA&#39;s Web site where travelers could file claims for damaged property. The TSA&#39;s April 2006 request for quotes for the redress site said the design had to be consistent with the claims management site, and it had to be hosted on the same server that hosted the claims management site, the House report says.As of September, Desyne continued to operate Web sites for TSA, and the company has received more than $500,000 in business from the agency since 2004, the report says. &quot;TSA did not take action ... to sanction Desyne for poor performance,&quot; the report says.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. may be willing to give some ground in a dispute with European regulators over access to trans-Atlantic passenger data, although reaching a compromise before a July deadline remains uncertain. The issue of how long the U.S. holds onto passenger data has been one of the sticking points in the dispute, which threatens airlines' ability to carry passengers to the U.S. without violating U.S. or European law. "I anticipate that there may well be a decrease, and perhaps even a significant decrease, in the amount of time [the passenger data] is retained," said Hugo Teufel III, chief privacy officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a meeting with journalists in Paris on Thursday. The U.S. requires airlines to hand over 34 facts about each passenger traveling from Europe, including where and how their airline ticket was purchased. The U.S. says it needs the information to help identify terrorism suspects, but some European regulators have fiercely opposed sharing their citizens' data, citing concerns about privacy. A 2004 agreement on the matter was struck down by the European Court of Justice earlier this year, and an interim agreement will expire on July 31. If a new accord isn't reached before then over the "passenger name records" (PNRs), airlines face being sued in Europe for sharing the data, or being denied landing permission in the U.S. if they do not. "I believe that there will very likely be increased privacy protections with respect to the PNR data," Teufel said on Thursday. "Whether it happens before the end of July or after the end of July is very difficult to say." He cautioned that he is not directly involved in the discussions, and would not elaborate on what the increased privacy protections might be. It was unclear if the concessions had been communicated to the European Union or would prompt it to ease its position. European parliamentarians have also expressed other concerns with the PNR system, including the amount of data being collected and the ways it will be used. A spokesman for Franco Frattini, the E.U.'s commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, said it would be inappropriate to comment on Teufel's remarks while the talks are ongoing. "We are in the midst of negotiations," the spokesman said via e-mail. Teufel is a political appointee responsible for privacy policies at the Department of Homeland Security. He was in Europe to meet with privacy representatives in France and Germany to gather feedback and smooth relations between the two sides. He sought to dispel what he characterized as misinformation about the PNR system. The U.S. does not ask about meal choices to identify potential Muslim travelers, he said, calling that "absolutely false." Asked if credit card data is collected, he said: "To my knowledge the department is not pushing for that." He acknowledged theÂ divisions between U.S. and European attitudes to privacy. "I think Europeans are beginning to have a better understanding of U.S. privacy and U.S. privacy laws. I don't think Europeans as a whole have a sufficient understanding now," he said. "I am not surprised when I hear from a European their often-held view that the U.S. has no privacy laws. That's just false. We do have privacy laws, we care about privacy. What we do have is a different approach to privacy and a different approach to government."
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The Transportation Security Administration will test a system that will compare names of passengers on domestic airlines to those on terrorist watch lists.
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A report by the Army's inspector general concludes that a controversial data-mining project involving airline passenger records did not violate federal privacy law. Critics say the report misinterprets the law. By Ryan Singel.
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Anyone who works at an airport or aboard a cruise ship will have his identity checked against government watch lists, just like commercial airline passengers.
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The Transportation Security Administration shifts responsibility for screening travelers from the airlines to the government. The new system, dubbed Secure Flight, seeks to target fewer people and to do so more accurately.
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'Invasive and unprecedented' The US Government signalled some willingness this week to address concerns over citizens' privacy, but also launched a scheme which will analyse secret airline passenger risk profiles and keep them for 40 years.â¦
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An agreement could be reached Friday over swapping personal information about passengers.
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(InfoWorld) - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, demanding the agency turn over information about an "invasive" data-mining system used to assess the terrorist threat posed by U.S. travelers. The EFF, an advocacy group focused on privacy and civil liberties, asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for the expedited release of records related to the DHS Automated Targeting System, or ATS, a program DHS unveiled in a November privacy notice in the Federal Register. The EFF filed Freedom of Information Act requests for information on the program on Nov. 7 and Dec. 6. ATS creates and assigns "risk assessments" to virtually all travelers as they enter and exit the U.S. by air or other means, according to the DHS filing. The DHS filing on the program raised objections from privacy advocates, who said ATS could violate federal privacy law and civil rights. ATS might also violate a federal law prohibiting DHS from developing algorithms assigning risks to passengers not on government watch lists, the EFF said. The program, as described, would track tens of millions of travelers, including U.S. citizens, the EFF said. "Individuals have no right to access information about themselves contained in the system, nor request correction of information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, untimely or incomplete," EFF lawyers David Sobel and Marcia Hofmann wrote in their complaint, filed Tuesday in the district court. The U.S. government will retain the risk assessment information for 40 years, according to DHS records. The information will be made available to "untold" numbers of federal, state, local and foreign agencies, the EFF said in a press release. "You don't know what information that assessment comes from," Hofmann said. "You don't know how that information will be used against you." The ATS program for cargo coming into the U.S. has been in place since the early 1990s, and its passenger screening capabilities since the mid-'90s, said DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen. DHS, which was created in March 2003, published the Federal Register notice about the program now after reviewing ATS and finding it had not yet been disclosed to the public, Agen said. The notice was "an effort to be transparent," Agen said. Agen declined to comment on the EFF lawsuit, but defended ATS. It's used to identify potential terrorists and terrorist weapons entering the U.S., he said. DHS is "expected to protect this country" from those threats, he added. "Without [ATS], we'd be virtually blind." The EFF wants to see DHS records that discuss possible redress for people who dispute the ATS assessments, records showing the number of arrests resulting from an ATS screening and records of complaints from people about the assessments. The EFF also wants to know if DHS has looked at the error rates in the government and private databases used in ATS, whether DHS has set up an oversight board to monitor the use of ATS and whether DHS has implemented security measures to protect the system against hackers. "DHS needs to provide answers, and provide them quickly, to the millions of law-abiding citizens who are worried about this 'risk assessment' score that will follow them throughout their lives," the EFF's Sobel said in a statement.
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The federal government said yesterday that it will order airlines to turn over millions of passenger records by November so it can begin testing a vast computer program that will hunt for suspected terrorists seeking to board commercial aircraft.
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WASHINGTON - Everyone who took a commercial flight within the United States in June will have his travel information turned over to the government so it can test a new system for identifying potential terrorists, federal officials announced Tuesday.    The Transportation Security Administration plans to order airlines to turn over the information in November...
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The government on Tuesday asked airlines to turn over information they collected on passengers who traveled in June, the first step in a controversial plan to screen for terrorists.
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The US Transportation Department inspector general will begin a review of the nation&#39;s airline service triggered by flight and baggage disruptions at US Airways Group Inc.