This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@xxxxxxxxx /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ THE DREAMERS - NOW PLAYING Set against the turbulent political backdrop of 1968 France when the voice of youth was reverberating around Europe, THE DREAMERS is a story of self-discovery as three students test each other to see just how far they will go. THE DREAMERS is released uncut with an NC-17 rating. Watch The Dreamers trailer at: http://www.thedreamers.com \----------------------------------------------------------/ U.S. Calls Release of JetBlue Data Improper February 21, 2004 By MATTHEW L. WALD WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - Transportation security officials violated the spirit of the 1974 privacy act when they helped a Pentagon contractor obtain computerized passenger data from JetBlue Airways, the chief privacy officer of the Homeland Security Department said in a report released on Friday. The official, Nuala O'Connor Kelly, did not call for any firings, reprimands or other punishments. Instead, she recommended training sessions for the workers involved and an evaluation of training on privacy issues throughout the department. She also called for new guidelines for sharing data and an investigation by the department's inspector general into whether the workers exceeded the normal scope of their work. The finding comes as the Homeland Security Department is trying to gain support for an extensive new computerized passenger screening system, intended to pick out who should be carefully searched at airports. The system has raised objections from privacy advocates. In the JetBlue case, Ms. Kelly said, ''we do not have a privacy act violation because this agency was not the recipient of the data." She said that the company that received the data, Torch Concepts of Huntsville, Ala., was subject to federal privacy rules because it was a government contractor, but that she had limited her investigation to her agency. An assistant to the chairman of Torch Concepts referred questions to the company's lawyer, who did not return a call. A call to the public information office of the Army, which awarded the contract to Torch Concepts, was not returned on Friday. JetBlue faces some class-action lawsuits on behalf of its passengers. And a nonprofit group here, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, lodged a complaint against the airline with the Federal Trade Commission, citing deceptive trade practices. The complaint also names a contractor for JetBlue, Acxiom. Torch Concepts paid Acxiom to match the passenger names with information about each passenger, including sex, whether the person owned or rented a home, years at current residence, economic status, number of children, Social Security number, number of adults in the household, occupation and vehicles owned, according to Ms. Kelly's report. But the data was not diverse enough for Torch Concept's purpose, according to information gathered by Ms. Kelly. The company's purpose was to test techniques for spotting potential terrorists through travel patterns. The data was obtained soon after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Torch Concepts approached several airlines, Ms. Kelly said, but none would provide data without the involvement of a regulatory agency. So Torch Concepts brought in the Transportation Security Administration, then part of the Transportation Department, as an intermediary. The security agency is now part of Homeland Security. Ms. Kelly said that to protect privacy, her department should take "appropriate account of all the promises made with the data" and thus be involved in any data transfer that violates the privacy rules of the group that collected it, including the airlines. "Any parties involved must be aware of the original covenants, or original promises, that attach to that piece of data," she said. At the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Marc Rotenberg, the executive director, said that Homeland Security "can't simply be in the see-no-evil mode" and should not stand by even if other agencies violate privacy rules. The JetBlue controversy has emerged as an early skirmish for a bigger battle, over the Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening program, known as CAPPS-2, which is supposed to help the government identify potential terrorists. The current system is operated by the airlines on information they gather, but under CAPPS-2, the airlines would give the government the names, home addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth of passengers. The government would give that to a private contractor, which would use commercial databases to determine whether the information represented real identities. Privacy advocates say the system is too intrusive. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/business/21blue.html?ex=1078388782&ei=1&en=57b3ad22409bf2e5 --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! 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