Several sources have been reporting that NorthWest Airlines are yet another group of collaborators giving out personal information on their travellers. However, Bill Scannell's been looking at the FOIA information that EPIC received, and apparently some of the projects that have used that data have been matching it with 1990 US Census data - you know, the stuff they promised would be kept private for 75 years, etc. --
Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [DontSpyOnUs] Northwest Airlines Shares Passenger Data From: Bill Scannell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, January 18, 2004 11:36 pm Northwest Airlines Shares Passenger Data Northwest Airlines gave the full Passenger Name Records (PNRs) of almost a half million of their customers to NASA researchers for testing a CAPPS II-like system. The PNRs contained everything one would normally give to an airline or travel agent, including credit card details. The PNRs were from passengers who flew the airline from July through September of 2001. The PNRs were combined with US census data in order to find 'outliers' - people who did not fall into predefined categories. Read the full story at: http://www.dontspyon.us/census.html ---------------- SCANDAL: US Census Data Used in Government Passenger Profiling Test The US government used data from the 1990 census and the records of close to a half million Northwest Airlines passengers in a test of a CAPPS II-like program. The government's use of census data to single-out and profile American citizens is not only outrageous, but possibly illegal. If the US census is turned into yet another tool Homeland Security uses to spy on our own people, the census will become worthless. Who in their right mind would tell census-takers the truth if it were known the information one gave would be used by the state to snoop? The US census would become about as useful at the information given when one registers with a website: we would become a nation that -at least on paper- was populated by 99 year-old millionaire grandmothers from Albania. -------------------
