If You Flew JetBlue, They’re Watching You

Posted on September 18, 2003

Wired News: JetBlue Shared Passenger Data

Apparently the ever-competent, completely non-Orwellian Transportation Security Agency partnered with JetBlue via a third-party defense contractor (Torch Concepts) to take data on JetBlue passengers and use it as the basis for a study of the feasibility of passenger-profiling systems such as the infamous CAPPS II — that’s the one that would assign you a color code, and if you got the wrong code you’d never be able to fly again. Anyone who flew JetBlue before September 2002 could have had their data handed over to TSA as part of this project, which JetBlue acknowledges violated its own privacy policy, and the data included “incomes, occupations, vehicle ownership information, number of children and Social Security numbers.”

So what color do you think they would assign to “billionaire construction mogul”? Because that’s Osama bin Laden’s income and occupation…