The Electronic Frontier Foundation vs. the TSA

[michael perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

* Action Alert: Request Your File and Help Reverse-Engineer
the Secure Flight Database!

Just what did the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) do with the more than 100 million personal data
records it obtained while testing the Secure Flight air
travel monitoring system?  And whose personal travel
records - including name, birth date, phone number,
mailing address, itinerary, and credit card information
- did TSA rifle through?

When four Alaska residents filed a Privacy Act request to
find out, officials said they couldn't locate the records.
That same day, TSA announced they had already destroyed
some of the records provided by the airlines.

We sure hope that TSA isn't shredding the evidence!

TSA says that 3 million of 15 million passenger records
that were handed over by the airlines have already been
deleted.  The fate of the remaining 12 million records
is unclear, as is the status of over 100 million
commercial data files that private contractors later
collected, based on variations of 42,000 passenger names
plucked from eight airlines.

The fact that the contractors collected and passed on this
extra information means that TSA didn't just get travel
records of people who flew in June of 2004.  It matched
travel records with commercial records that contained
information supplied to credit bureaus, such as the credit
cards you have and your credit history.

Even more troubling is the fact that TSA collected
commercial records for people who didn't even fly!  *If
your name is a variation on the name of one of the
passengers in the initial database, TSA may have a file
on you.*

The four Alaska residents are requesting that the deletion
of Secure Flight records stop until a search for their
records - and any others seeking to discover what happened
in Secure Flight - is complete.  Right now, they're suing
to stop the deletion.

Here's how you can help.  You can request your own records,
pushing TSA to freeze any plans to purge the database
until all your questions are answered.

Your request will not only pressure TSA to come clean about
Secure Flight's test phase, it will also help
"reverse-engineer" the program - giving us a clear view
of how TSA will treat your private information when
Secure Flight is fully implemented.

Don't let TSA continue to abuse the public's trust -
request your file today:
<http://action.eff.org/secureflight>

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901