It's okay to give your personal data to the government. And ultimately, this is exactly what American Airlines did, along with Delta, Continental, America West, JetBlue, Frontier Airlines and travel reservation firms Galileo International and Sabre Holdings. In all, tens of millions of passenger records were transferred in violation of express privacy and security policies. Among these revelations, Northwest Airlines admitted that it shared records with NASA in a similar program.

But in the end, very little of this matters, because even the restrictive privacy language may not be enforceable.

By Mark Rasch at SecurityFocus.

[ Read more ]