Airline Admits Giving Passenger Data To TSA

The list of airlines that contributed confidential passenger data to the TSA continues to grow, with an admission by American Airlines that it, too, shared more than a million passenger records.

The world's biggest airline admitted Friday that it gave the TSA approximately 1.2 million passenger itineraries "because of the heightened interest in aviation security at the time and American's desire to ensure its passenger and crew safety."

In 2002, American says its data-processing contractor, Airline Automation, Inc., was ordered to hand the records over to the TSA. Then, without AAL's consent, that information was shared with four other companies -- HNC Software, Infoglide Software, Ascent Technology and Lockheed Martin. At least, that's American's story as related by spokesman John Hotard. Airline Automation, however, says it did indeed have permission from American Airlines to share the information with the four other research operations.

"This underscores the fact that there's now a privacy crisis within the airline industry, largely driven by government demands for passenger data," said David Sobel, with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It has been a matter of secret disclosures, followed by belated admissions. We are clearly at a point where Congress needs to take a close look at privacy issues relating to air travel."

FMI: www.aa.com