WTF Is It Now?!?

JetBlue in hot water
JetBlue Airways began sending out apologetic e-mails Thursday to customers who are infuriated that the airline gave 5 million passenger records to a defense contractor investigating national security issues.

The form letter confirmed a story that JetBlue turned over the names, addresses and phone numbers of its customers in September 2002 in response to an "exceptional request from the Department of Defense to assist their contractor, Torch Concepts, with a project regarding military base security."

Torch investigated the viability of airline passenger profiling, by combining the JetBlue data with Social Security numbers, income levels, number of children and vehicle ownership that Torch purchased from Acxiom, a company that sells consumer data.

The potential system would check passenger data against private, commercial databases and government watch lists to prevent terrorists and suspected violent felons from boarding airplanes. In the process, it would code every passenger with a risk level from green to red. - - from Wired News.