Airlines Will Stop Selling Passenger Data to ICE (EXCLUSIVE) [View all]
WASHINGTON — Airlines Reporting Corporation has terminated its controversial Travel Intelligence Program that sold hundreds of millions of passenger travel records to federal agencies without warrant requirements, following revelations that the IRS conducted warrantless searches of Americans’ flight data.
In an email obtained by Migrant Insider, ARC President and CEO Lauri Reishus notified Congressional Hispanic Caucus staff Friday that “the small number of government TIP customers have been notified that the program is ending this year.”
“This is what we do. This is how we’re fighting back,” said Hispanic Caucus chairman Adriano Espaillat at a press conference on Tuesday morning at the Capitol, celebrating the win. “I would encourage other industry groups in the private sector to follow suit. They should not be in cahoots with ICE, especially in ways we may consider illegal,” he added.
The shutdown comes days after a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to nine major airlines demanding they exercise their authority as co-owners of ARC to terminate the data-selling operation.
The November 18 letter—signed by Senator Ron Wyden, Congressman Andy Biggs, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat, and Senator Cynthia Lummis—revealed the IRS accessed the database without conducting a legally required review to determine whether purchasing Americans’ travel data requires a warrant.
ARC’s Travel Intelligence Program maintained a searchable database of approximately 722 million ticket transactions spanning 39 months of past and future travel data. The system allowed government agencies to search by passenger name, credit card number, airline, and other identifiers—all without obtaining warrants, court orders, or subpoenas.
https://migrantinsider.com/p/airlines-will-stop-selling-passenger
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