Pen-Elayne on the Web

Carrying a Blue Torch

Here's another follow-up story about my favorite Mormon airline. Via Jeralyn Merritt (link at sidebar), JetBlue apologizes. Uh, for the CAPPS II thing, not the Mormon baptism thing. Neeleman wrote an e-mail to customers admitting "that JetBlue made a mistake a year ago when it agreed to a Defense Department request to provide the data to Torch Concepts Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., for a project said to involve military base security." A year ago! To a private corporation! And all in violation of its own privacy policy! (That LA Times link requires registration, by the way; the login name "corporatemedia" and password "stillsucks" might get you in.) Why haven't we heard any of this till now, when Wired picked up the story from Bill Scannell (whose website does seem a bit tinfoil-helmed but who apparently enjoys great support from online privacy advocates including the EFF)? Now that it's come to light, lt's hope someone with more journalistic cred than me can do a nice job of ferreting out info on Torch's management team and what their angle is. The NY Times take on the story mentions the following, "Torch Concepts...was hired by the Army more than three years ago to determine how information from public and private records might be analyzed to help defend military bases from attack by terrorists and other adversaries. While the company has insisted that the Army study was never intended to be used to improve security at civilian airports, there was clearly discussion within the company of whether its research might be of use to the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for airport security." Bet they were among the first in line for Poindexter's futures market, eh?