Posted on 01/15/2005 12:41:51 PM PST by wagglebee
WASHINGTON (AP) - If you're among the millions of Americans who took airline flights in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FBI probably knows about it - and possibly where you stayed, whom you traveled with, what credit card you used and even whether you ordered a kosher meal.
The bureau is keeping 257.5 million records on people who flew on commercial airlines from June through September 2001 in its permanent investigative database, according to information obtained by a privacy group and made available to The Associated Press.
Privacy advocates say they're troubled by the possibility that the FBI could be analyzing personal information about people without their knowledge or permission.
"The FBI collected a vast amount of information about millions of people with no indication that they had done anything unlawful," said Marcia Hofmann, attorney with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which learned about the data through a Freedom of Information Act request.
"The fact that they're hanging on to the information is inexcusable," Hofmann said on Friday.
FBI spokesman Bill Carter said the bureau was required to retain its records.
"There are rules that have been set by the National Archives with regard to the retention of records by government agencies," Carter said.
Hofmann, though, said the FBI still had a legal responsibility to tell people that it had obtained information about them and to let them have access to it.
As part of its investigation into the terrorist attacks, the FBI asked for, and got, the records from a number of airlines shortly after Sept. 11. The FBI also got one set of data through a federal grand jury subpoena.
The privacy center in May requested records of the FBI's acquisition of the data. The bureau last week turned over 12 pages of information, much of it blanked out for security reasons.
The 12 pages do show that the bureau obtained 82.1 million passenger manifests, or lists of people who flew on planes, between January and September 2001, in addition to the 257.5 million passenger name records.
Citing privacy concerns, the FBI didn't reveal which airlines turned over the information, which airline employees turned it over and which FBI special agents got it.
The data are called passenger name records, or PNR, and can include a variety of information such as credit card numbers, travel itineraries, addresses, telephone numbers and meal requests.
David Hardy, the FBI's chief of the record/information dissemination section of the records management division, said in a legal document dated Jan. 5 that the data were being stored and combined with other information from the Sept. 11 investigation, dubbed PENTTBOMB.
"I have been advised that the Airline Data Sets have been entered by the Cyber Division into a 'Data Warehouse' and have been intertwined for analytical purposes with the information from several other PENTTBOMB Data Sets," Hardy wrote in a statement to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where the privacy center filed its suit.
Hofmann, the attorney for the privacy group, said the FBI had a legitimate reason for collecting information to get a better picture of the hijackers' travel patterns and possible associates.
But, she said, "it wouldn't seem that there's any reason to keep that information now."
The FBI's Carter said he couldn't comment on what may be happening to the data because the bureau is involved in a lawsuit by the privacy center.
Daniel Solove, a George Washington University Law School professor and author of a book on privacy, said not enough is known about what the FBI is doing with the data to determine if there is a problem.
"Data just sits around and who knows what people are doing with it?" Solove said. "The public is left completely out of the loop, not told what this data is for. The agency is basically saying 'Trust us.'"
Solove suggested there was irony in Congress last year ordering the FBI to more quickly purge information obtained in background checks of gun buyers. That, he said, can be useful in tracking down criminals.
"Congress wants to protect guns at great cost, but when it comes to privacy and civil liberties generally, it doesn't register on the same level," Solove said.
Yes, the 9/11 ones were... but what about Indonesians, muslim Indians, that American "kid" muslim from CALIFORNIA and that Padilla guy. Hardly ARABS.
I have no problem with the FBI keeping information and besides.... if they think they need it, at this junction in the war on terror , I am OK with even the searches before airflight.
I'm okay with gathering information and looking for pattern, etc. However, most people are not terrorists and this is easily determined, to continue to gather data on these people is a violation of their rights and an enormous waste of money and resources.
I disagree. When the DC snipers were hard at work shooting people, the police had, in their computers, records of every person they stopped in roadblocks. If the nitwit running the hunt had bothered to look in those computers he would have discovered that the two perps who were finally caught were stopped by roadblocks TEN TIMES or more and then passed through.
This kind of information is very unlikely to harm anyone else, but it could be vital in identifying perpetrators. The FBI would be exceedingly foolish to destroy these records.
Personally I don't care whether the FBI keeps copies of records that are available in this way. As said above, if I wanted to keep something secret I'd use cash. But there's no way on earth they can do anything harmful with this information to ordinary citizens. There's just too much information, and why should they?
Oh yes you are! This is NOT "unreasonable" at all. Remember,please,that we have home grown al Qaeda members.
Well, then, I suppose my name's on that list. I flew from Colorado to Canada the week prior to 9/11 and returned to Colorado from Toronto on 9/9.
[snip]
As part of its investigation into the terrorist attacks, the FBI asked for, and got, the records from a number of airlines shortly after Sept. 11. The FBI also got one set of data through a federal grand jury subpoena.
Why do the airlines even need to keep tabs on where you are staying? They don't mail tickets out anymore (travel is largely ticketless until you arrive at the airport and are handed a boarding pass).
Same with keeping tabs on what meal you ate. After the flight is over, such details can be purged at the airline end. Officials can only request such information if it is collected in the first place. Obviously the airlines kept that data.
Paying for a plane ticket with cash will raise suspicions these days. Also, you have to present a driver's license to board even domestic flights and have had to for decades now.
I would feel safer if they were requesting a passport because I know that there are bad eggs in the DMV selling genuine IDs to false identities. A woman who participated in such a transaction in Tennessee after 9/11 (to some illegal immigrant middle easterners from NYC, no less) was murdered soon after she was released on bail.
People would treat a false passport with more seriousness.
I also have a question, some muslim women are refusing to have their faces photographed for American driver's licenses. What do they put on their passport?
Our Bill of Rights does not grant rights, it preserves and guarantees pre-existing individual rights. How do we know this? The Ninth Amendment states:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
In other words, we have other rights beyond what is expressly stated in the Constitution, and the federal government is not justified in denying us those rights.
What could those rights be? Although, this Web site is not for the purpose of discussing natural and positive rights, below are quotes from two Founding Fathers telling us that the right to self-defense is a natural right, it cannot be justifiably taken away by any governing body.
"I go farther; and now proceed to show, that in peculiar instances, in which those rights can receive neither protection nor reparation from civil government, they are, notwithstanding its institution, entitled still to that defence, and to those methods of recovery, which are justified and demanded in a state of nature."
"The defence of one's self, justly called the primary law of nature, is not, nor can it be abrogated by any regulation of municipal law."
--- James Wilson, Wilson, Of the Natural Rights of Individuals, in 2 The Works of James Wilson 335 (J.D. Andrews ed. 1896).
The above quote is from a series of lectures given between 1790 and 1792.
"Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would."
--- John Adams, Boston Gazette, Sept. 5, 1763,reprinted in 3 The Works of John Adams 438 (Charles F. Adams ed., 1851).
We have many, many natural rights not enumerated by law. Think about it! (Of course, we have responsibilities as well).
Borrowed from http://www.guncite.com/onething.html
I hope I'm not breaking any rules by reposting this. It just seemed very profound to me.
Use cash?
Funny......try buying airline tickets with cash...make sure you show up at least 6 hours before your flight.
And BTW, I have flown around the country and around the world after 9/11 with nothing but cash or cash substitutes (travelor's checks, prepaid credit cards, etc). And the hassles with gate checks have been about the same as I suffered b4 9/11.
Yes I have used travel agancies. If you pay travel agencies cash, it is duely noted. Plan on a very long talk with the plods at TSA if you pay cash.
You are seroiusly deluded. I have never spent any more time with TSA than any other travellor. Get a clue.
Thanks, but I do not need luck. Nor your ill-informed advice.
okey dokey...
go buy a one way ticket with cash from JFK to LAX.
Get back to me :)
Bring some snacks...you might be a while.
Ciao.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to travel or be in hellholes like NYC or LA? Idiots like you I guess, who try to tell me about how I have been travelling and what I encounter and don't have a friggin clue.
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