Passengers sue JetBlue Airways for passing on personal information

Associated Press | September 22, 2003

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A group of passengers has sued JetBlue Airways Corp. for passing their personal information to a Defense Department contractor.

The suit, filed Monday, follows JetBlue's acknowledgment last week that, in violation of its own privacy policy, it had given information from about 5 million passenger records to Torch Concepts of Huntsville, Ala.

Torch produced a study, "Homeland Security: Airline Passenger Risk Assessment," that was purported to help the government improve military base security.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in Utah's 3rd District Court, alleges fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of contract and invasion of privacy.

Also on Monday, a privacy group filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing JetBlue of engaging in "deceptive trade practices."

The complaint, filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, also includes Acxiom Corp.*, a Little Rock, Ark.-based data-mining company that provided additional demographic information that was used in the Torch analysis.

The FTC is reviewing the complaint "carefully," agency spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farell said Tuesday.

JetBlue chief executive David Neeleman said Monday the information the airline provided contained "name, address and phone number, along with flight information, but absolutely no payment or credit card information."

Utah attorney James W. McConkie filed the lawsuit on behalf of five named plaintiffs and a representative class, seeking compensatory - but not punitive - damages.

"We got the sense that Mr. Neeleman wanted to make this right, so we commented in our lawsuit that we wanted to pursue the matter, but not in a way that would damage the financial viability of the company. It's a good company," McConkie said.

JetBlue spokesman Gareth Edmondson-Jones said that he had not seen the lawsuit and was unable to comment.

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* Wesley Clark Keeps Acxiom, Other Board Memberships: Reports

[Shermy]

I found at Yahoo finance that George Soros owns more that 10% of JetBlue.

[Theo]

Refreshing to have an attorney who seems to care about having a fair outcome, while not wanting to destroy the company he's suing. Sharing private information is a big no-no in my book, though....

[Shermy]

Soros ping.

[Shermy]

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2003/030801_mfe_clark_1.html

"...People still addressed him as General Clark and called him sir, but more and more he was able to reconceive the notion of public service along the lines of "making $40 million and giving it away, like George Soros." Then the planes hit New York and Washington and the Stephens Building in Little Rock was evacuated. General Wesley Clark (Ret.) was out in the street, along with everyone else, wondering what was going on. CNN—which had hired the general as an expert analyst in matters of war and national security—was calling, but, as he says now, "I didn't know anything. No one did. Was there some kind of biological agent on the plane that was now spreading in the wind? Did they have a bomb? Did they have the bomb? Was the entire country under attack? What I remember from that day was fear. Everywhere. We were in Little Rock, and they closed the building. . . ."

[Ff--150]

George Soros owns more that 10% of JetBlue.

Is Soros going to become W's Ross Perot?? Buffett owns quite a bit JetBlue also?

[Shermy]

Clark is Soros' man.

I cant find any Buffett connections to JetBlue, yet...

[eno_]

He owns 12 million shares and change out of a float of about 57 million, so he owns closer to 20%. I never knew.

And where is that Soros check due me for my opposition to the Drug War. Damn puppetmasters can't pay on time.