NEW YORK, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- JetBlue Airways apologized Friday for giving records of more than 1 million passengers to a U.S. Defense Department contractor testing a security system.
David Neeleman, chief executive for the carrier, said in an e-mail to customers JetBlue made a mistake last year when it agreed to a Defense Department request to provide the data to Torch Concepts Inc. for a project said to involve military base security.
The Torch study was presented at a conference in February and was included on a Web site. One customer's personal information was included on the site, though not by name, the Washington Post reported.
The airline said it had nothing to do with the government's planned Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System II profiling system, which uses a massive secret database to assess individuals' security-threat levels.
The flap over JetBlue's action illustrated the nervousness of passengers and federal officials as the launch of CAPPS II approaches. The government has agreed not to include personal financial data in the profiles, but privacy advocates are not convinced the system will not infringe on personal privacy, the Post said.
