WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- A counter-terrorism measure by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration violated the 1974 Privacy Act, The Washington Post reported.
Secure Flight, the program to screen domestic air passengers for names on terrorism watch lists violated the law by not notifying the public of its measures, according to a report released Friday by the Department of Homeland Security.
The document is the first acknowledgement by Homeland Security officials that the Secure Flight program violated the law.
The law mandates that the public be made aware of any changes to a federal program that affect the privacy of U.S. citizens. Secure Flight gathered commercial data on passengers in 2004 without informing the public of its actions.
TSA also reportedly improperly stored more than 100 million records after saying that their data would not be mixed with commercial data and that no such storage would happen.
The U.S. Congress has halted secure Flight and officials at TSA are promising to work in a more "transparent" way while planning to re-implement the program in 2008, the newspaper reported.
