Airlines Collect Passenger Data and Sell It to ICE, Other Federal Agencies

[cbabe]

https://truthout.org/articles/airlines-collect-passenger-data-and-sell-it-to-ice-other-federal-agencies/

Airlines Collect Passenger Data and Sell It to ICE, Other Federal Agencies

Data includes full flight itineraries, passenger name records and financial details which are otherwise hard to obtain.

By Katya Schwenk , THELEVER
Published May 12, 2025

This article was originally published by The Lever, an investigative newsroom. If you like this story, sign up for The Lever’s free newsletter.

A massive aviation industry clearinghouse that processes data for 12 billion passenger flights per year is selling that information to the Trump administration amid the White House’s new immigration crackdown, according to documents reviewed by The Lever.

The data — including “full flight itineraries, passenger name records, and financial details, which are otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain” for past and future flights — is fed into a secretive government intelligence operation called the Travel Intelligence Program and provided to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies, records reveal.

Details of this program were outlined in procurement documents released Wednesday by ICE, which is a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Privacy and travel industry experts interviewed by The Lever said that law enforcement’s access to such a vast database — with little information on what privacy or other restrictions are in place — raises serious civil liberties concerns.

“This is probably the single most significant aggregated repository of data about American air travelers,” said Edward Hasbrouck, an expert in travel data privacy. “That the government has gotten access to it is a very big deal.”

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[Kid Berwyn]

1. Monetizing Collaboration with the Stasi

The American Way

[kimbutgar]

2. Won't be traveling by air anytime soon in the future,

Stopped planning a London and Hawaii trip this year. Going to travel by car for vacation this year in my wonderful state California.

Between this list and the air traffic controller issues I’ll pass.

[hildegaard28]

3. We need

A privacy amendment to the Constitution. Democrats should propose and run on that. I bet a lot of Republicans will get behind it. Not necessarily elected Republicans, because they are fascists, but regular people who identify as Republicans and Independents I could see definitely getting behind a privacy amendment.