In America, the airline Jet-Blue Airways is now facing several lawsuits for illegally handing over the passenger data of more than a million customers to a Pentagon contractor. The contractor, trying to set up a programme to enhance security at military bases, wanted access to commercial databases in order to assess the risk of a person turning out to be a terrorist.
Jet-Blue Airways has apologised for the surrender of the information, while at the same time trying to drag back a little dignity by saying that at least it did not pass the details on to a government body – scant consolation to anyone who has just had their secrets stolen from them.
The general point of this episode is that whenever a new intrusion into privacy emerges – entitlement cards, identity cards, Customs’ swaggering taste for impounding cars and goods – the Government defence comes down to the old adage, “the innocent have nothing to fear”.
Well, that just plain isn’t true when the system breaks down because of incompetence or malice. Those little boxes in adverts saying “Tick if you would prefer that your details are not passed on to other organisations” aren’t always watertight.
