There’s an old joke about the difference between a Democrat and a Republican being that the Republican will tell you he’s going to screw you and then does so while the Democrat will, with a straight face, tell you that he won’t and then proceeds to do so. Smiling like Snidely Whiplash all the while.
Lying has apparently become an acceptable way of conducting business in the wake of last year’s parade of corporate scandals. Witness Northwest Airlines, who last Friday acknowledged that it had, in fact, disclosed confidential customer information to the U.S. government as part of a secret security project after adamantly declaring that it “did not provide that type of information to anyone.” Northwest’s assertion was in response to news of JetBlue Airways providing customer information to a similar, but presumably different, government project last September. A day later, Northwest chief executive Richard Anderson told the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, “Northwest Airlines will not share customer information, as JetBlue Airways has done.” Customer information disclosed in both cases included names, credit card numbers, addresses, and telephone numbers.
The government project by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Ames Research Center was an exploration into whether data mining of customer information “could improve assessments of threats posed by passengers,” according to a Washington Post account that was published on its website late yesterday. The project was reportedly left unfunded at the end of last year because it failed to produce any verifiably useful results.
According to the Washington Post, Northwest released a statement Friday claiming that “Northwest Airlines had a duty and an obligation to cooperate with the federal government for national security reasons.” The statement is not available on Northwest Airlines website, so I can only assume that the nation’s fourth largest airline feels no duty or obligation to tell its customers the truth about how it handles their personal information or honor its privacy policy. Northwest flew almost 11 million customers during the period of time covered by the information disclosure. Presumably, some of those 11 million customers were European citizens who are afforded legal protections against such corporate information disclosures.
Northwest’s statement also reportedly states that Northwest “did not believe that the data sharing violated its privacy policy.” The Northwest Airlines privacy policy clearly states, in part:
“...We do not sell individual customer names or other private profile information to third parties and have no intention of doing so in the future. We do share User names and email addresses with our WorldPerks partners only for specific and pertinent promotional use but only if our customers have opted to receive promotional emails from Northwest and our WorldPerks partners.”
The Wasington Post account indicates that Northwest Airlines did not sell the information to the government, so I suppose that the company is technically correct in its statement, in the most weasely sort of way. But surely the federal government isn’t a Northwest WorldPerks partner and I don’t recall being given the opportunity to opt-in to the information disclosure. Northwest’s statement, again according to the Washington Post article, contains especially weasel-worded language regarding the privacy policy issue:
“Our privacy policy commits Northwest not to sell passenger information to third parties for marketing purposes. This situation was entirely different, as we were providing the data to a government agency to conduct scientific research related to aviation security and we were confident that the privacy of passenger information would be maintained.”
Ah, that explains it. The information was disclosed for scientific research. That makes it all okay. This is after all, science.
To me, one of the more interesting aspects is how news of the event was actually gathered and reported. It came as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). This story was not broken by professional journalists (who should have been on the case) but rather by a nonprofit privacy advocacy group. Both Twin Cities local papers, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, are owned by corporate media giants McClatchy and Knight Ridder respectively. Both have the resources to investigate stories like this that occur in their back yard (Northwest is a Minnesota corporation) but repeatedly fail to do so. Today, both reprinted Sara Kehaulani Goo’s Washington Post story. It’s a painful and telling commentary on corporate media in this country that the Washington Post staff writer had the story handed to her by EPIC who conducted the actual investigation and continues to actively pursue the case.
Up here on the far edge, when you fly you fly Northwest. It’s clear that Northwest has violated its own privacy policy. When corporations behave badly there are remedies available to the citizenry. The most severe remedy is revoking the corporate charter; the equivalent of corporate capital punishment. While this case, at least given what’s known so far, doesn’t come close in severity to warranting that, I think a fair remedy would be for some percentage of Northwest’s gates at the municipal airports in its hub cities of the Twin Cities, Detroit, and Memphis be confiscated and distributed to smaller competitors.
You’ll excuse me if I don’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
Update Mon 19 Jan 2004
Northwest Airlines claims that chief executive Richard Anderson didn’t know that his airline had released confidential customer information to the government until three days after he told the national media that the company did not disclose such information to third parties.
In a Minneapolis Star Tribune report this morning, Northwest spokesman Bill Mellon restated the company’s position:
“This project with NASA wasn’t a violation of the Northwest privacy policy…. Northwest believes that it was appropriate to provide data directly to NASA for a research study designed to improve aviation security…. Northwest Airlines’ current policy is to not provide passenger name record data to private contractors or federal government agencies for use in aviation security research projects. While Northwest Airlines still believes it would be appropriate to provide such data to the U.S. government to advance aviation security, in light of current privacy concerns, Northwest believes a data protection protocol addressing privacy concerns should be developed before any further aviation security research with passenger data is conducted.”
Instead of stepping up, admitting its mistake, apologizing for it, and moving on, Northwest Airlines continues to steadfastly deny any wrongdoing and goes so far as to say that while it isn’t doing it any more, it might in the future. Amazing. Simply amazing.
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