Airlines Don’t Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS
A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected US travelers’ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal CBP documents obtained by 404 Media. The data includes passenger names, their full flight itineraries, and financial details.
In America (and many other places, too), presume everything you do is surveilled. Without a VPN, your phone company and/or internet service provider can see all of your internet traffic. Every site you visit. Cameras collect your license plate and big databases crunch all those sightings, and you are watched as you travel. You turn on an internet-connected TV and haven’t turned off data collection? What you watch is being watched.
If you’re not a techie like me, the best thing you can do for yourself is to drive head-first into Apple’s ecosystem. Their phones collect minimal data, almost all of it optional. The Apple TV doesn’t watch what you watch. Yes, their devices are more expensive, but part of what you’re buying is privacy. And it’s worth the money.
When it comes to your real-world movements, i.e. your non-digital life, privacy becomes a lot harder to ensure. Nay, it’s downright impossible. But once you know what to look for, once you know how computers (and cameras and sensors etc etc) work, once you understand how data is collected and used, it becomes easier to navigate the world and retain a bit of privacy.