An aviation industry clearinghouse is collecting data on air travelers from billions of flights — and selling it to Trump’s immigration enforcers.

A massive aviation industry clearinghouse that processes data for twelve 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.

  • nuko147@lemm.eeEnglish
    129·
    15 hours ago

    The company is jointly owned by nine major airlines, most of which are US-based: Delta, Southwest, United, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, Air Canada, Lufthansa, and Air France.

    I hope EU starts some investigation, because it doesn’t seem this follows the GDPR for European travelers.

      • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        12·
        6 hours ago

        Maximum GDPR fine is 4% of your revenue. For Lufthansa, that would be ~$1.4 billion, Air France ~$650 million, both of which are roughly their entire net income for one year.

        Not sure if anyone has been hit with the maximum ever though, as everyone just keeps track of the dollars and not percentage of revenue.

          • mriswith@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            32 minutes ago

            I think the biggest one by value is Meta with €1.2b. Although their revenue is in the $150b+ range, so not maxed out.