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.
The government can’t just take every companies data. They absolutely can buy it if that is an option though. Just like how they pay for licenses for software, they can and do pay for data.
Which is the problem.
ICE would not be able to legally subpoena these companies for our data, so they buy it from them as a loophole.
Using our tax dollars, of course.
