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.

  • Sibbo
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    297 days ago

    Since when does a government agency have to pay for receiving a companies data? I guess there is no law for allowing ICE to access that data, and then they just pay instead?

    • @[email protected]
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      227 days ago

      If I had to guess, obtaining the data by force may require a court order or legal process.

      Buying data that someone else is willingly selling bypasses those steps.

    • @[email protected]
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      57 days ago

      At least for foreigners travelling into the US, you’re willingly giving the US govt most of this information up front anyway via the APIS. And paying for the privilege!

      • @[email protected]
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        37 days ago

        Well you could have easily not fucking come here.

        Americans are just fucked (and they stole the election so we get to be hated for voting for him while we didn’t even vote for him, our allies have every excuse not to lift a finger to care. Really convenient.)

        • @[email protected]
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          27 days ago

          Unless of course you’re forced to, like for your job. My place would have little to zero sympathy for my personal reasons not to travel unless it’s on a govt advisory not to.

            • sunzu2
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              26 days ago

              Always but this is also a naive. These parasites have the same incentive structures so they always exploit

    • @[email protected]
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      187 days ago

      Yeah that’s one of the things that stood out as what the hell… the companies already have the data, if ICE wanted it legally they shouldn’t need to pay… Really shows how shady they’re being.

      • @[email protected]
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        26 days ago

        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.