IRS Accessed Massive Database of Americans Flights Without a Warrant

Follow up to previous post – Airlines Sell 5 Billion Plane Ticket Records to the Government For Warrantless Searching – See Also 404 Media / no paywall: “The IRS accessed a database of hundreds of millions of travel records, which show when and where a specific person flew and the credit card they used, without obtaining a warrant, according to a letter signed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and shared with 404 Media. The country’s major airlines, including Delta, United Airlines, American Airlines, and Southwest, funnel customer records to a data broker they co-own called the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), which then sells access to peoples’ travel data to government agencies. The IRS case in the letter is the clearest example yet of how agencies are searching the massive trove of travel data without a search warrant, court order, or similar legal mechanism. Instead, because the data is being sold commercially, agencies are able to simply buy access. In the letter addressed to nine major airlines, the lawmakers urge them to shut down the data selling program.  “Disclosures made by the IRS to Senator Wyden confirm that it did not follow federal law and its own policies in purchasing airline data from ARC,” the letter reads. The letter says the IRS “confirmed that it did not conduct a legal review to determine if the purchase of Americans’ travel data requires a warrant.” The signatories on the letter are Senator Ron Wyden, Congressman Andy Biggs, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Adriano Espaillat, and Senator Cynthia Lummis.  The co-owners of ARC include United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska, Lufthansa, Air France, and Air Canada, according to the letter. Each of those airlines has a representative on ARC’s board of directors…”