DOT to research knowledge safety and privateness practices of high US airways

The U.S. Division of Transportation introduced its first industry-wide evaluation of information safety and privateness insurance policies throughout the most important U.S. airways.

The DOT mentioned in a press release Thursday that the evaluation will study whether or not U.S. airline giants are correctly defending their clients’ private info and whether or not airways are “unfairly or deceptively monetizing or sharing that data with third parties.”

Letters to airline executives will embody questions on how the airways accumulate and deal with passengers’ private info, monetize buyer knowledge by way of focused promoting, and the way workers and contractors are educated to deal with passenger’s info.

These airways embody Allegiant, Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, and United.

The division, which oversees U.S. authorities coverage on all issues associated to transportation, mentioned it might examine and take enforcement motion because it discovers proof of problematic practices.

U.S. Secretary for Transportation Pete Buttigieg mentioned the evaluation goals to “ensure airlines are being good stewards of sensitive passenger data.”

The DOT didn’t say what particularly prompted the evaluation, however that the motion was a part of the U.S. authorities’s “broader push to protect consumer privacy across the economy.”

In latest months, the U.S. Federal Commerce Fee — which regulates shopper knowledge privateness issues — has banned data brokers and other companies from sharing customers’ delicate location and shopping knowledge with others, ordered corporations hit by knowledge breaches to overhaul their security practices, and pledged to strengthen the federal law known as COPPA that forestalls corporations from acquiring knowledge on youngsters beneath the age of 13.

The DOT mentioned that the FTC is “also exploring rules to more broadly crack down on the harms stemming from surveillance and lax data security.”

Transportation Secretary Buttigieg mentioned the DOT’s privateness evaluation can be carried with the experience and partnership of Sen. Ron Wyden, a senior Democrat who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Wyden has raised alarms concerning the sharing and sale of delicate U.S. shopper knowledge to knowledge brokers — corporations that accumulate and resell folks’s private knowledge, like exact location knowledge, usually derived from their telephones and computer systems.

In latest months, Wyden has warned that knowledge brokers promote entry to People’ private info, which can identify which websites they visit and the locations they journey to. Wyden additionally warned that U.S. intelligence companies can — and have — bought commercially obtainable details about People from knowledge brokers, which the intelligence neighborhood argues that they don’t need to obtain a search warrant for knowledge they will buy.

In remarks, Wyden mentioned: “Because consumers will often never know that their personal data was misused or sold to shady data brokers, effective privacy regulation cannot depend on consumer complaints to identify corporate abuses.”