doodledee

Big scandal here in Northwest Airlines country. Whooo weee, I loves me a good scandal!

The Juicy Details: Way back in the weeks and months immediately following the September 11th attacks, Northwest Airlines apparently gave the government all kinds of pseudo-private information about the people that were flying on NWA planes. In addition to travel plans and itineraries, NWA turned over things like names and addresses and ages and probably credit card numbers and whatnot. Fast forward to toda and, go figure, people are a little worked up at such a violation of privacy and trust. Who knew?

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. Everyone saw this coming. Hell, NWA's CEO Richard Anderson more or less admitted they were going to give away all kinds of private passenger information when he was asked about doing so right after 9/11:

"Northwest Airlines will not share customer information"

Whoops! Guess he misspoke. But give the guy a break. He was under enormous stress at the time begging the government for huge cash bailouts for his ailing company. I'm sure his well prepared spokesperson, Kurt Ebenhoch, got it right. Let's just go by what he had to say at the time:

"We do not provide that type of information to anyone."

Whoops again! Guess that dude misspoke, too! Man, what are the odds of that? Ah well, guess it's time to update and backdate that privacy policy, boys.

The Dave Angle: The alleged dates that NWA was apparently turning over information to the government just so happen to line up with a period of time that I was traveling for work. Not just traveling, mind you, FLYING NORTHWEST AIRLINES. This means that my personal and private information was being sent to fancy research centers where it was fed into powerful anti-terrorism computers and analyzed by super smart anti-terrorism intelligence experts in an attempt to determine whether or not I was a threat to the United States. Spooky, eh? Ten bucks says there was a dashed line connecting me to Osama on some dude's whiteboard somewhere. Those government guys have been trying to nail me for years. Well keep trying, bozos, because you got nothin'!

The Conclusion: Nothing will happen to NWA. They'll continue to abuse anyone and everyone. But at least they're getting some bad press. And at least I'm not a 'perceived' threat.

NWA: CEO unaware feds got data [strib]