Gov't agency purchased private passenger data from US airlines: Report
A new report claims that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has purchased passenger information from a data broker owned by multiple U.S. airlines.
According to 404 Media, documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the CBP's purchase of private airline passenger data was intended to help the agency identify persons of interest. The outlet noted that the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), which is owned by at least eight of the top U.S. airlines, sold the data to the CBP, which included the names, financial information, and flight itineraries of passengers.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told 404 Media, 'The big airlines—through a shady data broker that they own called ARC—are selling the government bulk access to Americans' sensitive information, revealing where they fly and the credit card they used.'
404 Media reported that the sale of passengers' private information is part of the Airlines Reporting Corporation's Travel Intelligence Program (TIP). According to a Statement of Work obtained by the outlet, federal officials claimed the CBP needed access to the program to 'support federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to identify persons of interest's U.S. domestic air travel ticketing information.'
According to 404 Media, the CBP claimed that the data purchased from the Airlines Reporting Corporation is only used to locate individuals in investigations launched by the Office of Professional Responsibility.
READ MORE: Major airline files for bankruptcy
According to the documents obtained by 404 Media, the data obtained from the Travel Intelligence Program is expected to give the CBP 'visibility on a subject's or person of interest's domestic air travel ticketing information as well as tickets acquired through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories.'
404 Media reported that the Airlines Reporting Corporation asked the CBP not to 'publicly identify vendor, or its employees, individually or collectively, as the source of the Reports unless the Customer is compelled to do so by a valid court order or subpoena and gives ARC immediate notice of same.'
'CBP is committed to protecting individuals' privacy during the execution of its mission to protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nation's economic prosperity,' a CBP spokesperson told 404 Media. 'CBP follows a robust privacy policy as we protect the homeland through the air, land and maritime environments against illegal entry, illicit activity or other threats to national sovereignty and economic security.'
Wyden told 404 Media that the Airlines Reporting Corporation has 'refused to answer oversight questions from Congress,' prompting the Oregon senator to contact various airlines regarding 'why they gave the green light to sell their customers' data to the government.'
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Firms led by US military veterans deliver aid in Africa and Gaza, alarming humanitarian groups
ON A PLANE OVER UPPER NILE STATE, South Sudan -- Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week's air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former U.S. intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world's deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend that could allow governments or combatants to use life-saving aid to control hungry civilian populations and advance war aims. In South Sudan and Gaza, two for-profit U.S. companies led by American national security veterans are delivering aid in operations backed by the South Sudanese and Israeli governments. The American contractors say they're putting their security, logistics and intelligence skills to work in relief operations. Fogbow, the U.S. company that carried out last week's air drops over South Sudan, says it aims to be a 'humanitarian' force. 'We've worked for careers, collectively, in conflict zones. And we know how to essentially make very difficult situations work,' said Fogbow President Michael Mulroy, a retired CIA officer and former senior defense official in the first Trump administration, speaking on the airport tarmac in Juba, South Sudan's capital. But the U.N. and many leading non-profit groups say U.S. contracting firms are stepping into aid distribution with little transparency or humanitarian experience, and, crucially, without commitment to humanitarian principles of neutrality and operational independence in war zones. 'What we've learned over the years of successes and failures is there's a difference between a logistics operation and a security operation, and a humanitarian operation,' said Scott Paul, a director at Oxfam America. ''Truck and chuck' doesn't help people,' Paul said. 'It puts people at risk.' Fogbow took journalists up in a cargo plane to watch their team drop 16 tons of beans, corn and salt for South Sudan's Upper Nile state town of Nasir. Residents fled homes there after fighting erupted in March between the government and opposition groups. Mulroy acknowledged the controversy over Fogbow's aid drops, which he said were paid for by the South Sudanese government. But, he maintained: 'We don't want to replace any entity' in aid work. Fogbow was in the spotlight last year for its proposal to use barges to bring aid to Gaza, where Israeli restrictions were blocking overland deliveries. The United States focused instead on a U.S. military effort to land aid via a temporary pier. Since then, Fogbow has carried out aid drops in Sudan and South Sudan, east African nations where wars have created some of the world's gravest humanitarian crises. Fogbow says ex-humanitarian officials are also involved, including former U.N. World Food Program head David Beasley, who is a senior adviser. Operating in Gaza, meanwhile, Safe Reach Solutions, led by a former CIA officer and other retired U.S. security officers, has partnered with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed nonprofit that Israel says is the linchpin of a new aid system to wrest control from the U.N., which Israel says has been infiltrated by Hamas, and other humanitarian groups. Starting in late May, the American-led operation in Gaza has distributed food at fixed sites in southern Gaza, in line with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated plan to use aid to concentrate the territory's more than 2 million people in the south, freeing Israel to fight Hamas elsewhere. Aid workers fear it's a step toward another of Netanyahu's public goals, removing Palestinians from Gaza in 'voluntary' migrations. Since then, several hundred Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded in near daily shootings as they tried to reach aid sites, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Witnesses say Israeli troops regularly fire heavy barrages toward the crowds in an attempt to control them. The Israeli military has denied firing on civilians. It says it fired warning shots in several instances, and fired directly at a few 'suspects' who ignored warnings and approached its forces. It's unclear who is funding the new operation in Gaza. No donor has come forward, and the U.S. says it's not funding it. In response to criticism over its Gaza aid deliveries, Safe Reach Solutions said it has former aid workers on its team with 'decades of experience in the world's most complex environments' who bring "expertise to the table, along with logisticians and other experts.' Last week's air drop over South Sudan went without incident, despite fighting nearby. A white cross marked the drop zone. Only a few people could be seen. Fogbow contractors said there were more newly returned townspeople on previous drops. Fogbow acknowledges glitches in mastering aid drops, including one last year in Sudan's South Kordofan region that ended up with too-thinly-wrapped grain sacks split open on the ground. After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan has struggled to emerge from a civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people. Rights groups say its government is one of the world's most corrupt, and until now has invested little in quelling the dire humanitarian crisis. South Sudan said it engaged Fogbow for air drops partly because of the Trump administration's deep cuts in U.S. Agency for International Development funding. Humanitarian Minister Albino Akol Atak said the drops will expand to help people in need throughout the country. But two South Sudanese groups question the government's motives. 'We don't want to see a humanitarian space being abused by military actors ... under the cover of a food drop," said Edmund Yakani, head of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, a local civil society group. Asked about suspicions the aid drops were helping South Sudan's military aims, Fogbow's Mulroy said the group has worked with the U.N. World Food Program to make sure 'this aid is going to civilians.' 'If it wasn't going to civilians, we would hope that we would get that feedback, and we would cease and desist,' Mulroy said. In a statement, WFP country director Mary-Ellen McGroarty said: 'WFP is not involved in the planning, targeting or distribution of food air-dropped' by Fogbow on behalf of South Sudan's government, citing humanitarian principles. Longtime humanitarian leaders and analysts are troubled by what they see as a teaming up of warring governments and for-profit contractors in aid distribution. When one side in a conflict decides where and how aid is handed out, and who gets it, 'it will always result in some communities getting preferential treatment,' said Jan Egeland, executive director of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Sometimes, that set-up will advance strategic aims, as with Netanyahu's plans to move Gaza's civilians south, Egeland said. The involvement of soldiers and security workers, he added, can make it too 'intimidating' for some in need to even try to get aid. Until now, Western donors always understood those risks, Egeland said. But pointing to the Trump administration's backing of the new aid system in Gaza, he asked: 'Why does the U.S. ... want to support what they have resisted with every other war zone for two generations?' Mark Millar, who has advised the U.N. and Britain on humanitarian matters in South Sudan and elsewhere, said involving private military contractors risks undermining the distinction between humanitarian assistance and armed conflict. Private military contractors 'have even less sympathy for a humanitarian perspective that complicates their business-driven model," he said. 'And once let loose, they seem to be even less accountable.' Knickmeyer reported from Washington. Mednick reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. ___
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Firms led by US military veterans deliver aid in Africa and Gaza, alarming humanitarian groups
ON A PLANE OVER UPPER NILE STATE, South Sudan (AP) — Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week's air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former U.S. intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world's deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend that could allow governments or combatants to use life-saving aid to control hungry civilian populations and advance war aims. In South Sudan and Gaza, two for-profit U.S. companies led by American national security veterans are delivering aid in operations backed by the South Sudanese and Israeli governments. The American contractors say they're putting their security, logistics and intelligence skills to work in relief operations. Fogbow, the U.S. company that carried out last week's air drops over South Sudan, says it aims to be a 'humanitarian' force. 'We've worked for careers, collectively, in conflict zones. And we know how to essentially make very difficult situations work,' said Fogbow President Michael Mulroy, a retired CIA officer and former senior defense official in the first Trump administration, speaking on the airport tarmac in Juba, South Sudan's capital. But the U.N. and many leading non-profit groups say U.S. contracting firms are stepping into aid distribution with little transparency or humanitarian experience, and, crucially, without commitment to humanitarian principles of neutrality and operational independence in war zones. 'What we've learned over the years of successes and failures is there's a difference between a logistics operation and a security operation, and a humanitarian operation,' said Scott Paul, a director at Oxfam America. ''Truck and chuck' doesn't help people,' Paul said. 'It puts people at risk.' 'We don't want to replace any entity' Fogbow took journalists up in a cargo plane to watch their team drop 16 tons of beans, corn and salt for South Sudan's Upper Nile state town of Nasir. Residents fled homes there after fighting erupted in March between the government and opposition groups. Mulroy acknowledged the controversy over Fogbow's aid drops, which he said were paid for by the South Sudanese government. Shared roots in Gaza and U.S. intelligence Fogbow was in the spotlight last year for its proposal to use barges to bring aid to Gaza, where Israeli restrictions were blocking overland deliveries. The United States focused instead on a U.S. military effort to land aid via a temporary pier. Since then, Fogbow has carried out aid drops in Sudan and South Sudan, east African nations where wars have created some of the world's gravest humanitarian crises. Fogbow says ex-humanitarian officials are also involved, including former U.N. World Food Program head David Beasley, who is a senior adviser. Operating in Gaza, meanwhile, Safe Reach Solutions, led by a former CIA officer and other retired U.S. security officers, has partnered with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed nonprofit that Israel says is the linchpin of a new aid system to wrest control from the U.N., which Israel says has been infiltrated by Hamas, and other humanitarian groups. Starting in late May, the American-led operation in Gaza has distributed food at fixed sites in southern Gaza, in line with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated plan to use aid to concentrate the territory's more than 2 million people in the south, freeing Israel to fight Hamas elsewhere. Aid workers fear it's a step toward another of Netanyahu's public goals, removing Palestinians from Gaza in 'voluntary' migrations. Since then, several hundred Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded in near daily shootings as they tried to reach aid sites, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Witnesses say Israeli troops regularly fire heavy barrages toward the crowds in an attempt to control them. The Israeli military has denied firing on civilians. It says it fired warning shots in several instances, and fired directly at a few 'suspects' who ignored warnings and approached its forces. It's unclear who is funding the new operation in Gaza. No donor has come forward, and the U.S. says it's not funding it. In response to criticism over its Gaza aid deliveries, Safe Reach Solutions said it has former aid workers on its team with 'decades of experience in the world's most complex environments' who bring "expertise to the table, along with logisticians and other experts.' South Sudan's people ask: Who's gett ing our aid drops? Last week's air drop over South Sudan went without incident, despite fighting nearby. A white cross marked the drop zone. Only a few people could be seen. Fogbow contractors said there were more newly returned townspeople on previous drops. Fogbow acknowledges glitches in mastering aid drops, including one last year in Sudan's South Kordofan region that ended up with too-thinly-wrapped grain sacks split open on the ground. After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan has struggled to emerge from a civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people. Rights groups say its government is one of the world's most corrupt, and until now has invested little in quelling the dire humanitarian crisis. South Sudan said it engaged Fogbow for air drops partly because of the Trump administration's deep cuts in U.S. Agency for International Development funding. Humanitarian Minister Albino Akol Atak said the drops will expand to help people in need throughout the country. But two South Sudanese groups question the government's motives. 'We don't want to see a humanitarian space being abused by military actors ... under the cover of a food drop," said Edmund Yakani, head of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, a local civil society group. Asked about suspicions the aid drops were helping South Sudan's military aims, Fogbow's Mulroy said the group has worked with the U.N. World Food Program to make sure 'this aid is going to civilians.' 'If it wasn't going to civilians, we would hope that we would get that feedback, and we would cease and desist,' Mulroy said. In a statement, WFP country director Mary-Ellen McGroarty said: 'WFP is not involved in the planning, targeting or distribution of food air-dropped' by Fogbow on behalf of South Sudan's government, citing humanitarian principles. A 'business-driven model' Longtime humanitarian leaders and analysts are troubled by what they see as a teaming up of warring governments and for-profit contractors in aid distribution. When one side in a conflict decides where and how aid is handed out, and who gets it, 'it will always result in some communities getting preferential treatment,' said Jan Egeland, executive director of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Sometimes, that set-up will advance strategic aims, as with Netanyahu's plans to move Gaza's civilians south, Egeland said. The involvement of soldiers and security workers, he added, can make it too 'intimidating' for some in need to even try to get aid. Until now, Western donors always understood those risks, Egeland said. But pointing to the Trump administration's backing of the new aid system in Gaza, he asked: 'Why does the U.S. ... want to support what they have resisted with every other war zone for two generations?' Mark Millar, who has advised the U.N. and Britain on humanitarian matters in South Sudan and elsewhere, said involving private military contractors risks undermining the distinction between humanitarian assistance and armed conflict. Private military contractors 'have even less sympathy for a humanitarian perspective that complicates their business-driven model," he said. 'And once let loose, they seem to be even less accountable.'
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
CNBC's UK Exchange newsletter: A quantum quandary for the UK government
Her climbdown on denying millions of pensioners the winter fuel allowance was not the only U-turn announced by Rachel Reeves, the U.K.'s chancellor of the Exchequer, this month. Less significant in political terms, but of far greater importance to the U.K.'s long-term growth potential, was an announcement on June 10 that the government would commit £750 million ($1 billion) worth of funding for a new exascale supercomputer, capable of conducting a quintillion (one billion billion) operations per second, at Edinburgh University. The news reversed a previous decision, made days after the Labour government was elected in July last year, to pull some £800 million worth of funding for the project announced by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's administration in 2023. Edinburgh had already spent an estimated £30 million on supporting infrastructure and the decision dismayed the U.K.'s scientific community which warned that, at a time when the U.S. has two exascale computers, China has two and both Japan and France are building their own, it would leave Britain lagging its peers. The timing of the U-turn was no coincidence. Just two days later, to mark the start of London Tech Week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer shared a platform with Jensen Huang, Nvidia's founder and CEO, where both talked eagerly about the power of artificial intelligence to transform lives. During the session, though, Huang had a stark warning for the U.K. "The U.K. has one of the richest AI communities anywhere on the planet. The deepest thinkers, the best universities in Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College, amazing startups like DeepMind, Wayve, Synthesia, an incredible research community," he said. "It's just missing one thing. This is the largest AI ecosystem in the world without its own infrastructure." Cynics will say that Huang's message — chipmaker urges more investment in infrastructure that requires chips — does not look that different from a stockbroker urging clients to buy stocks. It is inconceivable, though, that the government would not have been made aware of it in advance. And restoring funding for the Edinburgh supercomputer suggests the message landed with Starmer and Reeves. Yet the U.K. tech sector faces other challenges. One is that the U.K.'s AI startups are way behind their American and Chinese peers in the sums they are raising from venture capitalists. That, potentially, is as much of a weakness, longer term, as a shortage of sovereign AI computing infrastructure. However, a broader worry is that the U.K. may be losing momentum in quantum computing, the revolutionary way of processing information faster than classical computing. Just up the A40 trunk road, on the same day Starmer was on stage with Huang, the quantum hardware startup Oxford Ionics, a spin-off from the University of Oxford, agreed to a $1.1 billion takeover by Maryland-based IonQ. The sale has revived concerns, first mooted when the AI start-up DeepMind was bought by Google in 2014, that the U.K. is nothing more than a tech "incubator," where businesses are born before being scaled up elsewhere. As Tina Stowell, former chair of the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, put it: "I am genuinely sorry about its loss to the U.K. as a British business, even if, under new ownership, it continues to operate here." "What we have seen this week is another example of a worrying trend," she added. There are fears that other companies in the space may follow suit. "This [takeover] is a reflection of the top-notch quality of U.K. quantum R&D, built on decades of public funding, but also an example that will be watched closely by other quantum companies seeking capital and opportunities that can be hard to find in the U.K.," Ashley Montanaro, co-founder and CEO of the quantum software company Phasecraft, wrote in an article for the British tech industry publication UKTN. "There's already more public funding available for quantum companies in the U.S. than in the U.K., more fellowships, more state and federal grants and contracts, and more support for scale-up and deployment." "Even with President [Donald] Trump's recent pushback against universities, private capital ultimately follows public money, and several of our peers have joined us in opening labs overseas to access such support, knowledge and capital," he added. Highlighting delays to the implementation of the U.K.'s National Quantum Strategy, announced two years ago, he noted there would be no new government funding for quantum computing projects until autumn at the earliest — while at the same time, the U.S was in the process of doubling federal quantum funding and other countries, among them Canada and Finland, had stepped up investment in the field. Montanaro went on: "Once the talent, capital and momentum go elsewhere, they rarely return." The U.K. government's newly rediscovered passion for supercomputers that will help power the AI revolution is heartwarming. But AI is only one part of the U.K.'s tech ecosystem and the worry must be that, in fields like quantum computing, it is in real danger of falling behind. Meanwhile, although Starmer and his ministers now appear to see AI as an unalloyed force for good, others may disagree. This week, in a rare interview, Alison Kirkby, BT's chief executive, told the Financial Times the company's plans to cut more than 40,000 jobs and strip out £3 billion worth of costs by the end of the decade "did not reflect the full potential of AI". She told the paper: "Depending on what we learn from AI … there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade." Most of the jobs expected to go under existing plans were those of engineers specifically hired to build BT's fiber network whose roles became redundant once the project was complete. The chances are that, in this instance, Kirkby was referring to BT's call centers, which employ thousands of people in locations including Plymouth, Greenock and North Tyneside, as well as the company's HR functions. Starmer and his colleagues may need to persuade the public — and their party's traditional backers in the trade unions especially — that AI is a force for good rather than just cost-cutting.U.S. President Trump meets with UK Prime Minister Starmer at G7 summit President Donald Trump speaks and U.K. Prime Minister Starmer makes further progress on the U.K.-U.S. trade deal at the Group of Seven summit. Watch CNBC's full interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang discusses Europe's role in the AI race, the robotics and AV industries, and how U.S.-China relations could impact the future of technology with CNBC's Arjun Kharpal at the VivaTech conference in Paris. Former UK ambassador to Iran says Israel has triggered a regional - and possibly global - conflict Richard Dalton, former U.K. Ambassador to Iran, discusses Israel's strikes on the country and analyzes the potential ramifications across the Middle East.'Because I like them': The UK has a magic formula that won over Trump. Not only was the U.K. first to sign a trade deal with the president, but it also appears to have won him over on a more instinctive and emotional level. The UK insisted unpopular tax rises were a one-off but hikes now look inevitable.U.K. Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged last year that the government would not conduct another tax raid. She may not have another option. As G7 leaders meet, allies ask: Is Trump with us or against us? The problem for the Group of Seven comes from within, with President Trump's array of trade tariffs and a potential global trade war looming as very live threats for allies.U.K. stocks slipped by 0.2% over the last week, taking the FTSE 100 down to 8,834 points by end of play Tuesday. It did, however, hit a record high last Thursday before losing steam. In case you missed it, the U.S. and Britain signed an agreement on the sidelines of the G7 summit on Monday, lowering some tariffs on British exports to the United States while the two nations eye a trade deal. There were also some rumors last week that UAE oil giant ADNOC had joined the fray of firms said to be circling some of BP's highly prized assets, as takeover speculation for the embattled energy major kicks into overdrive.
