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GAO-05-864R 1 (2005-07-22)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptasal0001 and id is 1 raw text is: SGAO Accountability * Integrity Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 July 22, 2005 Congressional Committees Subject: Aviation Security: Transportation Security Administration Did Not Fully Disclose Uses of Personal Information during Secure Flight Program Testing in Initial Privacy Notices, but Has Recently Taken Steps to More Fully Inform the Public As you know, we have been reviewing the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) efforts to develop and implement the Secure Flight program. The purpose of Secure Flight is to compare information on domestic airline passengers against information on known or suspected terrorists to identify passengers who should undergo additional security scrutiny. As we reported in February and March 2005, to develop Secure Flight, TSA has been conducting tests to compare data from airline reservation systems, such as name and flight number, with data from the government's consolidated terrorist watch lists, which include names of known and suspected terrorists.' We also reported that TSA has been testing the use of selected data available from commercial data sources-private companies that maintain records on individual names, addresses, phone numbers, and other information-as a means of verifying the accuracy of passenger-provided data. In this letter, we report on key aspects of TSA's disclosure of its use of personal information during commercial data testing for Secure Flight as required by the Privacy Act, and TSA's actions to more fully disclose its use of personal information.' We will continue our assessment of Secure Flight privacy protections as part of our ongoing review of the Secure Flight program. Results in Brief During the course of our ongoing review of the Secure Flight program, we found that TSA did not fully disclose to the public its use of personal information in its fall 2004 privacy notices as required by the Privacy Act. In particular, the public was not made fully aware of, nor had the opportunity to comment on, TSA's use of personal information drawn from commercial sources to test aspects of the Secure Flight 'For more on the Secure Flight program, see GAO, Aviation Security: Secure Flight Development and Testing Under Way, but Risks Should Be Managed as System is Further Developed, GAO-05-356 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 28, 2005) and GAO, Aviation Security: Measures for Testing the Impact of Using Commercial Data for the Secure Flight Program, GAO-05-324 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 23, 2005). 'Privacy Act of 1974, Pub. L. No. 93-579, 88 Stat. 1896 (codified as amended at 5 U.S.C. § 552a). The Privacy Act provides safeguards against an invasion of privacy through the misuse of records by federal agencies and allows citizens to learn how their personal information is collected, maintained, used, and disseminated by the federal government. GAO-05-864R Aviation Security

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