Congress Report: TSA Broke Privacy Laws

The Transportation Security Administration violated privacy protections by secretly collecting personal information on at least 250,000 people, congressional investigators said Friday.

The Government Accountability Office sent a letter to Congress saying the collection violated the Privacy Act, which prohibits the government from compiling information on people without their knowledge.

From the article: The GAO letter said that the TSA also said originally that it wouldn't use and store commercial data about airline passengers. It not only did that, it collected and stored information about the people with similar names.

"As a result, an unknown number of individuals whose personal information was collected were not notified as to how they might access or amend their personal data," the letter said.

It was only after meeting with the GAO, which is overseeing the program, that the TSA published a second notice indicating that it would do the things it had earlier said it wouldn't do.

Oberman said it's not unusual to revise such notices.

"We are conducting a test," he said. "I didn't know what the permutations would be."

Oberman also said that the test has no impact on anyone who travels and that the data will be destroyed when the test is over.

Anybody want to guess when the test will be over?