How Private Is Private?How Private Is Private?

Having faced a privacy dustup recently, Northwest Airlines' CEO last week called on his fellow executives to discuss developing a data-protection protocol to address privacy concerns.

Northwest CEO Richard Anderson made the suggestion at a meeting for top operating executives in the industry's Air Transport Association. Northwest officials declined to discuss specifics of the proposed protocol. According to a statement from the ATA, "There was a robust discussion about the importance of protecting traveler privacy under CAPPS II," the federal government's Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System. Airline executives reviewed a number of privacy policy issues raised by CAPPS II and listened to a presentation by Nuala O'Connor Kelly, chief privacy officer of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The airline executives' meeting came days after Northwest Airlines admitted it provided NASA researchers with three months worth of passenger data in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Northwest made the disclosure the same day the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group, filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation saying that Northwest's actions violated the airlines' privacy policy. Northwest maintains that providing data to a government agency for security purposes doesn't violate its privacy policy.