April 8, 2005
We received the following response from ChoicePoint to Martin Bosworth's story, "ChoicePoint Finds More Cases Of Illegal Data Access."
I am writing to seek clarification of the September 20 story titled "ChoicePoint Finds More Cases Of Illegal Data Access."
Readers could understand from these sentences that Ms. DiBattiste was employed by TSA during the time of the JetBlue issue. It is important for your readers to know that, in fact, Ms. DiBattiste was not employed by TSA during that time. Ms. DiBattiste joined TSA in 2003. The JetBlue issue occurred in 2002.
In that article, it is stated that Carol DiBattiste "was hired to act as ChoicePoint's chief privacy and compliance officer in May of 2005. She had previously served as deputy administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), during which time the agency utilized data on airline passengers for its screening programs. The agency had received the data from JetBlue airlines, in violation of the Privacy Act."
It would be appreciated if you would clarify this important point on your website. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kristen McCaughan
Martin Bosworth, author of the story in question, responds:
Though the actual data sale from JetBlue to the TSA (via
TorchConcepts) took place September of 2002, the investigation wasn't
publicly disclosed until well into 2003, during Ms. DiBattiste's
tenure there. It's a matter of public record that the TSA was
compiling and utilizing the passenger data even after the news was
made public.
If I follow my timeline right, Ms. DiBattiste was hired in January
2003 as TSA's new chief of staff, and was promoted to deputy
administrator after Stephen McHale stepped down. So she was acting as
deputy administrator while TSA was dealing with the public response to
the JetBlue data transfer, CAPPS II, and Secure Flight as well.
