The Secret Service plans to use private data to bypass the Constitution. The government wants to know. The results could spell trouble for your next flight.
Marilyn Kaufman didn’t realize she was inviting an observer into her living room when she signed up for a lower car insurance rate. To secure a discount, her insurance company required her to keep a driving tracker app active on her phone at all times. It monitored her braking and acceleration, but it also followed her while she walked her dog or sat at her kitchen table. To her, the government wanted to know her activities.
To her, this was a persistent monitoring of her life that never clocked out.
“I consider this an invasion of my privacy,” says Kaufman,
She won’t like the government’s plans
If Kaufman, a retired marketer from Boca Raton, Fla., finds the gaze of a private insurance company intrusive, she won’t like the government’s plans. The U.S. Secret Service recently issued a request for information for an online tool that would monitor your travel in “near” real-time. It could at some point even include your driving data.
The request, used to gather information from the public and potential vendors before a formal bid, reveals a troubling ambition: The government wants to monitor your travel patterns by tapping into an existing commercial database that already has an established data-sharing agreement with domestic and international airlines. And it suggests a much broader goal to track American travelers wherever they are.
Exploiting a legal loophole
Something feels wrong about this proposed digital dragnet. While the Supreme Court has long recognized a right to travel protected by the Fifth and 14th Amendments, this system primarily threatens your Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches.
The government relies on a legal concept known as the Third-Party Doctrine, which dictates that once you voluntarily give your data to a commercial entity, like an airline or a bank, you lose your expectation of privacy. (Related: The cruise ship virus is back. Why did we fire the health inspectors, again?)
By looking for a vendor who already has these data-sharing agreements in place, the government is effectively laundering its surveillance through the private sector, turning a fundamental right to move freely into a government-monitored privilege.
It’s not the first attempt. Last year, the Airlines Reporting Corporation, a data broker owned by the major US airlines, sold flight data to U.S. immigration officials as part of its Travel Intelligence Program. The program was shuttered in November amid criticism from privacy advocates.
When the government seeks direct access to travel data without additional facilitation, it’s removing the last guardrails of due process.
What if this goes through?
If this system is built, the government won’t just know you went to Cabo for spring break. It will know where you stayed, what credit card you used, and how much you paid. It will use a technique called fuzzy matching to connect you with other members of your party — and maybe other people you don’t even know.
There’s a lot of potential for mischief. By connecting too many dots, an algorithm could flag your lifestyle patterns as suspicious, directing TSA agents to give you a more thorough search or even adding you to the no-fly list. Real-time access through a commercial database makes the process invisible and instantaneous.
The database could also be used for pre-emptive investigation. By monitoring forms of payment and ticketing dates, the government could flag anyone who buys a one-way ticket with cash or a last-minute flight to a protest-heavy city. And suddenly, your right to travel is contingent on whether your itinerary fits the state’s definition of a “normal” vacation. It turns every traveler into a suspect until the data prove otherwise — a complete reversal of the presumption of innocence.
Fear is increasing
It would be too easy to dismiss these technical filings as dry bureaucracy, but the request for information is a blueprint for a digital panopticon. It mirrors the anxiety felt by travelers who are returning to the United States.
“Many folks have a fear that under this new administration, there is a risk that they could be detained or delayed at borders,” says Alma Lopez, a travel agency owner from Los Angeles.
When the state demands to know where you are going before you even buy the ticket, the anxiety is bound to increase.
In this framework, your travel history is no longer a private transaction between you and a carrier. It is a transparent data stream available to law enforcement 24 hours a day. No warrant required.
Ultimately, the goal of such a system is the normalization of observation. Like Marilyn Kaufman’s insurance app, the government wants to become a permanent, silent passenger in your life. Once they know where you go, they can start asking why — and in a free society, that question should never be theirs to ask.
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Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers consumers to solve their problems and helps those who can’t. He’s the author of numerous books on consumer advocacy and writes three nationally syndicated columns. He also publishes the Elliott Report, a news site for consumers, and Elliott Confidential, a critically acclaimed newsletter about customer service. If you have a consumer problem you can’t solve, contact him directly through his advocacy website. You can also follow him on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or sign up for his daily newsletter.
