The IRS Exploited Anonymous Travel Data Without Legal Authorization
The IRS accessed a vast database of American travelers’ flight records, including destinations and credit card details, without a warrant, according to a bipartisan letter to airlines. Lawmakers accuse agencies of bypassing legal mechanisms by purchasing access to the data from commercial data broker ARC, which sells travel information to government entities. Airlines including Delta, United, and American are implicated in the data-sharing practice. The letter demands airlines halt the data-selling program, and ARC confirmed it plans to do so.