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TSA Sends Employee Data to the Wrong Addresses

By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.com

September 7, 2006

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The error-prone Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says one of its contractors sent former employees' personal documents to the wrong addresses.

The agency said that Accenture, a global technology consulting firm that was contracted to the TSA, had mistakenly mailed nearly 1,200 former employees documents on other employees, including personal information such as names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and salary information.

The TSA notified affected former employees by mail in late August. Neither the TSA or Accenture offered a statement explaining or apologizing for the error, though the TSA counseled employees to put fraud alerts on their credit files.

Accenture, which bills itself as "delivering high performance," has high-level outsourcing relationships with many influential businesses and government agencies. The company recently won a high-profile partnership contract to automate data collection for the U.S. Census Bureau.

The mail mixup is the latest in a series of privacy-related snafus for the TSA. The agency came under fire when another contractor collected personal data on airline passengers to bolster the profiles in the TSA's "Secure Flight" screening program.

"Secure Flight" has been repeatedly delayed, most recently after a scathing Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that found numerous vulnerabilities in the hardware and software systems powering the program.

The TSA's existing "terrorist watch lists" are riddled with errors and mistakes, leading many average air travelers to be detained at airport checkpoints simply for being included on the list.

TSA launched its "Registered Traveler" pilot program last year, enabling passengers to pay a fee and be "prescreened" by the TSA for potential risks in order to bypass long waits at the airport. The program has met with general public approval, but privacy advocates remain concerned as to what TSA may do with the data it's collecting from registrants.

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