Why Big Brother's travel plans may brew backlash

"Once we start seeing headlines about a catastrophe ensuing because someone's travel plans have fallen into the wrong hands, there will be a backlash," predicted Jason Catlett, CEO of the privacy-rights consulting and anti-junk-mail firm Junkbusters Corp. Online travel services rate among the most successful e-commerce retailers. However the controversial recommendation comes at a time when a great many people are still uncomfortable about the potential for credit card abuse over the Internet.

Even what car you rent
"The idea that just anybody can find out what flight you're on and what kind of car you plan to rent is going to make people even more nervous," Catlett noted.

That idea drew fire from privacy advocates in the travel industry. Then this week, more alarm bells were set off after officials at Sabre Group Holdings Inc., developer of the Travelocity site and operator of the largest airline reservation service in the U.S., said they were considering selling travel itineraries to hotels, car rental agencies and other business partners, calling consumers' travel plans "a potential gold mine."

"If Sabre were attached to any single airline, passengers would boycott it," Catlett said. "But most people haven't heard of Sabre," which provides reservation services for some 30,000 travel agencies, "so it's harder for them to hit back where it hurts," he said.

Sabre looks to ease concerns
Sabre, for its part, said in a statement that it will not sell consumers' data to third parties without prior consent, and said any data that is sold will only be released to "those service providers named in the reservation who require it for operational needs."

A Federal Trade Commission lawyer who is involved in the agency's oversight of online privacy issues said such marketing plans, however well-intentioned, are rife with potential for abuse.

"Why don't they just sell it to organized criminals too?" said David Newman, an attorney with the FTC's San Francisco regional office, when told of the Sabre marketing plan.

While such schemes are not expressly forbidden under FTC rules, the agency does "take a dim view of any release or sale of passenger information without prior notice to the consumer and the ability for them to opt out," Newman said.

An official at a trade group for online ticket agents said the ATA recommendations, reportedly set to go into effect at carrier US Airways on Aug. 1, might also alarm consumers.

Plan to 'snatch' customers?
"The airlines want members of my association to gather and provide them with specific information about our customers -- at a level far more detailed than what has been traditionally required to buy an airline ticket," said Reid Detchon, executive director of the Interactive Travel Services Association.

"The airlines describe the recommended practices as intended to prevent imagined e-commerce abuse," but they could also "enable the airlines to build databases of customer identities, interests and travel histories" that could help them snatch customers from independent travel agents, Detchon said.