JetBlue Apologizes for giving away its passenger records.

David Neeleman, chief executive of the New York-based carrier, said in an e-mail to customers that JetBlue made a mistake a year ago when it agreed to a Defense Department request to provide the data to Torch Concepts Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., for a project said to involve military base security.

...The airline said the study had nothing to do with the government's planned CAPPS II passenger profiling system, which uses a massive secret database of information to assess individuals' security-threat levels.

Too little too late? Here's more:

Details of the study and JetBlue's involvement were reported Thursday by Wired.com, which credited privacy activist Bill Scannell for bringing attention to the issue on his Web site. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that by violating its privacy policy, JetBlue could be sued for "deceptive trade practices."

Torch said the intent of the study was to guide the Pentagon on a project for military base security. But Richard Smith, an Internet privacy consultant, said the study was a prototype for a system being developed by the Transportation Security Administration. The system, ordered by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, will check such things as credit reports and compare passenger names with those on government watch lists.