Two Democratic lawmakers are calling on Congress's watchdog to investigate the Department of Transportation's handling of airline passenger privacy, warning that travelers' sensitive information has been exposed to warrantless government surveillance and other privacy violations.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Ohio Rep. Shontel Brown sent a letter on Wednesday asking the Government Accountability Office — Congress's nonpartisan investigative arm, which audits federal programs at lawmakers' request — to probe the federal agency, noting that it has never brought any enforcement cases linked to passenger data in more than 40 years "despite numerous widely-publicized privacy disasters impacting hundreds of millions of travelers."

"US DOT'S abdication of its role as a privacy regulator has left the sensitive personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans exposed to corporate exploitation, warrantless government surveillance, and warrantless seizure of money and other property," the letter states. It adds that travel data held by airlines and travel agencies "may be of interest to foreign adversaries."

The Government Accountability Office confirmed it has received the lawmakers' demand, according to Reuters. GAO reviews typically conclude with public findings and recommendations that lawmakers can cite in oversight hearings or legislation.

The letter revisits a review that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg opened in 2024 into how the 10 largest U.S. airlines collect and use passenger information. Two years later, the lawmakers wrote, "it remains entirely unclear whether a meaningful review ever took place." According to the lawmakers, the Department of Transportation did not make the airlines' response letters public, did not announce any public findings, and did not seek subsequent enforcement actions. In the same period, the department did fine carriers over other consumer-protection issues, including slow refunds and mishandled wheelchairs.

Central to the lawmakers' concerns is the Airlines Reporting Corporation, which is collectively owned by major U.S. airlines and serves as the ticketing intermediary between carriers and travel agencies, giving it visibility into bookings across the industry. The company sold access for years, they wrote, to a massive database containing roughly 722 million passenger travel records, providing it to federal agencies — including the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS — without warrants or court oversight. Wyden had pressed the corporation over the practice as early as 2021, when it acknowledged that passenger data had been sold to Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Airlines Reporting Corporation put an end to the sale of passenger records to the government in November of last year. This year, however, DHS issued a public request to government contractors for a replacement airline passenger surveillance system — a sign that agencies are still seeking commercial access to such data even after the corporation's exit.

The lawmakers' letter also pointed to a 2016 Justice Department audit, which found that the Drug Enforcement Administration had paid airline employees millions of dollars for access to some Americans' private passenger data, part of a confidential-informant arrangement the audit said lacked adequate internal controls.

Mishandling consumers' private information could be considered an unfair or deceptive practice by airlines, potentially leading to civil penalties. That authority stems from federal transportation law barring unfair or deceptive practices in air transportation, a tool the department has used to fine carriers in other consumer matters.

The open questions now are largely procedural: whether the GAO opens a review and what it examines, whether the Department of Transportation discloses any findings from its 2024 inquiry, and whether Congress acts on legislation governing government purchases of commercially available data — an area where Wyden has advanced the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, a bill that would require warrants for such purchases. That bill passed the House in 2024 but has not become law.

FOX Business has reached out to the Department of Transportation for comment. Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: Fox Business