SEC accesses billion airline ticket records via ARC data broker

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subscribed to the Airlines Reporting Corporation’s (ARC) Travel Intelligence Program, gaining access to a database of more than one billion airline ticket records. The data include passengers’ full names, credit‑card numbers, departure and arrival cities, and flight numbers, and the program can flag new bookings linked to individuals on the SEC’s monitoring list, typically covering travel from the previous 24 hours.

The SEC obtained the information by purchasing it from ARC, a clearinghouse partly owned by Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines, without a court order or warrant. The agency requested between one and twenty‑five alerts per day. Privacy advocates and lawmakers have raised concerns about this “data‑broker loophole,” which allows government agencies to acquire personal data that they could not subpoena directly. The Internal Revenue Service has used a similar approach to monitor crypto investors, and the SEC’s earlier probe of Coinbase demonstrated its interest in user‑data analytics.

The practice highlights the expanding use of commercial travel‑data services by financial regulators to track market participants, raising questions about oversight, privacy protections, and the need for judicial review of such surveillance activities.