Gov Now Wants More Air Flyer Data, Redux | Threat Level from Wired.com

A couple of years ago, blog posts like this:

Gov Now Wants More Air Flyer Data, Redux | Threat Level from Wired.com

and this:

Practical Nomad: January 2004 archive on passenger name records and US/Canadian security surveillance

went by my eye, more or less under the radar. So noted, but not really impacting my daily working life. But today I somehow got my reservation computer (SABRE) to cough up the following in response to a normal request for “direct connect” availability for a specific light out on United (UA) that somebody was trying to change. This was while there was a snap FAA grounding of all American (AA) MD-80 aircraft (I thought it was just Dallas, but apparently it was systemwide). So I was checking availability on a competitor flight to try to get someone home. And this is what came up on my screen. My own entry is in the upper right – a perfectly correct entry, but some system glitch sent this back:

1¤I1«
UA            **** INFO ONLY ****
NSA TEST TOOL BIT SETTINGS FOR GTID F1170E
-------------------------------------------
DISPLAY INCOMING POLL KEYWORD FILE  BIT1‡ ? ON
DISPLAY OUTGOING POLL KEYWORD FILE  BIT2‡ ? ON
DISPLAY INCOMING LSA KEYWORD FILE   BIT3‡ ? OFF
DISPLAY OUTGOING LSA KEYWORD FILE   BIT4‡ ? ON
DISPLAY INCOMING FS KEYWORD FILE    BIT5‡ ? ON
DISPLAY OUTGOING FS KEYWORD FILE    BIT6‡ ? OFF

“What the ???” was my first thought. But then I saw “NSA” and “GTID” and keyword queries and I started to wonder.

I made the

1¤I1«

entry a couple of times, because I really did want to get direct connect availability off of that first line of itinerary, but this kept coming back. And then it started returning what I expected to see, but I had already copied and pasted it into an email to myself. Should have taken a screenshot, too, but I was kind of busy trying to help the lady who is still stuck in Dallas.

my husband David.

But this is very, very weird.