Jul 16, 2020,07:10am EDT

Thomas Brewster-Forbes Staff
Associate editor at Forbes, covering cybercrime, privacy, security and surveillance.


American border patrol already has significant surveillance powers and collects vast amounts of data on who is flying into and out of the country. But the U.S. has another tool to watch over travellers across the world thanks to a little-known but influential Texan business called Sabre. As the biggest of three companies that store the vast majority of the world’s travel information—from airline seats to hotel bookings — Sabre has been called on to hand over that travellers’ data and, on at least one occasion, do “real-time” tracking of a suspect. And, say former employees, the same powerful trove of information could be used to help monitor the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic...

...Publicly, Sabre’s entanglement with the U.S. government has been apparent for some time. Former CEOs have given testimony to Congressional panels and made it onto presidential committees. Then there’s the secret side of the relationship. Stretching back to at least the 2001 September 11 terror attacks, the government has, on numerous occasions, secretly asked the company to actively spy on suspects’ movements, in both major and minor criminal cases.

For years, the government has asked telecom giants and banks to help track individuals worldwide, whether through tapping calls or sharing the location of bank withdrawals. But with Sabre, it has a particularly powerful snooping option. With financial institutions or the telecoms industry, the government has to go to each separate bank or operator and serve an order on them. It could take a similar approach with the travel industry, asking each airline, hotel and booking agent. But with Sabre, or one of its two chief competitors, it can serve one order to cover all bases. That’s one explanation as to why the company played a role in assisting the U.S. in tracking the movements of the 9/11 hijackers after the attacks on the Twin Towers, as Guevara and Menge tell Forbes. (Sabre didn’t respond to requests for comment).

In that case, the government came knocking only after the atrocity had occurred. But, as detailed in one international cybercrime investigation, Sabre can be compelled to proactively watch and report on a persons’ whereabouts as soon as they start travelling. In an order from December 2019, feds asked Sabre to provide the FBI with “real-time” updates on the travel activities of a hacking suspect, an Indian fugitive called Deepanshu Kher. Sabre was told to provide “complete and contemporaneous ‘real time’ account activity information of the traveler [Kher] on a weekly basis” for six months. Sabre would provide “any travel orders, transactions or reservations” for the suspect....