Acxiom Faces Lawsuits

Some former passengers of JetBlue Airways Corporation have named Little Rock-based Acxiom Corporation in a lawsuit over a database created for the Defense Department. The suit accuses Acxiom of wrongly helping a defense contractor violate privacy laws by building a database of passenger information. The federal lawsuit was filed Friday in New York. The suit accesses Jet Blue, Acxiom and Alabama-based contractor Torch Concepts Incorporated of violating federal privacy law and using deceptive trade practices to build the database. The database included whether the passengers owned or rented their home, how long they had lived at that residence, the number of immediate family members, Social Security numbers and whether they owned or leased their car. An Acxiom attorney said the company will asked to be removed from the case. JetBlue has acknowledged that it violated its own privacy policy in giving information from about five million passenger records to Torch Concepts.