From USA Today
Why travel suppliers should 'spy' on their customers
By Christopher Elliott
It's probably a matter of weeks, if not days, before yet another round of troubling National Security Agency leak stories hit the news.
I'm sorry to disagree with a majority of Americans who are outraged by their government's reckless data dragnet, but I think surveillance is good, at least, if you travel.
Airlines, car rental companies and hotels ought to spy on their customers more often. Collecting information about you to improve customer service — and only for that purpose — could return the American travel business to greatness....
Talk with information experts, and they'll tell you that surveilling customers just to raise profits is ethically troublesome. Instead, companies should do it for the benefit of guests, says Deirdre Mulligan, who teaches courses on information technology and law at the University of California at Berkeley. The data collection has to be "properly disclosed and agreed to," she says....