FAA Spies on Employees' Passports? DOT's New Tracking Tool
Published Date: 11/28/2025
Notice
Summary
The Department of Transportation is starting a new system to track passport and visa info for FAA employees and their families. This helps keep tabs on application progress and passport expiration dates. Comments are open until December 29, 2025, and the system’s rules kick in right away, with routine uses effective at the end of December.
Analyzed Economic Effects
5 provisions identified: 2 benefits, 2 costs, 1 mixed.
FAA collects passport and visa PII
The FAA will collect and keep passport and visa information for FAA employees and members of the public like employee dependents. The system stores names, dates of birth, passport and visa numbers, issuance and expiration dates, countries visited, email addresses, job titles, and travel dates to track application progress and expirations.
Records may be widely disclosed
DOT may disclose records from the system under many 'routine uses' to other federal, state, local, or foreign agencies, law enforcement, the Department of Justice, OMB, Congressional offices, the Coast Guard, TSA, contractors, and for matching programs or terrorism-related sharing. The routine uses become effective December 29, 2025.
Three-year retention with exceptions
Passport and visa application records are maintained per NARA General Records Schedule 2.2, item 90, and are destroyed when 3 years old or upon employee separation or transfer, whichever is sooner. The notice says longer retention is allowed if required for business use.
You can request and contest records
Individuals can ask whether the system has records about them and can seek records or contest inaccuracies under the Privacy Act. Requests must be signed and either notarized or submitted under 28 U.S.C. 1746; to request records about another living person you must include that person's written agreement.
Electronic storage and safeguards
The system stores records in an electronic database hosted at Tier Point Olive Data Center, 1111 Olive Street, St. Louis, MO 63101, with an alternate site at Tier Point Bellevue Data Center, 1001 North Fort Crook Road, Bellevue, NE 68005. Access is limited to people with a need-to-know and appropriate clearances, and records are classified 'Unclassified, Sensitive.'
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