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Flying the Wiretapped Skies
An anonymous reader writes "The FBI is lobbying the FCC for the power to to quickly wiretap in-flight broadband services under CALEA. The feds are afraid terrorists will use the services to coordinate hijackings or remotely activate bombs, and they want to be able to interrupt or redirect a airplane's Internet access during a crisis, or to start sniffing packets within 10 minutes of identifying a suspicious passenger and getting court approval. Here is the FCC filing."
Here's something I never understood about the liberals on this site. They're all for making technological advancements that improve productivity and make things faster and easier for everyone, but then they complain when the feds wants to use this technology to make THEIR jobs faster and easier.
Why is it such a bad thing that they should be able to go to a court and get wiretapping authorization, then be able to do the tap in less than 10 minutes? I'm sure there will be lots of "big brother is after me" comments in this story, but why? Is the FBI supposed to just sit back and chisel everything in stone?
Call me crazy, but if the FBI needs 10 minute wiretapping on a WIFI setup to keep my plane from being blown up by a bunch of Islamic radicals, then so be it. It's better to be a live chump who's email was intercepted by the feds than a dead one who's viagra spam remained a secret.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Some kind of crypto is in order. I'm sure the fasttracked wiretapping will be a massive help when faced with terrorists using a VPN or other means to obscure what they're doing.
As we become a more connected world, an airplane is nothing more than another node on the Internet. Move along nothing to see here....
OK, so aside from assigning away all of our freedoms and rights to privacy, I have to wonder just how the Dept of Homeland Security plans on assimilating all of the data that they are desperately trying to get legal access to. This is the basic problem behind much of the remote sensing communities ability to surveil targets of interest from airborne/space platforms. Automating much of this surveillance is one of the holy grails of the intelligence community. For instance, I knew a guy who at the peak of the cold war, specialized in runway lengths. All he did was look at remote sensing imagery and examined runway lengths to determine the capacity and capability of aircraft and logistics at differing airbases. It is fairly simple to automate that sort of thing now, but many other aspects of determination of what is important data from what is not important is very difficult to automate.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Terrorists have found ways to hijack planes for the last 30 years without in-flight broadband. This proposal will fix nothing. The most effective defense against hijacking, and the reason why another one has not been attempted since 9/11, is vigilant passengers that will no longer cooperate with a hijacker.
Ahh, the SP2 roll-out's not done yet.
The uk has a patriot act just like our\,not to mention cameras everywhere.So how many more rights do youthink we can give away to remain "safe"?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"to start sniffing packets within 10 minutes of identifying a suspicious passenger and getting court approval"
US Patriot Act killed that waiting game.... They are able to act and get the court order later and frankly I'm surprised they are 'asking' for permission when in reality they're already doing it and got caught or we'd never have heard about it.
Well, you know all that liberty and freedom stuff they keep talking about on TV. Originally it ment freedom and liberty from your own government. Most of us just don't remember that since we live in relatively free times.
Is this supposed to make us feel safer on flights? If they need 10 minutes after getting a court order, don't you think the plane may already be blown up?
-FL
If it was only ever used in case of emergency, or in the investigation of a federal crime, then I doubt us "liberals" would have a problem with it. However, as the Indymedia server siezures (amongst many other things) show, this power is systematically and flagrantly abused to further politcal agenda.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
everyone else onboard with broadband to browse several pages of al-jazzeera and to make anonymous posts on slashdot mentioning atleast: bombing, airplane, suicide, assassin, bush..
oh, gotta go, flight marshall wants to have a word..
I'd agree with you, but I'd also say that the parent didn't exactly say this was bad or good. Granted, I've seen enough liberal tantrums to be sensitive to it but the parent might actually agree with you (us).
I think its easy to see the plus side here. What are the negatives? We already give up a lot by flying, not that that's good or bad.
Why is it such a bad thing that they should be able to go to a court and get wiretapping authorization, then be able to do the tap in less than 10 minutes?
It's not a bad thing. What's bad is when they use this plus provisions in the PATRIOT act to allow them to tap it without that ever-important authorization. I don't have anything against Law Enforcement doing their job. What I disagree with is when they have the legal ability to spy on people just in case.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I want a court looking after the FBI. They should answer to someone other than themselves. That's the idea of checks and balances. If a judge approves it, I'll accept it.
Would you support this if the FBI didn't require any authorization? If it was "we check everybody" or could be?
--Mike--
You can't send any bits over the internet without the possibility of them being watched in transit. They're carried over networks you can't trust.
If you value your privacy that highly, use SSL to an anonymizing proxy. Other than that, assume that the feds and anybody else is watching your packets, whether you're on an airplane or not.
That said, whether the FBI can or cannot quickly tap in-flight wifi is a different question. Given they're getting court approval, why is this a bad idea? If they can't do it quickly, the point is moot. If they can't do it arbitrarily at whim, our rights are not being trampled upon.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I assume they already are "sniffing" my packets. If not the FBI, than someone is; or could be. If the potential is there I assume it's being done. If you want to keep something private don't send it in the clear across a public network!
Crunch!
more data | grep bomb
I'm impressed that they're asking for authorization.
I was just thinking "there goes my chance of ssh'n to my machine at 30,000 ft"
now I'll be arrested...
Get your Unix fortune now!
Wasn't that about someone bragging about committing a crime on Indymedia and the police confiscated the servers because Indymedia wouldn't yield the identity of that one particular poster as requested? I fail to see any problem with that.
The owls are not what they seem
With the focus and $$$ being spent on anti-terror being the atmosphere in the executive branch of the US feds, these are the type of ideas that get you promoted, gets noticed and gives you a reputation as a go-getter and get'r'doner. Forget how practical or realistic it is or how easy to circumvent - just whatever you can come up with to fight the baddies makes you look good to the boss.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Yes, because the ability to carry out a wiretap obtained legally via due process in the courts within a useful timeframe is definitely an awful, horrible infringement upon my liberty and freedom by the government /end sarcasm
If they had the ability to carry out a 10-minute tap on anyone whenever they pleased, we'd have issues; as it is now they need to walk it past a judge still, and should not be able to indiscriminately tap people for no reason.
Whether or not the judges are competent in their positions or pushovers who'll sign every wiretap order they're handed regardless of merits is an entirely different problem, of course, tangentially related to the conversation at hand.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
A wise and well-trained group will use the time-old technique of publicly accessed itinerary and flight plotting sites, combined with a local calculator on their permitted laptops to estimate location, and reading easily plotted alert info available to the general public.
...
Hacking inter-group messages won't detect or deter such a group and they'll still accomplish their mission objectives, provided they don't need to survive the mission - which by definition, they won't.
Sigh. Always assuming the enemy is stupid and ill-trained is half of why we have no effective defenses. They train, they adapt, and they are willing to go beyond the bounds of what acceptable risks are considered to be.
To defeat such an enemy first you have to understand how they think - and black and white Us Good They Bad And Stupid thinking won't work.
But, hey, what do I know from my counter-terrorism ops and training anyway, or my field combat engineer experiences
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
On the other hand, if the guy is in the plane talking it up with others or setting off a bomb from his laptop, isn't it already too late to catch him once he's in the plane? I mean how are they going to stop him?
The only thing I can see from this is getting a source to the bombing (if it occurs). And if they wanted to, all they would need is a connection and someone remotely could detonate it.
So again, how is this going to help when they are already in the sky?
Their network, their rules.
Anyone who wouldn't think that every packet on such a network wouldn't be logged, needs to have their head examined - and is probably crazy enough that they should have their packet stream examined too.
Don't like it? Buy your own plane. Glue a Pringles can into a nicely-formed chunk of fiberglass, and glue the fiberglass onto the bottom of its fuselage. Paint the word "Experimental" near the cockpit. Your plane, your can, your network provider , your rules. (Of course, unless you own an offshore ISP, your provider is still subject to CALEA.)
But back to this article - if you board a taxpayer-subsidized airline's plane (let's be honest here, there are no private airlines in the strictest sense of the word), and you use that taxpayer-subsidized airline's network connectivity, then you surf by whatever rules your taxpayer-subsidized government chooses to impose on them.
Invasion of my privacy aside, what if the messages are intercepted in flight? The problem is you've got intercepted messages that indicate a terrorist is on the plane, but all of your feds are on the ground.
You can't put an agent on every plane. What could they possibly do once they intercept these communications?
What good is sniffing packets? Have terrorists not heard of ssh? I can see the argument being made for keeping track of destination ip's but even that can be proxied. The whole sniffing packets/echelon weltanschung seems like a lot of money to spend on something that is trivial for the "real bad guys" to get around at no cost to themselves.
The hackers will catch them first!
Just hand out Whoppix distros and the in flight fun will never cease!
RTFA again for the best results.
Judges are a very serious concern related to the problem though. All the FBI has to do is say that the person they want a tap on is a strongly suspected terrorist. What judge wants to be the first one to deny such a request if it later turns out to be true and a wiretap could have prevented an attack?
if the FBI needs 10 minute wiretapping on a WIFI setup to keep my plane from being blown up by a bunch of Islamic radicals, then so be it.
The examples they provide about how it would be useful are dubious at best. Remote detonation is definitely NOT the M.O. of radical terrorists. And once the terrorists are already aboard the plane I'd say it's a little too late. If terrorists have managed to board a plane the only thing that can stop them are the people on board the plane or war planes destroying it. Now maybe the feds actually think that such an ability would be useful, but when they cite reasons for which wire tapping doesn't seem all that useful it kind of makes people suspicious. It casts doubt on the premise that the FBI needs 10 minute wiretapping to prevent terrorism. This particular instance is not an extraordinarly egregious (sp) instance of infringing on privacy rights, but all such instances are worrying nonetheless.
And for the record, the people who oppose measures such as this shouldn't be lumped together as "liberals." I'm fiscally conservative, socially moderate to conservative, but I oppose government invasion of privacy.
The laws of probability forbid it!
Seriously. I am one who is all for more stringent measures to protect the national infrastructure, but this kind of initiative goes into the realm of absurdity (is that even a word!) They are afraid terrorists will use the in-flight service to coordinate or remotely detonate bombs. Well considering I could do the same thing with a pager or a cell phone what is the big deal here. Lets stop with the spread of FUD and focus in on measures that are meaningful. Putting Internet service on planes is not going to supremely facilitate the terrorists planning and coordination effort. Hell we better not allow Internet on other forms of transportation as well if we are that scared. I'm for protecting the country as much as the next person, but we need to start focusing on more realistic threats and stop trying to control these small inconsequential things.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I don't mind them speeding things up, but what I object to is the getting rid of due process that often goes along with that. Fast-track the warrants, fine - but you sure as hell better not give them until the FBI has shown reasonable suspicion.
I am trolling
Because this will also magically stop terrorists from using inflight phones, USB-cellphone internet connections (with the cellphone hidden in onboard luggage), or any other number of less than covert communication channels.
Not to mention, it seems the last time, they did just fine working independently of each other.
"I want a court looking after the FBI. They should answer to someone other than themselves. That's the idea of checks and balances. If a judge approves it, I'll accept it."
With the current state of the courts, that wouldn't make me feel any better about things.
a) If I am a terrorist, and using on-board internet for coordinating an attack I will communicate using encryption out of principle.
b) With the currently existing on-board internet, the captain can switch it off (interrupt power) at the push of a button.
So this sounds like some crybabies wanting new laws just for the sake of having new laws. *yawn*
(disclaimer, I work for an airline which has been providing this service for a while now.)
How it will work with a one-time-pad set of coded messages is something else again.
I can't decide whether I'm more disturbed by my government's attempts to get more power over honest citizens or over their apparent dependence on the Bad Guys all having IQs in the room temperature range. Celsius.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This has nothing (or little) to do with tapping in-flight broadband and phones.
Read that middle part again: "to be able to interrupt or redirect a airplane's Internet access".
What they REALLY want is the ability to shut passengers up during a hijacking. Killing off all communications with the ground ensures that later on first-hand reports via blog posts or phone calls won't conflict with the governments statement of what 'really' happened.
symetrix. We are building a religion, a limited edition.
Dude! This is the BOMB! I am having such a great time ON this PLANE. Me and Susan decided to 'HIDE THE EVIDENCE' IN THE RESTROOM! It was amazing. She BLEW me away. The low pressure got me UP a lot faster. We should be getting into Dallas around 12:45. Peace!
The authorities then noted that the Arabic word "Salaam" means "Peace."
If the terrorists want to kill you at 30k feet... ... then you die. Seriously, do you really believe terrorists won't be using strong encryption, knowing their data packets are probably being sniffed by the feds. This isn't going to stop a single terrorist--all it will do is allow greater snooping with less oversight on regular civilians going about their lives, who happen to take a commercial flight and use the net at the same time.
Here's something I never understood about the liberals on this site. They're all for making technological advancements that improve productivity and make things faster and easier for everyone, but then they complain when the feds wants to use this technology to make THEIR jobs faster and easier.
Here's something I never understood about the humanitarians on this site. They're all for making technological advancements that improve health, safety, and quality of life, but then they complain when the feds want to use this technology to improve THEIR ability to kill en masse.
See the flaw in your reasoning?
People object because technology, like everything else, is a double edged sword. It can improve people's lives, add to our quality of living, and empower us. It can also be used as a tool for unprecidented oppression. Most of us support and are working hard for the former, and vehemently decry steps toward the latter.
That having been said, in this particular case, there is no expectation of privacy on board a public, commercial aircraft (private aircraft are another story, and should be treated like private automobiles or homes), so I don't really have a problem with the feds (or anyone else) tapping communications on board a commercial airliner. You don't conduct private business on a busy street corner with dozens of (probably evesdropping) bystanders, nor would any sensible person do so in a public aircraft. But one can make credible, even compelling, arguments that this sort of laxidasical attitude toward authority evesdropping on private conversations in any context, be it a public street, a commercial flight, or a private residence, amounts to the same level of inappropriate intrusion by government into private life, particularly when infrastructure makes such capabilities the default, and court oversight becomes more and more a rubber stamp for letting the feds do whatever they like, whenever they like, often with little or no real justification.
Finally, your characterization of people encouraging what they see as a good use of technology and decrying what they see as a bad use of the same technology is disingenuous. Most people (myself included) don't embrace technology for technology's sake--we embrace it insofar as it enhances our lives and our freedoms, and reject its use when we see it being exploited to do the opposite.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What exactly would the FBI be able to do with their 'wiretap' to stop a terrorist that is already onboard the plane. If the FBI is concerned enough to ask the courts for an in flight wiretap of a specific passenger, it begs the question: Why didn't the FBI do something to prevent the passenger from boarding the plane in the first place? One of the senarios that was suggested was that the terrorist might use his laptop to remotely detonate a bomb on board the plane. If the FBI were able to distrupt this activity in time, wouldn't the terrorist probably resort to a more dirastic method of destorying the plane? It seems like abuse of authority is more likey than actaully terrorism prevention.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -Hunter S. Thompson
You will never be safe!!!!!
The real problem with this is that once a secure connection with a trusted outside machine (for example, an SSH server) has been established, you cannot sniff it anymore. You *might* be able to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack if you start *before* the connection is established, but even then, you probably won't - the public key fingerprint you present to the hijacker (in the airplane) won't match the one in his key database, so unless he's stupid, he simply won't connect at all and the attack (or at least the coordination) won't happen.
Of course, that would be a success in itself (at least if the actual attack is stopped as opposed to the mere coordination of different attacks), but it requires something much stronger than a court warrant that allows you to target a specific suspect individual - you'd have to actively monitor (and route through your application-level gateway) *each and every* single packet that's being sent or received. For everyone in the plane. On every flight. Always.
Suddenly, things don't sound so good anymore, do they? You might still say that you'd rather be a live chump without a right to free speech [1] and so on than a dead one that still has the right, but not everyone'd prefer to live in a 1984-like world. Would you?
Of course, total surveillance of everyone 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, without any privacy at all, in a world where cryptography and private communication is outlawed, would probably make you safer from hijackings and the like, but is that the kind of world you'd want to live in?
Getting back to the original point, the problem with this is not so much that the FBI will or should be allowed to place a wiretap within ten minutes if they get a court warrant allowing them to. As far as I am concerned, they could start wiretapping one second after the OK - there's nothing wrong with that.
What *is* a problem is the fact that this is probably going to be sold as a security improvement, when in reality it is not. A false sense of security does not help anyone - just like blind and unjustified fear does not help, either.
So it's probably still a good idea to remain skeptical for now.
1. Note that the right to free speech includes not only the legal right, but also being able to actually use that right without fear of repression and/or repercussions.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Twice now I've been approached by EU airport security that have looked over my shoulder, seen a collection of terminals open and asked me a plethora of silly questions.
Like many, I was, and still do run a minimal window manager: on one occassion I had to actually start up a browser (what that proves i don't know). The second incident was relaxed only by showing them that the email I was writing (in mutt) was to my mother. Another absurd situation had me spending 1.5 hours with security staff in Australia who weren't convinced that the kernel boot process wasn't actually some kind of evil hackery - they were routinely checking laptops and asked me to boot. A gigantic bloke came from upstairs, looked at the screen, gave a disturbing smile and said "it's fine."
Time to fly the friendly skies: install cheery ol' KDE with bootsplash.
Hey, I am a screaming liberal, and I agree with the federal goverment deing able to sniff/block airborne traffic at will. Face it, on that airplane you are not in your home. You are out in public. You have no right to expect privacy there. To bad.
If that is what it take to prevent a Christian Fundamentalist or any other wacko from blowing up the plane, then so be it.
Honestly, sometimes I think these guys have about as much intelligence gathering savvy as Sgt. Schultz.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
What's bad is when they use this plus provisions in the PATRIOT act to allow them to tap it without that ever-important authorization.
Which provisions is that? Do you have a link to the passage?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
And you wouldn't use more anyway, it's a pager.
How much good is that going to do them when I'm SSH'ing to my server at home to check my mail with pine?
And if I was really paranoid, I'd tunnel all of my web browsing through a remote server over SSH as well...
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
The most effective defense against hijacking, and the reason why another one has not been attempted since 9/11, is vigilant passengers that will no longer cooperate with a hijacker.
That and the use of a towel, coat, or blanket to subdue them ASAP.
If you need weapons aboard a plane, you obviously have no idea what you're doing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How does this fix anything? Unless they have a solution capable of decrypting a PGP message transferred over SSL in less than 10 minutes, they're pretty much screwed.
::busts out skype headset::
Hell, gaim's encryption plugin gets around this. Surely the "evil terrorists" know about encryption at this point, eh?
Getting a little bit OT here but: ***WHY*** can't I use my cell phone on a plane again? If we can put a freaking 802.11 hotspot on there, surely verizon can put a mini cell on the plane.
I suppose it doesn't matter anymore...
Agreed. Why anyone should be opposed to a federal agency shutting down a wireless system when cellphones were used by terrorists to detonate explosives in Madrid is beyond comprehension. I applaud the move. I just with we were doing more to kick these psycho-muslims in the balls.
an ill wind that blows no good
"...they want to be able to interrupt or redirect a airplane's Internet access during a crisis...."
Kinda hard to use internet access to set something off when all you have access to is the FBI's honeynet.
On the other hand, I don't think this is really about setting something off on a plane that some person happens to also be on; it's about making airplane wifi a bit less anonymous, so that someone can't keep hopping flights and have their internet usage be extremely difficult to track.
Of course, all the person has to do is be on the ground near a major urban centre, and they have their pick of anonymous access points.
...because there are already laws they can use against those who use the internet access to coordinate acts of terrorism.
It's 14CFR91.21 --All the FBI has to do is call the air traffic control centers (or approaches) and tell them that they have reason to think the Internet is being used for a coordinated attack against the country. Then each airline pilot would merely push the OFF switch on the internet access gear onboard the aircraft.
The bottom line is that 14CFR91.21 says that you're using whatever wireless gizmo on board the aircraft at the express permission of the Pilot-in-Command . The instant the Pilot thinks something might jeapordize the safety of others, they already have express permission to take whatever measures are neccesary to maintain safety of flight.
This is not about your rights, folks. You're a passenger onboard an international vessel and subject to the orders of the captain or pilot in command of that vessle. You can whine about the indignity once you're safely at port or on the ground. Until then, live with it or don't go.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
What happened to not letting 'terrorists' win and 'getting on with business as usual'? Doesn't sound that way to me. Quite honestly, it sounds like western govts are running shit scared because they -refuse- to even consider the fact that their own -foreign policy- is helping to promote these horrible acts.
Sadly, IMHO, it boils down to the all too familiar "testosterone over brains" mentality once again. Though I hope otherwise, I think if we don't change our ways, it will be the downfall of what we know.
As an aside, Ben Franklin anyone?
The judge that wants to uphold the constitution and bill of rights?
The judge should require substantial evidence that the person is a possible terrorist before signing anything that would violate their rights. Of course, that is the slippery slope of preventative policing. To catch someone before they do something, you need to violate their freedom before they do it.
I am all of this technology though. As long as it is used responsibly, it makes a lot of sense. Also, the only people that can afford to use those airline phones are terrorists backed by oil money anyway.
/. ++
Call me crazy, but if the FBI needs 10 minute wiretapping on a WIFI setup to keep my plane from being blown up by a bunch of Islamic radicals, then so be it. It's better to be a live chump who's email was intercepted by the feds than a dead one who's viagra spam remained a secret.
OK, I'll call you crazy.
None of these measures will actually work to deter the attack of a well-trained group that adapts to circumstances and is patient.
As al-Qaeda has been shown - repeatedly - to be.
Now go back to Russia and take your comrades in DC with you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
As someone I'm sure you would consider "liberal", let me say I agree with you. As long as they have the court order I don't care if they begin the tap in 5 seconds or 5 days. What I don't like is some of the current efforts to not require court orders (just needing "administrativer approval"). This to me just seems like common sense. If they have court approval, than I see no problem.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Intercept the plane itself? That wouldn't help the people on on the plane, but it would prevent the terrorists from slamming it into a building.
"What judge wants to be the first one to deny such a request if it later turns out to be true and a wiretap could have prevented an attack?"
The judge thats doing his job and asks for collaborating evidence that meets the structures for wiretapping (which I don't know offhand, but have been in place for some time)? The judge thats not a patsy to the FBI and respects our Constitutional rights?
As I said, its tangential to the issue at hand, but is a larger issue in and of itself, that I mainly mention due to the recent lack of intelligence shown by our nation's highest court. Judge's should be held accountable when they fail in their job, whether its giving away private property to advance commercial interests, or giving away free wiretaps to a buddy at the FBI without due process.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. That is all I can say.
Do you really think someone would bother setting up some complicated, error-prone, remotely detectable wireless connection to detonate a bomb in a plane?
A terrorist might use a remote detonation mechanism to set off a bomb when they think it will cause the most damage -- but why wouldn't they just use a simple timer on a plane bomb?
That's why your post, and these measures, are either completely stupid or completely disingenuous as to their true purpose.
P.S. If you attack people who believe in civil liberties by calling them "liberals," you don't have even the slightest understanding of what civil liberties are.
What about coordinated colocation facility attacks?
In related news, upon hearing that their phone calls are being monitored terrorists have resorted to synchronizing watches beforehand.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Rule-a #1: If bomb is already on plane, wiretap does no good.
Rule-a #2: 9 minutes is enough time to blow up anything.
...guess this means that terrorists will have to revert to using such items as cell-phones or pagers to remote-detonate bombs and something all complicated like _watches_ to coordinate attacks (with a little planning ahead of time, of course).
I should shut up now, before the DHS bans all cell phones, pagers, and watches from US flights.
time for yummies!
jihad explosive BOMB CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE hijack firearms islam
The problem is that there has been such a massive overreaction to 9/11. Today we're expected to give up freedoms and face all kinds of scrutiny the moment they words "terrorist" or "war on terror" are uttered.
The judge that wants to uphold the constitution and bill of rights?
That's the idea of course but I have serious doubts about that though when the Supreme Court says it's okay for the government to take away your property and give it to whoever pleases them - for the public good, of course.
To catch someone before they do something, you need to violate their freedom before they do it.
Where do we draw the line though? At what point do these violations of rights become wrong? Currently, they can only violate your privacy completely. What's next, detainment? "Well we're pretty sure this guy is a terrorist so let's hold him indefinetly while we investigate his entire life and interrogate him." "Oops turns out we were wrong but we're going to keep a wiretap on all your communications forever and regularly checkup on you, just to be sure."
The partiot act, for example, removes judical review of many things. This means that when the system is abused, and, say, political agenda is monitored (instead of terrorist activity), nobody finds out.
Remember Watergate?
Secondly, the stated example is:
This is nonsense since a device of this type would have been activated long before they had any chance of stopping it.Plus such a system could simply use a heartbeat - and trigger whenever the heartbeat quit.
They are aware of these issues, so the stated purpose is obviously not the real purpose.
Hence all the debate.
Pretend I'm a freelance software engineer. My name is the same as one on a terror watch list and I'm from *insert scary country here* and I'm using SSH to connect to a client.
Rather than the usual delay-me-for-3-hours at the airport, I manage to get on the plane, then the feds try to snoop my connection and can't and assume the worst and force the plane to land in *insert out of the way airport here*, ruining the day for everyone on the plane.
Meanwhile, they've shut down the plane's Internet and phone connections, making it all but impossible for anyone to notify their family.
*sarcasm mode on*
If only I were communicating in the clear, they could see that I wasn't up to no good and everyone would be happy.
*sarcasm mode off*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well, if by liberal you mean someone who favors small government that stays out of my personal affairs...
/. liberal. And as far as I'm concerned, the feds are welcome to interrupt my internet access on a plane or sniff my packets that go across the internet (whilst coming from a plane). So long as they get a court order to do so (which the article indicates they will). Except for the fact that I think this is just something that makes people "feel better," not something that will actually save one single life.
Then I would be a
Now, a bit of insight into why other measures the government has taken in the past four years...
The bottom line is that none of them work. For example, the rainbow of terror. When is the last time you remember the threat level dropping to Low? For that matter, when's the last time you remember the threat level dropping to Guarded? And what's with the colors, anyways?
And what's with the government being able to sniff out what kind of books I read? Am I the only one who realizes that in order to have a free press, you have to have a populace with the freedom to read what the "free" press writes?
What about the increased "security" at airports? Am I the only one who realizes that the increase in security at airports is unnecessary because passengers are unwilling to be used as a giant bomb against their fellow citizens of the planet Earth? The reason that 9/11 was successful (from a terrorist point of view) was because people expected that the plane had been hijacked, they would sit complacent and would be taken to Abu Dabi, at which point they would deplane. But as the plane that went down in PA shows, people aren't idiots. And they're not willing to sit there and be used as cannon fodder against their fellow humans.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
compared to the amount of people that have been prosocuted with these so called terrorist laws.
I'd rather be a dead chump than one who is in constant fear of being hauled off to Guantanamo. Where is YOUR civic backbone?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"*tap tap tap* Oh no! We got on the wrong flight! This planes going to Ft. Lauderdale!"
"*tap tap tap* Hey lady, we are two hot stalions we wanna have partying!!!t#*#&$&$NOCARRIER"
Gentlemen and sally from CS, I believe we have a winner.
They already do.
And I see that MP3 on your hard drive mister.
If the terrorists knew anything about computers they would simply tunnel what ever they are doing over SSH! The FBI or Home Land Security couldn't do shit!
Microsoft's CSS has been broken for years. IE is so bad it is criminal, in more ways than one. Where are the police when you need them.
Oh, you were referring to the encryption scheme for DVDs. Yes, the ones who broke that (designed it broken) should be locked up with Microsoft.
I don't believe in privacy. I think it is obsolete. The intelligence agencies can figure out ways to legally intercept anything they want anyway [moving the operation off shore for example], so haveing an audit trail is a good thing. Better yet, put cameras and microphones everywhere and let anyone watch and listen.
Big brother would be wonderful if he was not in the hands of a few but insteadin the hands of everyone.
Now, if all banking records were a matter of public record, the world would be a better and less corrupt place. No one would need to by a BMW to show their wealth and power because anyone could look directly into their bank accounts. There would be a lot more bikes...
The terrorists used high tech weapons: a box cutters and intimidation to highjack the plane. Sure the FBI could get a 10 minute injunction but it most probably will be after the potentially deadly commands were sent.
I live and work in NYC and experinced the 9/11 event first hand. Why are so many people who live in areas that will never be affected by team Osama so incredibly paranoid about terror? Is is a "me too, I'm important also" kind of thing?
Regardless of what checks and balances we have in place, the potential for a terrorist attack to occor will be present. So lets stop worring and start some proactive intelligence gathering.Are you the one who thinks that those WTC photos where someone photoshopped in some missiles are real?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Actually, I've always considered objecting to a governmental agency intruding on my privacy and my personal life to be a very conservative position.
I wonder if the people who fought for the independence of the US would be considered 'terrorists' by todays definition. Or perhaps they would simply be 'insurgents'?
;-)
There's two sides to every coin. What's right to one is bound to be wrong to another.
--Clusterbomb Charlie
To: hajjar.kabib@comcast.net
From: kumar@crazyasshabib.com
Subject: How are you mom?
Dear mom,
Oh my, how long has it been?
I haven't talked to you in forever!
Talk to me over the phone this weekend
!!!! Love you !!!!!
Why is the FBI even asking for this? The terrorists aren't going to use something like this. Let's look at what happened on 9/11. A group of Saudis hijacked some planes with fricken box-cutters. They didn't use any high-tech emailing or chat system or anything else to coordinate the attacks. It was as basic a plan that they could come up with...and the rehearsed it over and over and over until everything was right and nothing was left to chance. No technology...other than the guys learning how to pilot the airliner.
<sarcasm>So what is the FBI asking for? A "just in case" type deal? Well, they should then ask for all forms of communications then, have free reign on the postal system too in case the terrorists resort to writing a letter or two. Have microphones set up everywhere in every home just in case terrorists may want to gather in a house and coordinate an attack! OH MY GOD!</sarcasm>
It's because this country is in a state of fear still. I honestly don't think the FBI is out to get us all and wants to take away everyones freedom nor control people. Heck, I even have a friend that's in the FBI...he's a nice guy. But I think that they are as scared as everyone else is and they don't want to get caught with their pants down again. I believe they honestly want to try to prevent and protect the citizens of the US...it's just they're methods may be a bit zealous at times.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Call me crazy, but if the FBI needs 10 minute wiretapping on a WIFI setup to keep my plane from being blown up by a bunch of Islamic radicals, then so be it. It's better to be a live chump who's email was intercepted by the feds than a dead one who's viagra spam remained a secret.
I have nothing against this. Know why? The magic words at the end: with court approval. If someone decides to fuck with the system, there's a paper trail. Imagine if we couldn't have caught the several FBI agents over recent history that used wiretaps to make inside trades?
Pretending that these measures will only be used in the one-in-a-billion chance someone tries to hijack a plane (or the probably significantly higher chance that someone decides to just blow it up) is naive, especially when you consider the kind of business elite that will be using these services and who will be ripe for the picking.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The following is an actual FBI wiretapped call to a known terrorist from a domestic airline.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you !!
CATS: How are you gentlemen !!
CATS: All your base are belong to us.
CATS: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.
CATS: Ha Ha Ha Ha
Operator: Captain !!
Captain: Take off every 'Zig'!!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'Zig'.
Captain: For great justice.
FBI. We make the world safer for you. Sign up today!
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
Im defeding thhe FBI's right to War Fly especially cause they will do it anyway and it might save my own ass some day. I believe plans even terrorists plans are occasionally fine tuned right before execution.
First of all, there will NEVER be another passenger aircraft hijacking again. The age of "Be cool, do what they say, and everything will be fine" ended at about 8:50 or so on September 11, 2001. Now, as soon as some schmuck stands up in a plane and says, "Okay, everybody this is a hija--," everyone within reach of him will try to tear him apart. Hell, even guys who get drunk and rowdy on a flight are rather enthusiastically subdued by passengers these days.
Furthermore, the fact that the Fibbies even think this is necessary is IMHO a very public no-confidence vote in the TSA and all the crap they make us go through to even get near a plane, much less on it.
~Philly
What's next, detainment? "Well we're pretty sure this guy is a terrorist so let's hold him indefinetly while we investigate his entire life and interrogate him." "Oops turns out we were wrong but we're going to keep a wiretap on all your communications forever and regularly checkup on you, just to be sure."
OMG! Are you the guy that wrote the Patriot Act? That's the exact plan.
Somewhere there needs to be a line, but it can't be in the form of random indicators or heresay. That's where it gets scary. At some point I may have looked at a web site or ordered a book that has been deemed a flag for suspicious behavior. Now all of a sudden I get a SWAT team at my front door and they lock me away for 19 months until I either admit I am a terrorist or somehow prove that I'm not. It's a lot like the Salem witch ordeal.
Now, if you are being watched because you just ordered 500 tons of fertilizer to be delivered to a silo built under a volcano, there is probably good reason to investigate.
/. ++
the ever-quoted line by ben franklin:
"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security"--Benjamin Franklin
I am in Israel right now. I admire how they generally live normal lives without stressing about being blown up, but i don't like how no one cares if the massod listens in on them, or if they have to be medal-detected every time they enter a mall. (not to mention that the stress of attacks, IMHO, makes them live more me-first and in-the-moment... but i've only been here 6 weeks so i'm still doing my psychological analysis. and there are defintely some people who don't deal with it well. go to news.google.com and search for "lynch" "palestinian" "gaza.")
so i feel like i can still be agreeing with ben if i approve a security policy that requires its documents be released, in full, in some number of years. no more of the classifying everything crap. i don't trust anyone to deal with my privacy that doesn't have transparency and oversight, and surely not the government.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
The FBI can have all my personal data and tap all my communications and I don't care. Can someone please explain to me why I should care about protecting my electronic privacy from the FBI?
How about looking at ALL of the angles, not just two. I guess I'm going to be modded Troll now too.
How soon people forget. Forget about encryption, just use simple code word communication.
"Mr. Smith: Confirming our meeting at 30120 Altitude lane. I'll be there in 2:15 from now. Looks like the plane is serving "cold cuts" a few minutes from now. I'm reading the "red" folder the office gave me. Buh Bye. Best from Allah, Ackmed
All the wire tapes and sniffers in the world won't be able to determine if that's code or just regular dribble.
People are so stupid to think that only the good guys can be clever.
Not to shut you down, but;
you say that you're sure there will be "big bro is after me" comments.Then you say you want to know why they will happen.I don't see any comments that fit that description.
It seems to me that you have generalized a conception of "the liberal response", and want a specific reason why it is that way. But it is not that way.
This does not compute.
If you're curious *in general* why liberals tend to question proposals to increase the power of law enforcement, it's because our country has a history of using law enforcement in illegitimate ways to curb political actions of the left.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Quick, he took the DVD for the in-flight movie, stipped off the Region 9 region code (the special airplane region code...Look it up), ripped it to his hard drive and is now seeding a bittorrent----We'll be ariving in atlanta in six hours......
The security level has been raised to orange as "War of the worlds" was ripped from American Airlines Flight 223......Surely the work of terrorists....
section 217 is one of the applicable sections.
EFF has a decent PATRIOT Act analysis. See especially heading 'cheif concerns' 1a.
Thomas has a listing of most of the USA PATRIOT Act, though a few things are missing. Notably, section 217 linked above.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Here's something I never understood about the liberals on this site.
Thanks for throwing 'liberal' in there, thus making the stereotypical argument that all liberals must be anti-national security flower children. You would have had the same impact if you had merely said "Here's something I don't understand about most people on this site" without making it a partisan issue.
I actually tend to agree with you on your point but the manner in which you conveyed it instantly turned me off to whatever you might have had to say.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Why not make everyone sign a waiver before buying the plane ticket that says wireless communications may be monitored at any time?
I've been wondering the same thing. If I VPN to my box to make an encrypted VoIP call, how exactly are they going to decrypt anything I was saying within any kind of a useful timeframe? If anyone just plugs in a Cisco ATA 186 or something and just starts chatting away I could see this being useful, but if someone has half a brain they'll be encrypting the stream somehow, or even relaying off of it in addition.
"Powers. I have them."
Theoretically, you're correct. The problem is that the FBI can get a wiretap on ANYONE, just by shopping it around to the right judges. One of the provisions of the the patriot act was that the judge need not even be in the same jurisdiction as the person they want to wiretap. That means, they can go to as many judges as they want until they find one that agrees with them.
Wiretapping laws, in general, are not a bad thing. What's bad is that the enforcers have almost no effective restrictions on their use.
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"Seriously, do you really believe terrorists won't be using strong encryption, knowing their data packets are probably being sniffed by the feds."
Actually. No I don't believe the terrorists will bother using strong encryption. They'll have their instructions memorized, with information passed in person. You don't need a computer to blow up a train or a plane.
All this high tech stuff is futile, the terrorists aren't using it. The fact that the FBI are chasing it says to me that they don't understand the nature of the threat or they're after something else.
Deleted
The most common packets intercepted by the FBI:
[Bill has just logged in]
Bob: Hey d00d!
Bill: wassup?
Bob: guess where I am?
Bill: where, d00d?
Bob: I'm 30,000 feet above Colorado!
Bill: No WAYY!
Bob: TOTALLY!
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When in the past has such action been taken so quickly. A new form of communication was born. Immediately government officials seek permission to intercept communication using this format.
Does that seem wrong to anyone? If the encrypted cell phone were invented today, the government would require that all manufacturers use encryption chips with backdoors for government wiretaps.
Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.
c =130 D =12263&c=206
Take a look at:
http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=11054&
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?I
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
Having worked for the gov't for the last 16 years, here's how it will play out:
Agent Joe: "Bill, this is Joe. Start tracking, we have a suspicious passenger."
Agent Bill: "Roger that. Got 'im."
1375 false alarms later.....
Agent Joe: "Bill, get off your ass and find this guy. What the hell are you doing?"
Agent Bill: "Nah, I gotta go to the can and read the paper. Maybe someone else can start the tap."
You have to remember that this country (that's right: the good ol' U S of A) has slid down to the bottom of this slope before. Remember World War II and our Japanese-American citizens?
/rant off
It was only through a lot of civil rights activism and grass-roots support that we were able to start advocating stronger individual rights and less government interference in our lives. Then before you know it, one terrorist act and our highly esteemed officials are doing their best to turn the U.S. into a police state again.
It is ALL of our responsibility to not let that happen. We can protect ourselves without giving up our freedom. But we have to care, we have to get out and vote, and we have to constantly remind our government that it belongs to us, not the other way around.
Here's just a shot in the dark, but how about we x-ray and sniff volatile compounds from everything getting on the plane in the first place. I would think that preventing the explosive from getting on the plane in the first place is a bit better way of preventing explosions that waiting ten minutes to disable their wifi connection. It is NOT an unreasonable search to check everything getting on a plane, and it would be far more effective. But the FBI doesn't really want to protect you from terrorists - they want to catch garden variety criminals. They want to catch your everyday mafia types, under the guise of keeping us safe from terror.
I should shut up now, before the DHS bans all cell phones, pagers, and watches from US flights.
No, they'll just ban YOU from the flights, especially with a slashdot nickname like that.
Aside from the fact that this sort of setup almost certainly would never stop a terrorist...and all the privacy concerns. There is one other issue that bugs me:
What about the costs imposed on the airlines to impliment the sort of technology that allows the FBI to evesdrop? It seems like the FBI/feds in general have it out for wi-fi and VOIP. I mean first you have the FCC demanding that VOIP carriers impliment who-knows-what kind of expensive tech to allow 911 calls to go somewhere AND show location. Then the FBI demands wiretap access from the VOIP providers. Now the FBI is going to make cheap wi-fi expensive by demanding that they have access to tap, AND shut down or redirect traffic! Given this trend and mantality, the next thing they will demand is a chip be implanted your head that shuts down your body if the government thinks you might commit a crime/terrorist action. Now wouldn't that just be the ultimate anti-terrorist and crime fighting tool? (please note that I was being sarcastic there)
...writing in my slashdot journal once.
Seems ridiculous to me. Moreover, we're not going to see another 9/11. Passenger psychology changed that day; no longer does anyone believe that sitting quietly in your seat is the best way to survive.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Even easier.
Just make sniffing part of the agreement when you use an Airlines Wifi network. If you don't want to be monitored then don't use it. Should you have an expectation of privacy on a public network on an Airliner?
Then again if you do not want your information to be tapped then us an ssh tunnel.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Here's something I never understood about "the conservatives". They're all against trusting the government when it comes to managing basic public resources like the water supply and roads, but somehow even after Watergate they still trust the government to not abuse their power for political purposes.
AccountKiller
Really. They may hate us no matter what we do, but they won't committ suicide trying to kill us just because we let women vote. It's more because we've interfered with their countries for about 50 years.
Can I point out that the majority of the 911 terrorists were on FBI watch lists? If the FBI can't watch the people they're already watching they don't need to expand laws to watch people they aren't going to watch.
Let's do something reasonable, like putting trained air marshalls on flights.
All the FBI has to do is say that the person they want a tap on is a strongly suspected terrorist.
In how far does that make sense? I thought planes with even weakly suspect people got diverted to canada or sent back to were they came from? Also what would be gained by wiretapping? Did the FBI ever hear of pre-agreed codewords that could be put into blogs on websites or the like and would not even help to identify which people were communicating if the traffic is launderd through intermediate sites?
As with previous moves in this direction, I honestly cannot tell whether the people wanting these new wiretapping powers are incompetent or have an entirely different agenda to what they claim. I am pretty sure that this will not stop terrorists, though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I really don't get it... are they saying that terrorists are going to plant bombs that will jump online, and wait to be instructed (RSS maybe) to blow up?
I'd say there are a few problems here:
(1) Why is the bomb on the plane??
(2) Don't the Air Marshalls and "thougher" screening procedures prior to boarding guarantee that a would be kidnapper (or more) would have a very hard time in hijaking the plane (no guns, no knives - just jump on the fool(s)) ?
It might be naive, but I'm assuming that if you manage to get a bomb on the plane, then you'll probably have a timer attached to it, or some other sort of trigger (altimeter, g-sensor, etc).
Perhaps the person who came up with this possible scenario has watched too many crappy hackers movie, e.g. "We got a bomb on flight ###, and if you don't wire $5 million to our account in Zurich, then we're pointing our browser to http://bomb123.terrorist/explode.aspx !!". Who knows, maybe they envisioned a user-friendly bomb, with a nice HTML GUI. (IIS jokes, anybody?)
Anyway, if they are really worried about 802.11 bombs, then employ authentication prior to allowing anybody to get on the net, e.g. give the flight crew the ability to issue login info, which the passengers will use to authenticate via PEAP, or anything else for that matter.
Don't get me wrong, if I thought there was a chance in a million that terrorists would be using airplane Wi-Fi as a tool for attacking our airlines, I'd be all for this... but it just doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. It would be like designing a nuclear reactor during a blackout so that you could power your flashlight... or killing a mosquito with an SS-18 ICBM....
The time is long past when someone should reasonably be allowed to shout "war on terror" and have everyone mindlessly jump to give up their civil liberties. Every time that happens, the terrorists win.
Besides... everybody knows that real terrorists use Bluetooth.... :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The central problem is that they are requiring products or services to be modified in order for the ease of wiretapping, using terrorism and safety as excuses when both and neither are sufficient.
iow, they are requiring products to be modified to make it easier for a warrant to be carried out. I'm not aware of too many situations outside of CALEA or communications where a product is to be modified by law *in order for* the execution of a warrant be made easier.
The abuses of the FBI, proper issue of warrants, flight safety, and whether wiretapping is abused are pertinant but still side issues to the central concern--government mandated interventions to make their jobs easier.
Metaphors have their limits, but this is like putting a kill limiter in your car so the cops can pull you over easier. Or weaker lock on your front door so the government can execute their warrant easier.
This is government intervention at its worse. The fact that you do not recognize that as a conservative is shameful. btw, since you seem to think this is a liberal/conservative issue, I'm a Republican.
More laws and regulation haphazardly isn't the answer. Reviewing all laws pertaining to this stuff, revising them appropriately, and enforcing them is what needs to happen. We need appeals processes for those who do get restricted by laws or profiling, in case they have been accidently placed on a list. We need common sense.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That's really the problem. It's how it's used. The Patriot Act "sneak an peak" provision have been used +1,600 times and not one of them has been turned down by a judge. (Come on, the government is not that perfect)
I have a friend who is an American Citizen, born here, white as can be. He's a private pilot in his late 20's. He bought a 1 way ticket in advance to get home after flying for work. He had an Air Marshal sitting next to him because he was one of the highest risk passangers for that day. (And it happens a lot) Folks, that's what we are spending money on.
What is tapping WiFi really going to give someone? Are they plannign to detonate a bomb in the cargo hold via Wifi? Why couldn't they just use a timer or Altemiter to detonate? What else, coordinate with other terrorists? Why can't they use raido and code words worked out beforehand. Or simply fly the plane low over a city and use random passanger's cell phones. (Yes they work)
I wish GOP backers would actually consider how these laws are actually put into practice, and how they are combined with other provisions to make them even worse.
So you've got a guy trying to hijack a plane in the US (post 9/11 mind you) and planning to use it for a terrorist act in which his death is part of the plan. Then you have the nerve to say "unless he's stupid" with a sarcastic tone like it's a given that these guys are descendants of Einstein or something...
If the feds have enough evidence to suspect someone on a flight, then maybe they should have the authority to shut down the WiFi server for that flight. If the suspicions were wrong, then--at worst--a couple hundred people have been temporarily inconvenienced.
Technologically, it might even be easier to do. It's a faster response to a threat, so it seems more likely to actually STOP an attack than collecting a data stream of potential evidence that will be useless by the time it has been decrypted. As a bonus, nobody's privacy gets invaded simply because we didn't think we had time to get a warrant.
Whether or not the judges are competent in their positions or pushovers who'll sign every wiretap order they're handed regardless of merits is an entirely different problem, of course, tangentially related to the conversation at hand
Idiot -- under the USA Parrot-fucking Act, judges have no discretion in whether or not to sign the order as long as it's asserted to be "in connection with an investigation into possible terrorist acts." That's not judicial oversight, it's judicial rubber-stamping.
I agree.
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -James Madison
Call me crazy, but if the FBI needs 10 minute wiretapping on a WIFI setup to keep my plane from being blown up by a bunch of Islamic radicals, then so be it.
Your faith in the FBI's ability to do anything with such information is what's allowing the FBI et al. to increase their ability to spy. If the FBI finds something suspicious they can not send superman to come save you. The best they can do is alert the pilot to lock his door and land immediately, which will most likely cause a lot of unneeded havoc due to many false alarms, and do little to prevent a bomb in the cabin from going off. Furthermore, even with supercomuters at their disposal, the FBI will not be able to crack the encryption that the terrorist (and many law abiding citzens like myself) are using within a meanful amount of time.
The end result is the FBI spying on us with no real affect on flight safety. If a terrorist tries to take over any plane I'm on I'm going to do my best to kick their ass. It's time to start taking responsiblity for our own safety and stop relying on big brother to protect us all the time (obviously the govt does have a role in safety, but that doesn't negate our own role), and stop letting them take our freedoms that so many people have died to protect.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I agree 100%. It's a frigging JET AIRPLANE for fark's sake. Not your house, not a library, not work, a flying aluminum can at 30,000ft. and it damn well should fall under different rules than down on Earth. We're not talking inherently safe, we're talking screw with something and you get two hundred plus soon-to-be-dead people falling crazily to the ground at three hundred miles an hour.
They aren't asking to wiretap at random without an order, they just want to do it quicker when they do get an order. I'd prefer that to getting blown out of my shorts by some nutjob with a grudge against the entirety of western civilization or merely trying to get to Cleveland for free.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
The only problem I have is if there is no "check" to the power the FBI has. If, as advertised, they need court approval to make it happen, then no, I have no problem with a ten minute, or a ten second implementation time.
As always, I have suspicions that this technology might be used without court approval. But, I can't say "no" to something based upon my suspicions only.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
1st, I'm going to climb in the mud, then climb out and be objective.
Ah, someone who reads Republican talking points and worships Bill O'Reilly.
Perhaps you consider yourself a libertarian with a little L as opposed to the party with the big L. Anyway, get on with your life and stop trying to blame liberals for everything from your hangnail and no dates to Bob Barr being de-elected. Okay, I'll cop to the Bob Barr thing.
I consider myself a liberal, I'm a business owner, I vote and I donate money. I'm also a veteran of the submarine service.
Having been in that line of work related to radars and communications (and now, among other things, network security), you gobble up everything that is available in the band or on the wire. That means that they look at everyones business. Mind you, I loved my work in the Navy but when I got out of the service, my 3 choices for doing it legally/domestically were CIA, NSA or Secret Service. The first two, I didn't trust (call it paranoia if you want...you probably don't have a clue what I did) and the third was really uninviting. Doing any other form would have meant for foreign governments (no thank you) or corporate espionage (not just no, but fsck no).
You clearly made up your mind to give over the free and open society in which we live(d). I am not. Free doesn't mean or just mean free to do as you please. It means free from unnecessary intrusion, privacy, etc.
I'd rather NOT have wifi on US planes if it meant everything I did was scrutenized. That doesn't mean I'm doing anything illegal. You send a letter in an envelope because if affords a modicum of privacy, not typically on a postcard.
I feel that if you want a fascist utopia, go to Singapore. It's clean, polite and punks get caned for marketing up public or private property with graffiti.
The bit about the fear that terrorists will use the wifi in flight has about as much to do with security as the government's old fight about encryption that sprung up again after 9/11. It was about being able to back door everything. Remember the Clipper chip? It quietly got integrated into secure voice products about 11 years after a big noisy fight.
Liberals: we're to blame for everything. Too bad we haven't had power since LBJ. Amazing what you can force on society when you don't rule.
Ditto for me with the proviso that the probable cause be more rigorous than a kinda match with the no-fly-list. (I wonder if a public posting that I don't like no-fly-lists gets me on one?)
[i]A[/i] court?
That's a recipe for lax oversight. Look at FISA. Hell, look at what happened to the patent system after appellate jurisdiction was concentrated in CACF...
Now if only we could get people here to believe that about the 2nd through 10th Amendments.
If you think you're important enough for the FBI to go running at full speed into a courtroom and ask a very overworked judge for a court order, you probably overestimate your Evil Quotient.
Seriously, guys, it costs a butt-load of money to get a tap implemented, and the few agents qualified to do anything with one have big fish to fry. That torrent you're downloading is going to get you a mass-mailed bill in the mail, but it just ain't worth the attention of the feds.
Previous author had a point. The tinfoil hat brigade doth protest too much.
>collaborating evidence
I think you mean Corroborating evidence
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
You march well to the drumbeat of Larry Ellison's Stalinistic "no expectation of privacy" drumbeat. May you live in degraded comfort in yout toilet, which is damned near the only defined "non-public" place left in Soviet Amerikka.
What difference is it going to make if your stuff is encrypted? Oh, so you're going to be a suspected terrorist if you open an SSH session.
Nice. If terrorists wanted to wirelessly detonate bombs, they could go about it in literally a hundred different ways not at all involving the internet, and at any rate, 10 minutes is way too long of a time to make any difference. Might as well not do it at all. If they want people dead, they'll be dead.
No, instead, the best use this will ever have is busting people who shop for pot via the internet whilst on airplanes. That's obviously worth billions.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
What am I missing here? Lets not get carried away. When I buy a ticket for a commercial airline, I give up certain rights. I know up front what they are, and I choose to consent to it. I agree to have my luggage searched. I agree to have my 'person' searched. I agree that my name will be run through a database for known suspects, and I agree to provide some identification. I will now agree that any broadband usage on the plane is also open and monitored. This is a side effect of choosing to use broadband on the plane. It is for my saftey and for others saftey. If you don't agree, don't fly or don't expect privacy in your in-flight broadband connection. I don't see it as an abuse of power. If it was left to the airlines to decide who monitors and who doesn't, I'd choose the airline that does monitor. Why are people not complaining about being searched and luggage screening? Its the same thing. Its a commercial transaction and we know the restrictions surrounding it.
Do they already have monitoring of the in flight phones? Seems to me the last cal anyone woudl need to make and it woudl be too late then when the coordinator yells "God is Great!" on a conference call with all involved planes.
I don't know about you, but all the terrorists I know use low-tech elements to minimize failure and to maximize effect while minimizing cost and effort.
fertilizer and fuel.
explosives and a match
grenade
the American media.
explosives and a washing machine timer and a battery.
etc....
just a a late afternoon thot.
Yes, thank you. Thats one of those words I can never quite get right. At least I've stopped (mostly) using 'irregardless' now :D
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Code 000 - blow the shit up
code 414 - start praying
Code 069 - instantly order 20 virgins to be available in the afterlife
Code 514 - check Slashdot for the latest counteterorrist techonology
Code 300 - send 'w00t' to Papa Osama
I thought your comment was pointing out a problem quite nicely, I liked everything about it except when I got to the Islamic radicals part. People, especialy Americans, seem to link terroism with Islam and only Islam. There are other people out in the big bad world that do not like America. Its not just thoes crazy Muslims, please remeber this.
My uncle-in law is one of those conservatives. He makes it sould like watergate was just good clean fun.
Fucking idiot. Breaking and entering, unlawful trespass and wire tapping.. Yeah, real innocent. Maybe he was a bank robber in his youth.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
I'm not sure why you insist that "the liberals on this site" would be the only ones against providing this power to the FBI. I believe the entire libertarian wing of the Republican party would also be against this sort of thing. I also know plenty of "liberals" who would support giving the FBI this right. This isn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" issue.
The Oenophile Network -- http://www.oenophile.net Wine blog, discussion, news and information for wine lovers!
What are the odds of being killed by a terrorist? What are the odds of being wrongly imprisoned by the FBI due to an overzealous wiretap? In 2001 the U.S. suffered the loss of 3,000 of its citizens from a single terrorist attack. How many people last year had their lives wrongfully ruined by a loss of privacy?
The odds of dying while travelling on London's tube are still lower than driving a car in London, even with terrorist threats.
The odds of them catching al-Qaeda are pretty close to nil if they keep assuming they: a) aren't trained; and b) are stupid.
Privacy is what makes us Americans. The loss is incalculable, especially when it isn't going to help in any way shape or form.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I don't understand why they want to go this route when all a terrorist needs to do is plan things out well in advance, and execute on the fly with no external prompting while on board. Al Qaeda didn't need on-board broadband to crash three planes on 11Sep2001, and they won't need it should they decide they want to do so again.
This sig no verb.
>>Altemiter to detonate
Common myth, the plane is pressurized to 8000 feet no matter how high it is, so an altmeter would never read higher then 8000 feet.
And, the whole plane is pressurized, not just the top where people sit. Planes are round for a reason.
If you have no expectation of privacy, then they wouldn't even need a warrant, would they?
Please note that "expectation of privacy" is a specific legal term, not just a statement of angsty desire.
Departing briefly from the legal arena, I personally have no expectation that my packets cannot be inspected by any random BOFH after they leave my house, which is why I encrypt them as much as possible. I suspect I am not alone in this manner of thinking.
The government sees someone who opposes the administration rising in prominance so they use his private information against him in some manner.
Example: J. Edgar Hoover collected dirt on John F. Kennedy as early as the Second World War:
"One of the first examples of Hoover's activities that would lead to blackmail on his part occurred during World War II, when Hoover had his agents follow a young Naval Officer named John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was the son of one of Hoover's closest associates, former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy. Officer Kennedy was involved in a sexual relationship with a woman, Inga Arvad, who was a Danish national believed to be a Nazi spy. Thus, Hoover was conveniently able to launch an investigation of Kennedy's relationship with this woman 'for reasons of national security.' Hoover's agents spied on the couple and obtained tape recordings of the two in intimate activities."
Link
-kgj
-kgj
While I don't quite agree with the details of why the OP believes privacy is obsolete: "The intelligence agencies can figure out ways to legally intercept anything they want anyway".
I too believe that the perceived "right" to privacy as currently legally construed is an antiquated notion - although for entirely different reasons than the OP. I believe that all methods of encryption, etc. and decryption should be completely deregulated. For everybody.
As to the original issue about wifi on planes, I have no problem with every packet on an airplane going straight into a federal database - as long as everybody is informed of this fact.
Call me a troll if you will. Or you could just get comfortable with the fact that you don't have to believe in the dogma of "privacy" as framed in American legalese to have a reasonable framework of civil rights. /. mods be damned
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
Or maybe you're a scientist studying the effects of plants under extreme temperatures.
My personal theory is this: The line should stop when it starts to interfere with the subjects life in any way. Detainment is an obvious form of this, but things like cutting off your internet while they re-route packets to their servers or even causing the quality of your phone conversation is too far. (Usually it would make you repeat what you had to say, costing you time and minutes.
Then again my theory on software piracy is that if they can steal it, I didn't do that part of my job right.
For the FBI's other worries: that terrorists will communicate with each other and a device on the plane, the extremely techno-savvy terrorists that they believe might be out there, could just as well use an Ad Hoc network between their wireless laptops for intra-plane communication.
Then again, it's just silly to think that these wiretap measures are very useful to stopping a highjacking or a bomb. The real problem would have to be the weapons that must be on board for them to hijack or blow up a freaking plane.
--Excyl
You mean to tell me you actually believe that the gov't is honestly doing any of this to actually protect us??? As opposed to the more likely scenario that this, like the patriot act and similar laws, is just another power grab? I, for one, don't believe we should make life easier for anybody who takes away our freedoms, especially under the false pretenses being used to do it. I was hoping that, with what I see in your journals, you, of all people, would see through this charade. The definition of "liberal" is going through a lot of changes these days. What's yours?
What?
>what are you up to? :-)
>I'm on a plane and just laid a huge bomb...the stewardess is looking at me funny...I think she knows -snif.
>lol
And how do We the People verify that these and other police powers are being used responsibly?
Answer: We can not. We're not allowed to ask.
Power without accountability is called tyranny. That's bad.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
They didn't use any high-tech emailing or chat system or anything else to coordinate the attacks
They used cell phones gto communicate between planes when they were on the ground.
Have you thought about the XPKQ? After what JRES did to interstate dairy commerce, I don't know how you can bring up that FISA crap.
And I've got lots more 4 letter acronyms where those came from, pal!
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Because, you know, the FBI has never abused its powers. (See Also, J. Edgar Hoover, McCarthy, House Un-American Activities Committee)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Any discussion of this is incomplete without basically quoting all of Beyond Fear, by Bruce Schneier, which is a wonderful book and discusses exactly how to make this sort of decision. You will be smarter after reading it.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Just because a message is encrypted does not mean that one can't glean useful information from it.
If a person on plane A sends a PGP encrypted email to accomplices on three other planes, an evesdropper could grep for the cyphertext on the other planes to determine what other planes are at risk.
If someone sshes into a server, you've determined the IP address of their 'trusted' server, and can watch for corresponding information that leaving that box.
So, basically, your argument boils down to "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!"
That's not a very good basis for a civil society. That's why some dead white guys wrote a document called the Constitution of the United States of America, which I happen to think was a pretty good idea.
Only problem was that Bill of Rights part. Now a bunch of jackasses are running around saying I don't have any rights that aren't explicitly enumerated on that document.
Remedial Civics class for you, buddy.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The filing does have some interesting parts to it. My favorite section was titled "Operational Vernacular", where they say they will sack
"anyone who ever dares to use the slogan 'We love to spy and it shows'."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Or connect to an IRC network with encryption? These taps are useless for all except the idiotic. Any trained professional would be able to mask their activities.
The judge should require substantial evidence that the person is a possible terrorist before signing anything that would violate their rights
Gathering that much information, putting it together in a form that can be easily understood, finding a judge, waiting for judge to review the evidence and approve the warrant would easily take longer than the plane is in the air.
The only way they can mke it before the plane lands is to rush thru the procedure. And when people rush, they make mistakes.
Will the bomb run Linux?
- okay, bad joke
2005-06-04 21:10:19 FBI, DHS Object to In-Flight Cell Phones (Index,Privacy) (rejected)
Same thing as the cell phone article, only now it's for data. Glad to see Taco's on the ball again.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
The more power you give the secret police, the more the potential for abuse. Look at the good old USSR? Want to be like them? No? Well then stand up for your rights while you still can; no doubt soon, protesting against the USAPATRIOT act and similar will be a public order offence; once that happens, that's the end of any vestiges of democracy in the US.
Me (Blog)
Jeez. I can (theoretically) sniff packets and I don't even need a court order. Just a copy of ethereal, nmap and nessus, none of which I have ever used or have any experience with. But as pointed out, a packet of encoded fluff doesn't do me, or the government, a lot of good, unless one of us has a way of decoding it in near-real time, and my secret decoder ring only goes to 32 bit.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Professional...thats the thing here. All the "security" they are putting into all of this is useless against anyone that really wants to do something. It's purely a way to intimidate the sheeple out there. Hell my last flight I took a full box of razer blades on the plane without knowing it (artist). A full box I believe was 50 blades and in the box it just looks like a block of metal under xray and I've gotten worse trough knowing I have it on me.
unless they have broken the encryption.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Are they plannign to detonate a bomb in the cargo hold via Wifi? Why couldn't they just use a timer or Altemiter to detonate?"
:^) Or, more seriously, in the Maldives or some other place with no extradition treaty.
First, as has been mentioned, you'd have to use a radar altimeter which could probably be detected. And Timers mean you have to make a few rash assumptions, such as the time the airplane is going to leave.
"What else, coordinate with other terrorists? Why can't they use radio and code words worked out beforehand. Or simply fly the plane low over a city and use random passanger's cell phones. (Yes they work)"
Needless to say, the answer to almost all your questions is range and traceability.
Suppose I'm planning on having people hijack two airliners and fly one into the Capitol building and one into the White House. Suppose one of the hijackings fails--for whatever reason. It might be worthwhile to be able to communicate with the people on board the aircraft to have them change their target.
And, of course, while I'm doing this, I'd rather not be in the Washington DC area which is where they'll be looking for me. I'd rather be leaching my WiFi signal anonymously from some guy in Florida.
The cell-phone problem comes up in that I would probably like the information to be encrypted. Most commercially available cell-phones don't have encryption. Also, the government has gotten pretty good at tracing cell-phone users. The Internet offers much cheaper anonymity. If you've got access to a bot-network, you could probably keep the feds running around forever with no idea where you are.
Come now. Do you really think that the FBI (or any other three letter agency) is going to be able to decrypt your AES or 2048 bit SSL communications in time to stop you from commanding the IED you planted in the cargo hold to explode?
Oh, wait. Wrong argument.
I have a friend who is an American Citizen, born here, white as can be. He's a private pilot in his late 20's. He bought a 1 way ticket in advance to get home after flying for work. He had an Air Marshal sitting next to him because he was one of the highest risk passangers for that day. (And it happens a lot) Folks, that's what we are spending money on.
The reason they do such things, especially to high profile people, such as celebrities, is to make sure arabs know it's not just them that are being scrutinized.
--fatboy
FISA = Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. I've heard that the special FISA court has never rejected a warrant request.
CAFC = Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The US Supreme Court is reluctant to accept appeals unless there is a disagreement among the circuits. A singular appeals court precludes such disagreements, so writs of certiori are quite rare, and the CAFC is largely free to pursue its own conception of patent law. Some think that it has "gone rogue".
Remedial Civics class for you, buddy.
Well, there's one phrase in the Decleration of Independence that covers a WHOLE lot of ground: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness". Those words are just as binding as the Constitution! :-)
crazy.
This is posted a lot here, but my imaginary hundred dollar bill has some words for you; "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Ben Franklin
ôó
One day, they're going to lock up, ahem detain, the WRONG person, and all hell's going to break loose. No matter how good they think their intelligence or sources are, nothing's perfect. But, detaining people and not affirming to relatives or courts that the subject indeed is being held for questioning only stirs up more rancor and ire. Doesn't matter if it's a domestic or foreign person. I recently heard "This American Life" on NPR, where a 70-year-old suspect who promised to deliver a submarine to would-be evil-doers was considered a terrorist. The guy has a spotty record and has dealt with shady types, but to lock up someone just to make 'merkuns "feel good and safer" is just plain wrong. Only bad karma can be expected to be generated from such things. Not only that, they used a FAKE Stinger missile to entrap the guy, and the poor/lame salesman didn't even know what was the shooting end of the damned missile. Even one of the jurors held out in favor of the accused, but relented and tossed in a "guilty" verdict because the jury foreman (who'd found out her mortgage was closing) told her she'd not see the inside of her new home (losing the escrow/settlement process) if she didn't vote along with the rest of the jurors. What justice....
...you get two hundred plus soon-to-be-dead people....
t /airbus/A380/.
Or, with the new Airbus A-380, well in excess of 800 http://www.aircraft-info.net/aircraft/jet_aircraf
Have a nice flight.
"Most commercially available cell-phones don't have encryption"
/. article about someone breaking the protocol for the first time, and I think it took a supercomputer about a week to brute force it. I imagine CDMA (Sprint & Verizon) and whatever Nextel uses (iMode??) are similiar.
Au contraire. GSM (Cingular, AT&T, T-Mobile) phones have pretty good encryption. IIRC there was a
Of course, it's quite easy for the government to wiretap calls at the cell carrier side. But digital cell calls *are* encrypted while going "over the air."
Now, *analog* cell phones, a pretty much obsolete technology, can be picked up with just about any $50 police scanner.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
You're right. Like your friend, same discrption w/o the piolet license, I am searched at every airport. Dont mind, really, puts me ahead of everyone and TSA are real nice. The TSA staff also think searching me is stupid. But it does bother me that I am a suspected criminal. Nothing in background to indicate this, never been arrested or criminally charged. Asked the TSA and a US Senator's staff why. Two years later am still waiting for the answer.
The terrorists will just get the FBI stoned by making them sniff loads of magic packets.
That's already happening. Us government has a whole jail full of folks like that down at gitmo. I wonder how loud americans would scream, if the chinese government came to the usa, grabbed a few hundred folks, flew them into china and held em for years without any formal charge or any means of representation, yet that's EXACTLY what the usa is doing these days...
Turning anything Off just after the attack only slows down ligitimate use of the system even for law inforcement and emergency workers. This same idea has been tried with cell phones. Why not shut down every car when one is used for a attack, think its too crazy? Tell me why then are you getting busted for a pair of nail clippers at the checkpiont?
This is all reactionary responses, FBI is a reactionary force, in all its history how many people did they catch BEFORE the crime was commited? How many changes would have to be made untill the FBI became Proactive? What needs to be dont is better assesment of what your trying to secure, and what the FBI is trying to do puts them one step behind the terrorist. If law of the land is Innocent untill proven guilty, then terrorist acts would have to happien before you can arrest. but are more like Innocent unless you look suspisicious approch.
Ill call you dead, if you on a plane with a terrorist on board that the FBI is tapping, tell me how that is going to save your life? The only good that would come from tapping the terrorists is for better identification of the corpse. Look, the terrorist is onboard the plane, therefor the FBI faild. The Tap is a "save our ass" prop so they can catch the living bad guys while people mourn the loss of life, because the FBI could stop the guy from getting on the plane in the first place
"There is a short window of opportunity in which action can be taken to thwart a suicidal terrorist hijacking or remedy other crisis situations on board an aircraft, and law enforcement needs to maximize its ability to respond to these potentially lethal situations,"
There is a short window of time for crisis situations NOT involving airplanes. Does that justify weakening due process for those situations?
Well, they can't just tap everybody all the time overnight. They have to start SOMEWHERE, don't they?
I'm not big on using computers on airplanes-- but now I feel like I have a responsibility to use inflight wifi for downloading (or would it be uploading in this case?) as much material as possible from websites in the middle east.
I think the concern might be that fast authorization for wiretaps might _conceivably_ (perish the thought), be used for inappropriate reasons, that have nothing to do with national security, and that the power would be abused. I'm sorry, but I think Americans kill other Americans at a more alarming rate than foreign terrorists do, and they don't generally use commercial airplaces to do it. I'm personally getting a bit annoyed at the "terrorist" excuse being pulled out like a trump card whenever anyone complains about police or executive powers being increased, or personal freedom or privacy being threatened. "Oh, but a terrorist might..." or "What if a terrorist..." What if monkeys fly outta my butt, or I get run over by a car, or a meteor crashes through my roof? In order to fight terrorism, we need better foreign and domestic policies. We need to make fewer enemies. We need to take the moral high ground and live up to a high example. We need to have better communication, cooperation, and information analysis - not excessive domestic police powers, excuses to eavesdrop on innocent people, or more ways for people to put requests for wiretaps on the fast track. Our intelligence services need to cooperate with one another and share information. The goals must be to protect the safety and freedom of our people, not find ways to exploit people's propensity for fear so that the laws protect people _less_. We need law enforcement that is skilled, impartial, fair, and well-funded. We don't need to take shortcuts through personal freedoms or privacy. Some things _should_ be hard to do. Some things should not be shortcut for convenience. Whenever I hear "we need special powers to protect you from terrorists", I _really_ hear "We don't have a good reason for this, so we'll pull out some BS about terrorists so that nobody will question too closely. I simply lose trust at this point when I hear "terrorists". I begin to assume that the terrorist card is played not because there is a real danger of terror attacks that will be able to be stopped by whatever new tactic is employes... but because the real reasons are dubious, unethical, or unecessary, and nobody would _like_ the real reasons. Have no fear though. Apparently, enough Americans are willing to support any stupid, greedy, or evil thing our "leaders" decide to do in order to become more wealthy and powerful, that I'm sure that we'll only be seeing more stuff like this in the future. Apologies for the bitter tone of my response. It's not that I don't feel that terror attacks could conceivably occur. It's not that I don't want to see them prevented. It's simply that I don't feel any safer since many of these new abrogations or infringements on civil rights and privacy began. I'm thinking that instead of being afraid of terrorists, I now have to be afraid of the government of my own country... plus the terrorists.
Isn't it interesting how overbearing the Dept. of Homeland Security is when it comes to their desire to know everything about everyone, and with the power to lock up individuals for months or years at a time without regard for writs of habeous corpus?
At the very same time, nearly four years after 9/11/2001, the USA's borders are still unsecure (except when private citizens organized like the Minuteman Project shine the light of publicity), or that less than 5% of incoming container cargo is inspected. The Bush regime will not commit to the increased manpower necessary to do the job -- instead, billions of dollars are spent with defense contractors for high tech toys. UAVs might detect terrorists crossing our borders, but without the manpower to interdict them, we can only watch them disappear into the countryside. And anyone who thinks a $500 Million USD nutrino scanner that cannot find a nuclear bomb in a container cargo box, but can detect kitty litter quite well is not a monsterous joke, please explain your point of view. (And explain why that same $500 Million USD would not have been better spent on "boots on the ground".)
This country has 28 million illegal alien occupiers, most of whom our government knows little about. Bush's "amnesty" program and Social Security reform (including Bush's "Normalization plan") appear to reward these lawbreakers, as well as those employers that hire them. In 2000, 334 employers were prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens, but in 2004 that number dropped to 13.
The methods and purposes of the current regime in power seem less to do with countering terrorism than with curtailing individual rights, as well as draining the US Treasury for the benefit of government contractors. When the next major terrorist attack occurs in the USA, this regime needs to be booted out of office and prosecuted for "dereliction of duty" and "malfeasance". I personally would vote to put them in front of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, but that's only me.
He had an Air Marshal sitting next to him because he was one of the highest risk passangers for that day.
He knew that he was sat next to an air marshal? What use is that? Did he promise not to beat the shit out of him and steal his weapon or something?
(Not saying that he would, of course, but surely knowing who the air marshal is is completely counter to the point of having them in the first place, especially if they're sat next to the "highest risk" person on board)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It's irrelevant that he's a white US citizen.
So was Timothy McVeigh.
However, some of the flags they use for risk are so silly and transparent. A genuine terrorist would just buy a round trip ticket from a travel agent to look low risk since they know that buying one way tickets off the Internet flag you as high risk.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Sure while we're at it we can give the federal government access to cameras installed in our inflight toilet stalls (for safe guards against terrorist explosive gases). No worries-it will all be legal and used during national security emergencies only.
....better foreign policy?
I seem to remember the good 'ol days when we used to complain about the Russians for invading everyones's privacy.
Just a crazy idea I had to protecting western freedoms. Instead of the government spying on its own citizens and undermining the values we say make us better lets try.....hmmm....I dunno... ahhhh....
Actually, there was a bill introduced into the House just days ago to let the DHS regulate sales of fertilizer.
i ?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:h3197ih.txt.pdf
See http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cg
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
Next time you fly, refuse to show them your photo ID at the check-in counter, and when they insist that its "..the law", ask them to show it to you. They can't, because there is no such law.
The airlines don't need a law, because they are a private industry.
If I'm the pilot of a boat, and I happen to disallow anyone who doesn't show photo ID onboard, that's my business. I own the boat, I can do what I want. If the airlines wanted to mandate that each passenger have sex with a goat before boarding one of their planes, they could add such a requirement as well.
Now, placing such a requirements on all *planes* doesn't exist. If you want to fly as a passenger with your buddy Bob Smith, who does crop dusting, he isn't going to require a photo ID, nor does he need to. It's a pretty safe bet that damn few charter pilots are going to demand photo ID from their passengers before going up.
The requirement is one placed by the airlines to gain access to their airplanes. If you want to set up an airline that doesn't require photo access to board, I'm sure that you are welcome to do so (and suffer the customer concern and insurance issues that will follow).
So, basically, you can refuse to show the check-in counter your ID (which is, admittedly, your right) and they can refuse to let you on their plane (which is their right).
And everyone just happily hands over their ID, without a single second-thought about how much they're being tracked.
I agree that we have way too much tracking.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
"What is tapping WiFi really going to give someone?"
Ill bite. An innocent(s) carrying a bomb(s) inside their company laptop. Lets say i work for an IT support provider for a large company. I call these guys up who are flying overseas next week, need to swap out their laptops for whatever reason. I preconfig the laptop to phone home periodically...plant a bomb in it... you can guess the rest. i think this is a reasonable request for $SECURITYCO to make... whether I trust the FBI or not is another matter.
You are 100% right, and in this sense I think we can learn an important lesson from London, because they have--after a brief disruption--continued to go on with their daily lives.
Some might argue that 9/11 was much worse than 7/7, which is true; but look at how we reacted to the sniper shootings in VA, or the anthrax scare--the London bombings were far worse, in terms of # of people killed, than either.
I lived in VA at the time of the anthrax scare, and even my dad--who is generally a pretty calm guy--was acting on blind fear. When my sister got a rash, he decided it might be anthrax and promptly called to get an appointment with a doctor--but then he noticed the doctor's name was Arabic, so he cancelled the appointment and made a new one somewhere else.
In some sense, when the terrorists goad us into passing freedom-diminishing laws and invading other countries, they win--because they make us look like the Big Bad Wolf.
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me --
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
- Martin Niemoeller (1946)
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Phillymjs: First of all, there will NEVER be another passenger aircraft hijacking again. The age of "Be cool, do what they say, and everything will be fine" ended at about 8:50 or so on September 11, 2001. Now, as soon as some schmuck stands up in a plane and says, "Okay, everybody this is a hija--," everyone within reach of him will try to tear him apart.
I take it you haven't seen Wrong Is Right? That chilling satire posited susicide bombers who had explosives surgically implanted within their bodies which are then detonated at the appropriate time. Why hijack a plane and (no doubt) planebomb (famous) buildings when you can blow a planeload of people up anyway. Think it's not possible?... Consider this:
1) Fashion the explosives into artificial limbs (if possible) and have amputee suicide bombers wear them on the plane -- being sure to sit next to a window in the cabin for obvious reasons....
2) Surgically replace arm and leg bones with explosives encased in metal rods and whatnot -- that oughta fool 'em -- they can even bring a doctor's note for the 'hardware' in their bodies....
3) The simple, elegant solution involving explosives and the use of that small hidden place all women have (for the most part) if you know what I mean....
Richard Reid's attempted 'shoebomber' attack could be construed as the 'tip of the iceberg' for these kinds of attacks....
There are only two (extreme) ways to stop the deadly 'nonsense' of worldwide terrorism once and for all....
a) For there to be a lasting, permanent pardigm shift in USA foreign affairs that treats foreign nations as equals and not as resources to be plundered at the expense of the native population. By one account I read of, the USA consumes 60% of the world's resources but only has about 5% of the world's population. If this is done, worldwide terrorism will ratchet down to deadly, regional squabbles between neigboring groups of people sharing common resources or radically juxtaposed ideologies who can't 'all get along'. Unfortunately, this condition includes Pakistan and India who are now in the midst of their own (private?) 'cold war'.
b) Go the Deterrence route and be done with it and 'damn all consequences.' This rationale was 'espoused' by the character Gabriel Shear in Swordfish. In a nutshell: make the punishment disproportionate to the crime through the use of nuclear weapons with extreme prejudice!
P. S. The first 9/11 'planebombing' happened at 8:46:40 AM EST (12:46:40 UTC) on 2001-09-11 when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center complex. The attacks of that terrible day were breathtakingly spectacular in their visibility, intensity, carnage, damage, viciousness, and simplicity.
Had commercial passenger airline security in America (as well as the rest of the world) been conducted in the 'El-Al' style, this tragedy might not have happended in the first place!
Something is fundamentally wrong in the world at large when 'geopolitics' motivate people to kill as many other people as possible at one time in order to bring attention to their plight (since using nonviolent methods gets them nowhere)....
Please stop this sensless boodbath as soon as possible.
Thank you for reading this.
Hey, if you want to write for the comic strips, you'll need a little more bold type. You're nearly there!
Here's something I never understood about the liberals on this site....
Well done and well said, citizen, now get back into line so we can laser a barcode on your dick.
1) Fashion the explosives into artificial limbs (if possible) and have amputee suicide bombers wear them on the plane -- being sure to sit next to a window in the cabin for obvious reasons....
...Which bomb-sniffers, X-Rays and physical inspections can deal with just fine.
:-)
3) The simple, elegant solution involving explosives and the use of that small hidden place all women have (for the most part) if you know what I mean....
Yeah, but then they'll just start looking out for women in Burqas who are walking around the airport funny, sweating and with these strained looks on their faces.
You forgot one visible set of countermeasures: USE MORE BOLD FONT. That will TERRIFY the TERRORISTS into UTTER BAWLING SUBMISSION.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Le's all move to the netherlands, so noone can tell us anything about smoking pot
> because the ability to carry out a wiretap obtained legally via due process in the courts within a useful timeframe is definitely an awful, horrible infringement upon my liberty
If they can do it under false pretenses (basically just saying "He's a terrorism suspect," whether he is or is not) then it is a problem. We don't want people blowing stuff up, and we would like the FBI to be able to stop them, but if it means they can infringe my Constitutional rights, they need to find another way to do their job.
That said, I don't personally have a problem with Internet access being monitored if it is publicly available. The access on planes that have it, AFAIK, is available to everyone on the plane, and therefore semi-public. It was not paid-for by the passenger (I'm assuming?) so the passenger should have little to no expectation of privacy.
With or without the ability to 'wiretap,' I wouldn't be checking sensitive EMail from the plane.
As far as stopping terrorists... all I have to say is: "Air Marshalls".
/. article at http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/30/18 54228&tid=123&tid=95&tid=145
An Air Marshall, equipped with a gun, loaded with rubber bullets, could easily have aprehended a few people with home made knives and box cutters. This would be an effective security measure that would cost less than a police officer (less fitness, etc., required).
For those of you who doubt that, here is another one! "Cabin Locks", which, as was reported but never listened to, have long been known to be faulty and easily forced. When you know that other hijackings have occurred and the terrorists do not intend to let the passengers live, the pilot's should simply lock their cabin and not allow anyone in. If the locks were sturdy, we would be "that much safer".
Now, for these wiretaps. When in recorded history have terrorists communicated in-flight via DSL? At the point in which they intercept, and block, terrorist activity, what the fuck will they do about it? Take it down with a cruise missile? With half an hour between the first trade-center collision and the pentagon collision, with knowledge of flight 77 (the pentagon crash) being hijacked for 40 minutes, they sure as hell did a great job dealing with it.
All this BS is simply an excuse for less more government power. In this age of the DMCA and the RIAA's lobbying against "information stealing", the government is getting more and more freedom with our information.
As for "if it passes the review of a judge", I would like to point you to the
in which "CVS logs showing that he downloaded more then he uploaded" were the evidence allowing the confiscation of all his electronic equipment (anything capable of reading electronic media), and all his file folders. Either the judge was completely tech-debilitated, or he simply didn't give a fuck.
~nog_lorp
"If they can do it under false pretenses (basically just saying "He's a terrorism suspect," whether he is or is not) then it is a problem."
Read the post. What part of "obtained legally via due process in the courts" is so unclear?
(Sorry, I'm just a little tired of people basically ignoring that line and harping on the issue of judges who are corrupt/inept, in which case the court order *would not* have been obtained legally, and thus the GP's point would still hold true)
> And when people rush, they make mistakes.
Or when they are incompetent. I bring that up because even when they are not rushing, they make a lot of mistakes.
I did, in fact, read every word of your post. I didn't conveniently ignore anything in it.
> judges who are corrupt/inept, in which case the court order *would not* have been obtained legally,
Wouldn't the warrant still have been obtained "legally," even though it happened due to someone's incompetence? I think that's where the confusion lays.
There is no way an investigator can relay the facts regarding a suspect to a prosecutor who then has to understand the technical drivel enough to explain it to a judge who then has to comprehend all the facts and make a legal decision in under 10 minutes. The process takes at a minimum hours. A speedy legal system is not as good as it sounds.
It seems to me that you have generalized a conception of "the liberal response", and want a specific reason why it is that way.
I don't think the original poster wanted any specific reasons at all. The poster was insincere in his or her attempt to determine the rationale that liberal slashdotters apply in coming to conclusions. The poster did not seek dialogue, which may have provided an answer to a question like, 'Why do many Slashdotters question the government's use of technology?'. Instead, the poster attempted to denigrate liberal Slashdotters by asking, 'Why do stupid, liberal Slashdotters constantly seek to undermine the ability of our government to protect us from terrorists?'
The fact that the post was a first post, that it generated a great many number of responses, and that it directed the nature of the conversation to the poster's own ends suggests a troll. And, with lines like, "Call me crazy, but if the FBI needs 10 minute wiretapping on a WIFI setup to keep my plane from being blown up by a bunch of Islamic radicals, then so be it", the troll is confirmed. Who could possibly disagree? Who among us will suggest that allowing the FBI to prevent radical Muslims from blowing up planes is bad? By suggesting that such people exist, the poster attempts to paint all liberals with the stupid brush. Troll, indeed.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
First off regardless what the FCC says, the FAA can still over rule them when it comes to *anything* on a US based aircraft and their non accountable to just the US judicial system when it comes to their rules. Not to mention, " The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" will do nothing to protect you from an airline who chooses to do whatever they please with your data if they so decide to put in a statement to the effect in their ticketing agreement which each and everyone of us agrees to everytime we buy a ticket...and if you think that this will effect the flying public's desire to fly a given airline or not then you are sadly mistaken the reality of life is that people will fly the lowest carrier 99% of the time.
(1% being die hard frequent flyers or people who really should own their own aircraft anyways).
I think you hit the nail on the head, there. Good disection.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
You ungrateful wretches: why can't you appreciate a government so efficient they've already fixed all the security problems below 30,000 feet?
Thanks!
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
Here's the problem with that: A) The laptop won't work anymore so they would probably figure that out before the flight B) You still send the laptop through X-ray! They would see that it doesn't look like the 1,000's of other laptops that go through the machine. WiFi doesn't give them anything they couldn't do today. The FBI is just obcessed with tapping anything communication related. Even if it makes no sense at all, and terrorists have encryption tools to adequately protect communications in their possesion today.
I would say Israel does a little more than provide 'education' in dealing with terror. They have turned their country into a fortress and physically walled their enemy off from themselves. They also bulldoze the family homes of all the murderers they identify. Not quite the sensitive, soft approach you advocate, but one which I admire.
an ill wind that blows no good
No such judge is present in the FISA courts. They can prove me wrong by publishing transcripts of FISA hearings. Taking their word for it is not an option.
> It's better to be a live chump who's email was intercepted by the feds than a dead one who's viagra spam remained a secret.
Guess you don't live in New Hampshire, where the state motto is "Live free or die."