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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."
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
As a followup to this, it could be reasoned that this is exactly why the federal government is continuing to grow and is larger under the Bush administration than ever before (that is a fact and not a troll). Hiring people to go through this data simply means that you have to find/train a specialist to go through the data looking for patterns or specifics and that because of the increasing types of data the government is trying to examine you have to parallelize this process meaning more than one analyst is looking at the same stream of data. This of course means that more people than ever before are getting access to your personal information. This is important because when "the Government" looks at your data, it is actually a person(s) (with all of their interests/foibles) examining your data.
Automating this with computers simply means that you are initially taking the human element out of it, but the data are eventually disseminated to humans. It also means that large amounts of data are being stored in one place increasing the risk of information breach.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
That is the party line, yes. However (and many of the details are unclear) the authorities contacted ONE indymedia volunteer, who declined to release the relevent logs. They made no attempt to co-operate with rackspace, or the administrators of the server in question, they just knocked together a warrant, marched in and confiscated the server. The response was completely disproportionate to the crime, and the peripheral involvement of the indymedia server in the investigation.
It has also been speculated that the timing of the incident (not long before the G8 summit) was more than a coincidence. Not to mention that this is not the fist time that this sort of action has been taken against Indymedia's servers.
I don't know whether there's any truth in these "conspiracy theories", but I don't just swallow the official record of events either.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
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.
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.
...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!
People here on slashdot brag about committing crimes daily, be it breaking CSS, pirating the latest MS or Adobe product, illegal drugs, etc..
Do you think that Slashdot should be forced to yield the identity (IP, subscription info if applicable, etc.) of posters who do this?
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...
"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
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.