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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."
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?
"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.
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