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Delta Air Lines Sued Over Alleged E-mail Hacking
alphadogg writes "Delta Air Lines is being sued for allegedly hacking the e-mail account of a passenger rights advocate supporting legislation that would allow access to food, water and toilets during long delays on the tarmac. Kathleen Hanni, executive director of Flyersrights.org, alleges Delta obtained sensitive e-mails and files and used the material in an attempt to derail the 'Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights of 2009,' of which four versions are pending before Congress. The suit was filed on Tuesday in US District Court for the Southern District of Texas and seeks a minimum of $11 million in damages. Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007, had been investigating surface delays in air travel."
Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007, had been investigating surface delays in air travel. According to the suit, Hanni exchanged information with Frederick J. Foreman, who worked for Metron Aviation, which was hired by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to study surface delays. The suit says Foreman provided information to Hanni with permission from Metron, including a report that fingered Delta as having excessive surface delays. Metron is also named in the suit.
During the correspondence, AOL informed Hanni that her e-mails, spreadsheets and lists of donors were being redirected to an unknown destination. Also, files on Hanni's computer became corrupted, the suit says. The hacking began in 2008 and continued through this year.
This does not constitute "hacking" (or even cracking, as it should be termed). Unless I've missed something here, the actual allegation is that information was improperly disclosed, but not that an email account was broken into.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
They'd also be entitled to clean air and access to medical treatment.
Who does she think she is, the Pope?!
Another story on the lawsuit currently circulating on the wires includes this nugget: "Through a spokesman, Delta denied that it was involved in any hacking. 'Obviously, the idea that Delta would hack into someone’s email is clearly without merit,' spokesman Trebor Banstetter wrote in an email."
Without prejudging the facts in the case, I'm not sure that "clearly" and "obviously" are adverbs that belong in any statement relating to wrongdoing on the part of a huge corporation.
I'd like to point out that we may suffer many fewer flight and road delays if our country had a well-developed passenger rail service.
Busy routes like LA-SF, LA-Phoenix, and Miami-Atlanta could easily be replaced by fast trains and therefore take a lot of load off of our air and highway infrastructure at a relatively small price.
I'd be sure to "accidentally" leave my password lying around in plain sight.
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Thinking back to Nader v. General Motors Corp., 307 N.Y.S.2d 647 (N.Y. 1970) and overzealous surveillance.
Larger corps have a few game plans:
1. Pay off and you stop.
2. Discredit with a "past", real, hyped or almost created.
3. Useless busy work via infiltration and re directing. Or a personality implosion of the groups eg COINTELPRO.
A fishing expedition? Looking for leaks, press contacts and members.
The planting of logger.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...look for the leaks.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
How's that crack pipe taste?
Man you must be so high you can fly without a plane.
My parents are bringing our whole family to Cimarron, NM for Christmas, and already booked flights. To get there, I'm going to have to leave my home in the middle of the day and drive 25 miles to the airport. I'll have to get there an hour early and go through an intrusive security check. They'll also make me pay more for my bags at the airport. I'll then have to walk to the gate and wait there, then board in a line, then settle into my cramped seat and wait on the tarmac. I'll have to keep my electronics off until we reach cruising altitude. We'll then have to fly to the hub in Chicago, doing all of the previous stuff in reverse for landing and disembarkment, layover, and re-boarding. We'll then fly to Amarillo and do everything in reverse. I'll be landing in Amarillo after dark. Then I'll have to get a hotel because it'll be too late to reach Cimarron. So the next day I'll then be renting a car and driving 250 miles to Cimarron (no sizable airports near it) and get there in the afternoon. On the return trip, all of this will happen in reverse.
Well, I decided to check, and sure enough, there's an Amtrak stop 85 miles from my house and another 40 miles from Cimarron, with a direct line between them. So instead, I could leave my house at shortly before 6 in the evening, get on a train at around 7:30 with almost no waiting at the station, settle into whatever comfortable seat I want (I find rail travel to be *much* more comfortable than air travel), have a power outlet for my laptop, recline way back and sleep from 11 to 9 AM, get off at 11:30 AM, and get to Cimarron just after noon. With all costs added in, significantly cheaper, way more comfortable, saves six hours of driving, no hellish airport experiences, and faster. And way less environmental impact.
This may be an extreme case, but most people don't ever bother thinking to check to see whether a train can get them to their destination reasonably. A lot of people use the argument that as a less population-dense country, the US can't support rail. Well, population density arguments apply to *every* mode of public transportation, including air. Less population dense areas means fewer airports and fewer flights.
I loved riding the rails around Japan. Back in the US, get the speeds up and add more tracks, and at least I personally will ride them most places I go.
Mr. Wizard... why is this place called the Cave of Hopelessness?
I work in the industry and I believe that a Bill of Rights for passengers is long overdue. Will it necessarily cost the airline more in revenue, no. But, the demands need to be reasonable.
If Delta's found to have done this, all their executives should have to sit in an airplane on the tarmac for a week. With no food, or bathrooms. There's some poetic justice!
... but I've long ago decided that I'm stuck on teh tarmac, I'm gonna going to poop my pants. Definitely.
So all this aside, does this mean I can sit up and use the bathroom when I need to , if we are grounded, because we all know the expert training it takes to be an airline stewardess, and the amount of hours spent walking on a wobbly surface.
I mean seriously, if they stoop this low to get an advantage against this bill, I think they should be put in their place.
I hope I'm never stuck on the tarmac for more than an hour. That's when I will open the emergency door and get off the plane. I'm sure that sitting in jail will be more comfortable than sitting on a stopped plane.
OK, so the first time someone tries this, they will be physically restrained, and probably beaten. Oh my god, a passenger refuses to sheepishly comply? They must be a terrorist, and be banned from air travel for life. But honestly, I can't image being stuck for hours without fresh air or use of the lavatory. If I had to go, I would tell the attendant that I can't hold it any longer, and that I need to return to the gate. For medical reasons, you understand. If refused, I can image that peeing on the floor would get the point across.
I think if the passengers would start to rebel -- gently at first -- the airlines would not longer think, "Eh, let's just wait another hour and see if we feel like flying then" They would start to think, "OK, we only have 45 minutes before things get ugly. If this problem is not solved soon we need to return to the gate."
For shorter trips (say, up & down the east coast), train travel is the way to go. But cross country? I thought about booking an Amtrak trip from Northern VA to Des Moines one time. It would have taken days, and was more expensive than the equivalent airline ticket.