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In-Flight Wi-Fi Provider Going Above and Beyond To Help Feds Spy
An anonymous reader sends in a report from Wired that GoGo, a company the provides in-flight Wi-Fi access to airline passengers, seems to be making every effort to assist law enforcement agencies with wiretaps. From the article:
"Gogo and others that provide Wi-Fi aboard aircraft must follow the same wiretap provisions that require telecoms and terrestrial ISPs to assist U.S. law enforcement and the NSA in tracking users when so ordered. But they may be doing more than the law requires. According to a letter (PDF) Gogo submitted to the Federal Communications Commission, the company voluntarily exceeded the requirements of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, by adding capabilities to its service at the request of law enforcement. The revelation alarms civil liberties groups, which say companies should not be cutting deals with the government that may enhance the ability to monitor or track users."
Where's Antonio Prohias when you need him?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
not surprised, considering we live in the optomicon.
I think you mean panopticon.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I have OpenVPN installed on my portable devices, and it connects back to my VPN server, using my own CA. I have the devices set to use the VPN server as the gateway so when I'm doing any kind of data retrieval that I want to keep confidential, it's going through an encrypted tunnel. Yes, it does slow things down a bit, but I find most public WiFi sucks pretty serious donkey balls anyways.
Nothing is 100% secure, but I pretty much treat any public network; airport, airplane, hotel, restaurant, or the like as hostile territory.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
While it would be nice to have Internet access on a domestic US flight, I find it's a nice break to not have it. Things I can do 'offline' are, read, nap, converse with strangers sitting next to me, admire the view from the window, hit on the cute female flight attendant, sketch... If you need to be connected for business that's one thing. For 90% of people on planes, that probably isn't that case!
Now, Internet on international flights? Absolutely!
Take a moment and unplug, people! It will do you some good!
Can't say I blame them. What's the downside for GoGo? They're not going to lose any revenue over this. They have monopoly control over a captive audience that literally can't go elsewhere for service. On the other hand, the airline industry is already deeply, deeply in bed with law enforcement. When it comes time to get a franchise as an in-flight provider I expect that an endorsement by the TLAs is only going to work in GoGo's favor.
It'd be nice if they'd keep their hands off our packets, but who are we kidding? Unless all network providers suddenly get regulated as common carriers that's just not going to happen. Whether you're in the air, in Starbucks, or leeching wi-fi from your next-door neighbor you have to assume that your packets are being logged and analyzed.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
As if any actual NSA target of interest is going to google bomb-making information, email other members of their sleeper cell, or update their subscription to Inspire magazine while actually ON a flight.
I have OpenVPN installed on my portable devices, and it connects back to my VPN server, using my own CA. I have the devices set to use the VPN server as the gateway so when I'm doing any kind of data retrieval that I want to keep confidential, it's going through an encrypted tunnel. Yes, it does slow things down a bit, but I find most public WiFi sucks pretty serious donkey balls anyways.
Nothing is 100% secure, but I pretty much treat any public network; airport, airplane, hotel, restaurant, or the like as hostile territory.
That's all pointless. They've tapped your home connection too. Your ISP gives them anything they want on a silver platter.
The last time I used gogoinflight I was using it to search for and download freely available academic papers for work. I know I should be appalled at them giving up the data, but I wouldn't use a service like that for anything that I would be worried about the feds looking in on.
In my case, being a medical student -- what if I happen to be studying infectious diseases at the moment? Maybe some novel Influenza strains, or bacterial antibiotic resistance profiles, or epidemiological models of disease spread? Possibly even actual bio-terrorism agents, as these were a pretty big item on my board exams (probably someone at the federal level pushed the NBME/NBOME to emphasize them, there was way too much given the relative clinical utility of the topic).
My colleagues would find those topics perfectly normal and usual items of study, but I'd hate to end up on a watch list because MUH TERRORISM.
Can't say I blame them. What's the downside for GoGo?
As I work with secured customer data, knowing that I'm possibly getting MITM'd sounds like a likelihood I won't be able to use GoGo (now I have to go and verify if it's ok). So abstinence is always an option, despite me being gogo's captive.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Interestingly, the article says that, at the request of law enforcement, they added CAPTCHA support. The article then goes on to say that this must be a deception because they used a plural, it "doesn't make sense", etc.
Actually, it makes a lot of sense. How is every IED detonated these days? Cell phone. Buy a cheap, anonymous phone, wire it up, and call it to detonate it. Wifi that wasn't resistant to automated signup would make this trivial. They could just sign up with an anonymous phone and pre-paid Visa. Then, when it's in the air, *BOOM*
It also makes a lot of sense that they don't want to talk about it. Don't want to give people ideas.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
but I don't think the remaining brainwash / control aspects of the totalitarian govt are realistic.
Then you are not paying attention. its here, today. Perhaps not as overly as in the book, but it is happening every day.
Everybody wants to be part of the 1%.
Clearly that is not the case anymore. Too many people are willing to live on handouts from the government, using the funds from the rest of us, and not aspire to be 'better'..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
While this won't make the tinfoil-hat people happy, there's almost nothing here.
The PDF is pretty harmless, and the Wired article is 100% speculative bullshit.
CALEA was the law when they built their system, so they built their system to support it. Saying things like "in close conjunction with law enforcement" is just flowery wording to say they made a phone call or two. The PDF is the most boring "meets or exceeds expectations" paper I've ever read.
Nolan, asked about those statements, said, “Despite what the person said in 2009, what I can tell you today and what the truth is today is that we adhere to CALEA and we do everything in conjunction with what law enforcement has asked us to do.” He added that, “There is no ‘super CALEA’ capability. Our capabilities and what we adhere to are exactly what any communications provider, including on the ground networks, adhere to when they abide by CALEA. Nothing more and nothing less.
GoGo is provided by a company called Aircell, out of Itasca, IL. They rely on a network of ~400 AT&T cell tower locations to provide connectivity (its all interconnected over MPLS). Row 44 is a competitor, and they use satellite connectivity, and hence can provide coverage over the ocean or international countries.
Not all relevant info, but thought I'd throw it out there.
...terrorism!
No, Lawful Intercept.
Don't shoot the company that is complying with government wishes. When the FBI knocks on a CEO's door and says "you need to do this and this", the CEO will have little choice but to comply. Yes, in theory he may refuse an order if it is not 100% a requirement per the law, but that will only make his own life difficult. Remember that it is the same government that hands out licenses for the CEO's business, and the same government that collects that CEO's taxes. The government can make life very, very difficult for the CEO, even while staying within the boundaries of the law (tax audits, anyone?).
When focusing on a single company, you're losing sight of the bigger picture. The problem is that the government has little regard for the end-user's privacy, and sacrifices civil liberties in the name of security. It is the government that needs a slap on the hand, not the company that has been "exposed" (but I do agree that morally, the company is on the wrong side in history).
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Actually, the people with enough disposable cash to use in-flight internet are the most likely to have an impact if they protest being spied on.
I don't think the problem is about corporations providing requested information to law enforcement. The problem is more about making sure there is a valid warrant before handing over the requested data. Court provided warrants have been a crucial and well litigated part of US law enforcement and are used to provide a level of protection that satisfies the requirements under the 4th Amendment. It's never been a perfect system but it is what it is.However the FISA warrants introduce a gigantic loophole into the entire process. People are just supposed to "trust" the government which is an absurd notion in the extreme. FISA warrants are basically requests for information that can be used to obtain a regular court approved search warrant. Any information collected using a FISA warrant can be presented to the court when trying to obtain a normal warrant but none of the information collected under a FISA warrant can be used in court against a defendant.
I have OpenVPN installed on my portable devices, and it connects back to my VPN server, using my own CA. I have the devices set to use the VPN server as the gateway so when I'm doing any kind of data retrieval that I want to keep confidential, it's going through an encrypted tunnel. Yes, it does slow things down a bit, but I find most public WiFi sucks pretty serious donkey balls anyways.
Nothing is 100% secure, but I pretty much treat any public network; airport, airplane, hotel, restaurant, or the like as hostile territory.
That's all pointless. They've tapped your home connection too. Your ISP gives them anything they want on a silver platter.
I wouldn't say pointless. He's protected from public wifi that is easily monitored/manipulated by anybody with physical access to it.
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
I work for an ISP that provides in air wifi wholesale to the likes of the goofy companies that sell it in air. We have traffic shapers. If you want to control connections of people in air, you must have traffic shapers. Traffic shapers in and of themselves massively report (by default) on the activity and log tonnes of data about each person connected. This is done for many reasons. Mostly to study and trend behaviour on one's network. CALEA requires a small subset of the reporting AND taps be in place. We also have taps to aid troubleshooting the network. If CALEA has done anything, it's required us to get more taps and put them in more places. We wanted them there to begin with; it's just easier to approve the hundreds of millions in taps if it's 'for CALEA' and thus a requirement.
1 back up your drive.
2 encrypt your back up drive
3 ship the drive to your destination
4 wipe your drive with a clean install, don't encrypt it.
5 fly and enjoy something from a ripped DVD No need to set off alams with encryption or shady content.
6 after passing security with a sanitized drive, arrive and pick up your real data.
The truth shall set you free!
Agreed. I'm an engineering student and I'm the head of one of my student competitions which happens to involve building a high powered rocket. I had to travel on the day of an important meeting for the competition and was forced to leave the task to a rather junior member of the team. I couldn't check in on one of team members when I was in either airport because I was afraid of being labeled as a terrorist and end up in an interrogation room because I was discussing basic rocketry with a team member.
Don't be so sure about the brainwashing aspect. Haven't you noticed the way they try to redefine words like torture to exclude whatever they have done? The way the internal passport/national ID card was redefined as an 'enhanced drivers license'? How the bill that pisses all over everything the country stands for is called the Patriot act?
All that trouble because stupid fearfull people might put you on a no fly list for doing your god damn job? Nice country. Great people. Land of the free.
Yes, protected from a few hops ... at which point it then turns around and goes right back out on the public internet ... which can be easily monitored/manipulated by anybody with physical, virtual, remote or local access to it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager