Slashdot Mirror
NSA, GCHQ Have Been Intercepting In-Flight Mobile Calls For Years (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: American and British spies have since 2005 been working on intercepting phone calls and data transfers made from aircraft, France's Le Monde newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing documents from former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden. According to the report, also carried by the investigative website The Intercept, Air France was targeted early on in the projects undertaken by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, GCHQ, after the airline conducted a test of phone communication based on the second-generation GSM standard in 2007. That test was done before the ability to use phones aboard aircraft became widespread. "What do the President of Pakistan, a cigar smuggler, an arms dealer, a counterterrorism target, and a combatting proliferation target have in common? They all used their everyday GSM phone during a flight," the reports cited one NSA document from 2010 as saying. In a separate internal document from a year earlier, the NSA reported that 100,000 people had already used their mobile phones in flight as of February 2009, a doubling in the space of two months. According to Le Monde, the NSA attributed the increase to "more planes equipped with in-flight GSM capability, less fear that a plane will crash due to making/receiving a call, not as expensive as people thought." Le Monde and The Intercept also said that, in an internal presentation in 2012, GCHQ had disclosed a program called "Southwinds," which was used to gather all the cellular activity, voice communication, data, metadata and content of calls made on board commercial aircraft.
Now what?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I don't believe it.
I am against spying and mass surveillance but honestly wouldn't mind making an exception for communications aboard aircraft. inb4 slippery slope fallacy
All 5eyes countries have moved to a more extreme surveillance regime over time.
Take Theresa May, she was Home Secretary. For quite a while only women would be made Home Secretary, and we didn't know why. Then we found out about the mass surveillance of Britain done in secret and against Parliament wishes and the reason was clear. Online porn. Men surf porn, MPs do too.
You can't have a boss with a weak spot being spied on by GCHQ. So the Prime Minister always chose a surveillance friendly women in the role of Home Secretary, who wouldn't rock the boat, and wouldn't be vulnerable to the surveillance.
So David Cameron resigns, and she sort of works her way from the Home Office, into the Prime Ministers office. Did we elect her? No, she just sort of became the PM. None of the major political candidates wanted to stand, I wonder why, they would all know about the surveillance.
And as PM she passes a new law, legalizing the mass surveillance they were already doing.
So you can see how GCHQ's mass surveillance of Britain has affected the political makeup of Britain. Just by existing, they've made Britain into an authoritarian state with an unelected leader.
And the same pattern is happening right across the 5 eyes nations. With leaders increasingly being pro-surveillance, extreme right, in power without a democratic mandate from the voters. Trump is just the latest of these.
486/66 with 8 need your help! kill? myself like
Spy agencies gonna spy. It's what they do. For the NSA there's some legal issues with intercepts of US citizens communications inside the US, or perhaps on US carriers (not sure about that though). No such restriction on GHCQ.
What do the President of Pakistan, a cigar smuggler, an arms dealer, a counterterrorism target, and a combatting proliferation target have in common?
They're all legit targets for surveillance.
At this point (honestly well before it) its simpler to assume that any and all communications medium around the globe have been spied upon by the 5 Eyes coalition since at least the mid 80's when Bell and others began to coalesce and merge once more due to deregulation and a very friendly set of first-world government policies.
The proof will be nice, but its kind of done deal at this point that it happened. Letters, phone calls, internet communications, BBS systems, and even fucking smoke signals were likely intercepted by at least one member.
So... what are we gonna do to prevent this in the future despite these government's insistence on being allowed to look at our stuff?
And keep in mind, those who say they have nothing to hide, its not just the governments get this data, its anyone who can hack them. And you always have something to hide, or do you really not care if your neighbors/family/pastor know what kind of porn you like to surf at 3am on Sunday when the family is all asleep?
This is only the current set of programs. The prior set had other names, and were data shared under other agreements.
And, as always, you won't do anything.
You never do.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I have never been able to establish a connection while at cruising altitude. I haven't tried during takeoff or landing though.
ZERO.
I find it hard to believe the editors of Slashdot find this news worthy.
An astute POTUS with business acumen could use this capability to gather industrial intel and turn a tidy profit for himself !
The law is not an ass. No really.
https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/cnslttns/ntnl-scrt/thm09-en.aspx
If they haven't been, they'd be negligent. Their damn job is to spy. I realize that you idiots reject reality, but there are more than 1.5 billion people who believe that you must bow 5 times a day to Allah, and another 1.3 billion who are adequately willing to killing you to protect the communist party in China. Both of those groups outnumber the western world and are part of cultures that view the destruction of western cultures as a good thing.
So this smells like maybe Imarsat got tapped, but were they tapping at the ground teleport relay points, using some sort of lawful access backdoor hole? Can't be satellite SIGINT capture, wince that would only capture conversation going up to a satellite.
Goatse!
]=O=*[
Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it!
I've requested some of my intercepted financial statements which was encrypted by ransomware on my fileservers, but up to the moment I am still waiting a copy from them.
captcha: shallow (post)
intercepting ALL calls for years.
The ongoing damage control trying to convince you that you haven't been living in "gilded cage".
You privacy is invaded for advertising! It's invaded for nation security!
That is misleading.
It's invaded so that you can be kept down "where you belong" by people who got fat off easy business and don't have the ability to compete with you if you are able to reach your potential and enter an even playing field.
Please tell me that quoted NSA "internal document" was not classified. I'm not supposed to read US govt classified information except under specific conditions. Even if it's widely distributed or "public knowledge". Classified means classified. Publishing classified information right in the slashdot story stream where I could read it places me in a difficult position.
Or beastiality.. a certain Parliament member's member in a pig's mouth anyone?
CP viewing from British government was brought up on slashdot a year or two back: There was also another about a sex abuse scandal utilizing orphans/foster children during the 80s up until recently. Interestingly, before the last member of that ring died, it was covered up by the allegations against Pitcairn's residents who in turn were jailed on the island with a moratorium on children under 13 living there. Interesting in that this helped distract from British government's own misdeeds in that realm, while also ensuring the slow death of the island's population, ensuring that independence will not be sought and access to the EEZ surrounding that and other nearby islands remains with Britain, who will no doubt begin largescale resource extraction efforts there in the coming decades.
Go look through the archives, it is all there. If the future is not to be rife with blackmail and sex abuse there needs to be a great culling from the top and unwilling members of the populace need to take up those positions in turn to help things recover. Politicians as currently established need to fall or be made to decline until control returns to the people.
Not classified any more, apparently.
IMHO this was all about industrial espionage, it's difficult to imagine a reason for terrorist to use these services, they try to keep low profile.
Please tell me that quoted NSA "internal document" was not classified. I'm not supposed to read US govt classified information except under specific conditions. Even if it's widely distributed or "public knowledge". Classified means classified. Publishing classified information right in the slashdot story stream where I could read it places me in a difficult position.
Grow up.
It's like when the NIPR system blocked The Guardian website when the Snowdon files were being published.
Well, that's not what they're looking for anyway.
Since you seem to be very factually challenged.
Best Slashdot Co
In other news, the NSA and GCHQ have been spying on ROT13'd telnet connections!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Makes no claims that the NSA was intercepting calls made by those people in the US, nor GCHQ in the UK. Since Air France was targeted they may have been intercepting calls made anywhere in the world.
This is, by the way, what NSA and GCHQ are supposed to be doing. Intercepting foreign (to the US and UK respectively) communications.
Best Slashdot Co
That's what spy agencies do
Maybe you should grow up. It sounds like the OP has a security clearance to maintain, unlike you jobless hippies.
I think the argument could be made in this case about intent. The OP was not intending to come across that material, if he actively went out looking for it that is a different matter.
The NSA, FBI, GCHQ, and these other organizations are all defining terrorist as whoever their opposition is. The solution is not to elect Trump or whatever. He's part of the system pushing for more surveillance, a bigger police state, more boarder walls, etc.
If you want to fix things we have to shrink our expectations and focus on issues at a local level. Not just anywhere, but in one area. The Free State Project is the only real remotely good solution as far as I can see. There aren't enough people who want freedom and liberty to fix the federal government or any government anywhere else. The only way we can fix things is by migrating those who want these things to one region for the purpose of pursuing them and that is what the Free State Project is all about.
It's a proven solution that is having an impact in New Hampshire with about 10% of the 20,000 signers having moved thus far already and we're only begun the migration officially this year. We're getting libertarian politicians elected (and the establishment is freaked out- even targeting libertarians from radio hosts to libertarians politicians who have been elected). They are using sex and drugs to try and undermine the movement, but failing. Real libertarians see right through these tactics and when we get publicity from it we get new movers and signers.
Check out http://www.freestateproject.org/ for info on the movement and http://www.freekeene.com/ for news on libertarian issues in New Hampshire. There are other great sites and places to check out too for videos on activism going on here. YouTube has tons of videos of activists fighting in court (and winning some important cases, like freedom to record police, etc): http://www.youtube.com/freekeene . Every summer there is Porcfest and in the winter Liberty Forum. Both events attract libertarians from across the country. The summer camping event (Porcfest) is the biggest and attracts thousands. The hardest thing to do is resist dropping everything and moving up here. I moved in March and have been super excited about all the weekly events and activities that are going on here that are helping to nudge the bar of progress a little bit further.
The NSA and GCHQ, creeping on citizens since 2005! Good job people, good job.