In-Flight Wi-Fi Provider Going Above and Beyond To Help Feds Spy 78
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."
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
...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).
Read the letter. (Score:2)
Let me break it down.
The letter is from Gogo LLC to the Federal Communications Commission. In the letter, Gogo was trying to persuade the FCC that it was unnecessary for the FCC to specify a mandatory list of capabilities that Gogo would have to implement as a condition for their license. This mandatory list is being pushed for by the U.S.Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S.Department of Homeland Security. Gogo's argument is that it was unnecessary because, in their own w
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The government -- that is you.
Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
And? (Score:1, Insightful)
And yet nothing will happen to them but have some impotent nerd rage flung at them.
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Spy vs Spy vs Spy (Score:4, Funny)
Where's Antonio Prohias when you need him?
The feds can have the data from my last flight... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The feds can have the data from my last flight. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The feds can have the data from my last flight. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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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.
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These days a VPN is pretty much basic protection, like a firewall was 10 years ago. Particularly if you travel or use public wifi, but even at home/work.
Re:The feds can have the data from my last flight. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Yeah very nice (Score:2)
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.
Re:The feds can have the data from my last flight. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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not surprised... (Score:2)
not surprised, considering we live in the optomicon. everybody likes to exclaim "1984!" but I read the book recently and don't think it applies much. In terms of the technical invasion of privacy it is accurate, but I don't think the remaining brainwash / control aspects of the totalitarian govt are realistic.
The other thing that's accurate is the use of endless warfare to put the population into defensive mode. Think of the airports and their "status yellow/orange" bs that GWB was shown to manipulate durin
Re:not surprised... (Score:4, Informative)
not surprised, considering we live in the optomicon.
I think you mean panopticon. [wikipedia.org]
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Then what's an optomicon?
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A made up word from what I can tell.
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Then what's an optomicon?
Yo momma.
Sorry, couldn't help myself.
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You are wrong. Remember that in 1984, Winston is not a regular person (Prole), he is a member of the Outer Party.
The Proles have more freedoms than outer party members because they are no threat. As a consequence, they can express themselves a lot more freely, engage in recreational sex, and a lot of other things that Winston cannot.
You really should think of 1984 as a book about someone trying to enter politics or a very junior member of the house / senate. It's there that obedience is enforced.
There is
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There is speculation right now that chief justice Roberts was blackmailed into supporting Obamacare and rewrote his decision the night before.
I speculate that Justice Roberts is an alien and Obama is a hologram. have you ever shaken his hand? Do you know somebody first-hand who has shaken his hand? I didn't think so.
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agreed that there are serious problems, but making wild speculations and accusations just makes things worse. at least that's what my invisible unicorn told me.
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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'..
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OH yeah, everybody 'living on handouts' is so damned happy!
Have you actually looked in to that at all or did you just swallow the GOP soundbites whole?
So which handouts are those that people are living off of?
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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?
Take a break people! (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
International flights (Score:2)
So what happens when they fly over countries with proper privacy regulations? Hopefully those countries will issue INTERPOL warrants for the company executives.
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Last I checked, no international flights are using Gogo.
Re:International flights (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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But they better be sure to shut down the connectivity before touchdown.
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Sounds good for GoGo (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Abstinence (Score:2)
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.
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You didn't know you were possibly getting MITM'd anyway? If you're working with secure customer data, you should be using a VPN as a matter of course.
Hoping to catch procrastinating terrorists? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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At least one was eager to find out "how to light my wet shoe/underwear bomb"
The problem is that he first needed the answer to "how do I fend off a hundred angry passengers?", which is harder to type than he expected.
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The NSA isn't that interested in terrorists, they prefer industrial espionage and politically motivated spying. Since a lot of business people and politically interesting people fly it makes sense to bug aircraft.
civil liberties? what's that? (Score:1)
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If you use public WiFi without ssh/vpn/tor/etc then you deserve to be spied on.
Oh, you mean we're only spied on when using public WiFi hotspots?
Boy that's a relief. For a minute there I thought hundreds of millions of people were overreacting to the fact that private or public doesn't really fucking matter anymore...
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Oh, you mean we're only spied on when using public WiFi hotspots?
No, that isn't what i said. Try learning some reading comprehension, sarcastic pinhead.
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Oh, you mean we're only spied on when using public WiFi hotspots?
No, that isn't what i said. Try learning some reading comprehension, sarcastic pinhead.
Ah yes, you're right. My bad. Apparently you only need to use encryption on public WiFi hotspots. Obviously you're perfectly secure behind private ones and have little or no need.
Yup, got it. Comprehension wizard you are.
CAPTCHA (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Feds are in the wrong here, not anyone else. (Score:2)
"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."
Uh, companies should not be cutting deals?
That is absolutely the wrong mentality to have here.
How about we address the fact that law enforcement likely knowingly asked for capabilities that exceed their legal purvey. And they knew damn well those requests would likely be granted only due to their federal standing and considerable influence, which again is an abuse of power.
Why in the hell this appears to be pointing blame solely at the companies here is beyond me. Sure, they're complacent, but certainly n
Article is FUD. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Who cares? (Score:2)
How dumb. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Are you a secretary at an ISP? You haven't provided any actual REAL reasons to use traffic shapers at all. There are reasons, but you clearly don't know what they are.
Mafia (Score:1)
We have enough resources and technology to make a system whereby the entire nation gets to vote/decide on any small decision that gets taken. We can even add a weightage system to it so as experts in the field's opinion get more value.
It is about time that we eliminate that form of central decision making, which instead of working for the people, are indulging into spying on them, und