Thursday, July 14, 2005

Big Brother Wants to Listen on Planes

You might be able to use Wi-Fi soon on airplanes, that will be nice. So the government is butting in and saying that for security from terrorists they need to be able to tap into any communications with 10 minutes notice. They're saying it's a reasonable extension of the exiting CALEA act but as this Wired article points out, they've been extending it to as much as they can.

This argument really bothers me. It's not too much of a leap to say that the FBI needs to be able to remotely control cars because terrorists could use car bombs. In 23 pages the proposal offers no justification other than mentioning that hijackers could use such systems to coordinate attacks, and federal agents on board could use it to communicate with the ground. For the latter no extra support is needed and on 9/11 such communication via cell phone from the fourth plane was the only thing that was effective in saving lives. For the former there's no explanation what would be gained, it wasn't available or used on 9/11 so why would a terrorist use such capabilities? All the video monitoring in England didn't prevent or lessen the attacks in London, though they have made the after-the-fact investigation easier.