Rattle wrote:

Federal law enforcement officials, fearful that terrorists will exploit emerging in-flight broadband services to remotely activate bombs or coordinate hijackings, are asking regulators for the power to begin eavesdropping on any passenger's internet use within 10 minutes of obtaining court authorization.

The scenerios I can envision as to why they would want these legal powers -- I don't see a terrorist link. Or terrorism being a significant or special element. Except that it opens doors and awakens fears.

I think. This is what I see.

It is a simple technical matter, easy to regulate by the FAA, to prevent a terrorist from being able to detonate a payload on the plane: make all network connections require some physical, inflight interaction to activate, with no ground-to-air inbound connections. If you can do an inflight interaction, your conspirator can detonate the bomb anyway.

Or wait -- maybe the terrorist plants a bomb, gets on their flight, and triggers the explosion. It would make oh so much sense to do it that way -- where if they detect your action, or can trace that the detonation came inflight, your destination is known and escape options limited. Like an open WiFi link, or cell phone call, would be a less likely vector (oh wait, let's regulate those too).

Or, ok, they will only coordinate their terrorist plans while in-flight. I'm just not convinced. It seems like other criminals would have better use for inflight internet activity. Or business people.

Rattle wrote:
Federal law enforcement officials, fearful that terrorists will exploit emerging in-flight broadband services to remotely activate bombs or coordinate hijackings, are asking regulators for the power to begin eavesdropping on any passenger's internet use within 10 minutes of obtaining court authorization.

Hrm.

The scenario here is that I plant an 802.11 equiped device in someone's checked baggage, it got on the plane, gets online, and connects back to me, and then I make it go boom. My gut reaction was that this request was bullshit, but upon consideration I can see that its not. However, I imagine its overbroad and I really don't think airplanes matter. If someone is planning to use the internet to control explosive devices you want the FBI to be able to react quickly regardless of whether or not an airplane is involved.

The whole problem with the patriot act is that they can't fucking just do something honest. Its always got to be a negotiation. I want them to be able to shoot first and ask questions later if there is a real chance they can stop a terrorist attack. But I want people who abuse that to go after some less important crime to get fired. I know from experience they'll use the powers granted under the guise of anti-terror to investigate petty whateverthehelltheywant because I'm a fucking FBI agent and fuck you. There have been plenty of examples of people evoking the patriot act or terrorism in the wake of 9/11 in trite ways.

Having a system that impedes legitimate police work while allowing idiots to claim terrorism when the local holligans wallpaper their town with "all your base are belong to us" serves no one. We ought to consider a structure that enables proper investigations while punishing illegitimate ones.