Twitter is Under Real Time Monitering by the Feds

[MsGuy]

There was this computer security type on an air trip, one Chris Roberts, who casually speculated on twitter on the possibility of hacking into the plane's electronics systems. On landing, he was escorted from the plane by the FBI, questioned for hours and all his gear (iphone excepted) was confiscated. Further, the following Saturday he discovered he was on United's No Fly list.

What bothers (surprises) me about all this is not the our guardians appear to have over-reacted to a bit of idle tweeting by a security expert. It's that the Feds have developed the capacity to monitor electronic messages in real time.

Think about it. A dude hits the send button in mid-air between Denver and Syracuse; the Fed's AI plucks it out of the jillions of tweets clogging the ether and pings some cubicle dweller who gives it a once over, assigns a priority and sets the bureaucratic gears in motion. By some supreme miracle of cross departmental cooperation the FBI boys get the word in time to meet the flight.

When did the Dept. of Homeland Security develop this ability?

Well AS has been dropping hints all along, it was just hard to picture how it would all come together in action.

====

I certainly hope that nothing said above will be misunderstood as a criticism of DHS, or any other arm, agency or branch of the USA government. I am entirely a patriot to my last fiber and, even if I weren't, I'm too old and ill, feeble and addled to get up to any mischief.

Besides it's AdamSmith you want, not me. He's the suspicious one.

[RA1]

I would think a computer looks for "suspicious" words similar to how google and other search engines look for words that suggest the subject of your inquiry.

I think that the US No Fly List goes to all the airlines (as well as charter operators of larger aircraft).

Best regards,

RA1

[MsGuy]

RA1, I have to credit DHS that they didn't put Roberts on the official No Fly list.

United appears to have its own private No Fly list of folks they decline to do business with. I guess an expert on transportation security falls squarely into that category. I would have hired him to fix my systems so they couldn't be hacked but that's just me.

[RA1]

In theory any private business can refuse service and any potential patron can refuse to purchase. Of course, nothing is nowhere near that simple under current US law.

Why would you hire him to fix your systems when his was just hacked? Just curious.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

So last night MsGuy posts the above note outing yours truly.

This morning, ostensibly in follow-up to a tech conference where I spoke on Friday and met a guy from NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), I get an email from his higher-up inviting me to come visit and give them an informal talk about the technology that I spoke about.

Putting the two together -- if I suddenly drop out of posting here, send a search crew to look for me in the shallows of the Chesapeake.

[lookin]

What bothers (surprises) me about all this is not the our guardians appear to have over-reacted to a bit of idle tweeting by a security expert. It's that the Feds have developed the capacity to monitor electronic messages in real time.

Well, they're not the only ones.

I'll match my snooping paranoia with the best of 'em, but even I don't believe you need to be James Clapper to read somebody's tweets. In fact, he may be one of the few people in the world who know how to escape them.

And, once you've read one, what do you do about it? It will probably take our twitchy ol' world some time to figure it all out.

[MsGuy]

... come visit and give ... an informal talk about the technology that I spoke about.

"Mr. Smith, we have so been looking forward to you clarifying a few technical details for us."

[AdamSmith]

[Guest Scorpio]

What bothers (surprises) me about all this is not the our guardians appear to have over-reacted to a bit of idle tweeting by a security expert. It's that the Feds have developed the capacity to monitor electronic messages in real time.

Think about it. A dude hits the send button in mid-air between Denver and Syracuse; the Fed's AI plucks it out of the jillions of tweets clogging the ether and pings some cubicle dweller who gives it a once over, assigns a priority and sets the bureaucratic gears in motion. By some supreme miracle of cross departmental cooperation the FBI boys get the word in time to meet the flight.

When did the Dept. of Homeland Security develop this ability?

I don't know if the Feds have this ability or not. Perhaps they do, but the article doesn't mention how the FBI was alerted. You're presuming the Tweet was scanned from the whole Internet in real time. However, there are filters on public Wi-Fi that prevent one from accessing certain websites. Perhaps the airline has filters on its onboard WiFi and they scanned keywords from its much smaller subset of Internet traffic and alerted the FBI. According to Expedia there are no direct flights between Denver and Syracuse, the shortest one stop flight would take 5.5 hours or as long as 9 hours. I didn't even look at flights with more than one stop.

[RA1]

Are there any non-stop flights between "anywhere" and SYR?

Best regards,

RA1