Canadian spookhaus says airport Wi-Fi slurp didn't invade privacy The chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which has been accused of slurping airport Wi-Fi traffic in a story aired on CBC, has denied wrongdoing to a Canadian Senate committee. As part of the never-ending drip-feed of spook secrets served up by Edward Snowden, CBC News alleged that CSEC used …
Airports and other international travel portals such as harbours are tagged as high risk places in most countries as they are the main point of access and thus also used by any Bad Guys™. I sidestep the question if these are the genuine article or People Who Have Seriously Pissed Off a Government.
It's fairly logical to assume that as much monitoring is going on as possible - as a matter of fact, it may be one of the main argument for free WiFi in the first place.
Exactly my thoughts!
Never trust that your data is secure when you connect to a third party wifi network!
But considering most of us carry phones, and I bet most of us turn them on as SOON as we land, I expect to be trackable down to the cell tower level at any point, maybe even down to a few square meters....
IF the spooks are interested in you for any reason, then they will track you, I just think the leaders of the nations should just ensure spooks have warrants for any data tapping, just so they don't go on fishing expeditions, all data tapping should be targeted and then accountable after the fact, so they learn from mistakes, I.E. they target the wrong guy, at the least an apology letter is needed with a note confirming all data was destroyed.
Whether or not those reassurances settle those who believe their privacy has been invaded is another thing.
I was out in a public place using a resource that is free for everyone to use and am now outraged that my privacy has been invaded right there, out in pub... oh... wait...
my 'phone Wi-Fi chip unique MAC address (today) is 40:B2:C7:xx:xx:xx,
my 'phone OS is broadcasting all previously connected to Open SSID's in clear - in the vain hope that my ever scanning Wi-Fi might find that AP again - (Yes that means "Frenchy's Adult Superstore", "King Faisal Mosque Freenet","European Parliament EP-EXT Network", "Fort Meade Lodging WiFi" etc)
metadata - what is it good for? (absolutely everything! is the answer)
@Marketing Hack: They already have records of all Canadian citizen's WiFi MACs so it's easy to filter them out, to be in accordance with the law. :)
@AC: You need an auto-Forget app; or go through them yourself and 'Forget' them if they might cause you problems.
"I rather assumed that all those Canadians died at Vimy ridge so I didn't have to practice John Le Carre-esq trade craft"
I think they died because the various governments concerned didn't give a crap about any dead Canadians:
Wikipedia on Dieppe
Objectives included seizing and holding a major port for a short period, both to prove that it was possible and to gather intelligence.
Kinda got it the wrong way around didn't they?
Never wonder why?
IMEI and MAC addresses are what they like - but they can be changed.
I change my IMEI weekly - if you roam out of country (which makes IMEI swapping redundant) just pop in to your Cellco and have them update the IMEI they have on record.
> I change my IMEI weekly
Probably not good advice, as it's frequently illegal to do so.
There will doubtless be similar laws in other jurisdictions, but someone else can look those up.
Vic.
According Canada's The Globe and Mail, the prime minister's national security advisor told the committee that he was “not totally persuaded” that CSEC had “tapped into airport WiFi”.
Presumably the Prime Minister's National Security Advisor could just ask CSEC if they "tapped into airport WiFi"... me thinks he's deliberately taking the piss out of the committee with that statement.
Rather than a tracking exercise, Forster said CSEC slurped the WiFi metadata as an R&D project. CBC quotes Forster as saying “We weren't targeting or trying to find anyone or monitoring individuals' movements in real time. The purpose of it was to build an analytical model of typical patterns of network activity around a public access mode*.”
Presumably they'd already checked the flight manifests and knew Trevor wouldn't be flying that week, so just used it as an exercise to test their "tracking Trevor's movements" system.
"We do this but not to <home country of data fetishist> citizens."
So what, they cross reference everything to Canadian passport holders and shoot that data over the border for the NSA to scan with their computers?
I'd suggest the first 3 words in such a sentence are honest and accurate.
The rest I think can be filed under "mendacious."
Its a bit like the USB charging ports in Heathrow Terminal 5, now thats an attack vector that just keeps on giving to the security services.
Ah, you mean the Sony charging towers - they're everywhere now. IMHO a VERY clever information acquisition ruse - I must rig up a phone one day to detect the connections it experiences whilst hooked up.
The thing that REALLY burns me up, is we have a bunch of poorly educated yahoos making huge decisions about things they know absolutely nothing about.
The minister has revealed his poor hand by stating, "Oh, it's just metadata. No big deal" when he doesn't even know what metadata IS.
This is becoming a REAL problem in governments around the world.
When the internet, artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, digital currencies, etc. are challenging folks to educate themselves to participate or deal with these issues, why is it that our governing politicos are listening to industry pundits and shaping laws without consulting actual experts or the public.
Even worse, why is some yahoo that thinks evolution is an unprovable theory, global warming doesn't exist and science comes from satan in charge of a country?
Just a completely disgusting situation we have in Canada.
When the internet, artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, digital currencies, etc. are challenging folks to educate themselves to participate or deal with these issues, why is it that our governing politicos are listening to industry pundits and shaping laws without consulting actual experts or the public.
You should be able to see the flaw in that logic for yourself... not consulting actual experts would require politicians who would look into a subject and try to understand it, in order to understand if it needs governance and if so how to govern it effectively.
The problem is that they do consult 'experts', you might not agree with their choice of 'expert, but your elected representative does, that's why he/she picked them to be their expert advisor. With the added benefit that if the 'expert' advice which they will take no matter if it makes sense or not, turns out to be a bag of shite, they have at least a degree of plausible deniability about the negative consequences which they couldn't possibly have foreseen, after all their appointed experts couldn't see them.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
