How the NSA obtains and uses airline reservations (2013)

I think that one of the interesting aspects of this talk was explaining that the airline companies really have no incentive to fight abuse beyond recognizable fraud.

I mean, someone could build some really interesting services on top of these holes, one I was thinking of is that for customers who do not check into their flights before a certain period of time, somehow one could get those flight codes and change the information, and then people nearby the airport can hitch the ride while everything looking good from the perspective of the airline company or even a Frequent flier miles as a service, where someone just creates accounts by automatic means, and scans for trips that don't have ff codes applied and uses "their" code for it and passes those miles to someone else for a price.

As we amass more and more data, and devices get cheaper to leak stuff, i wouldn't be surprised to see some interesting power shifts from traditional incumbents (the NSA's of the world, to more lean operations who are increasingly in a position to mine/exploit similar large amounts of information at scale).

well, that's disturbing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3kl3e9/which_manuf...

Sure, but rolling this back now, especially in this political climate, seems exceedingly unlikely.

But to what advantage? Before governments knew who was arriving on thier shores travellers would be held for days, even months, sometimes on dedicated islands. Even in the 90s, 10+ hours to clear customs and immigration was not unussual in many countries. Today, law enforcement and immigration officials can rely upon advance data and do away with lengthy in-person background checks for all. This is why land crossings, which are unannounced, take so much longer and are more unpredictable than air crossings.

Fly to Dubai. Then try driving to Dubai. Same boarder, vastly different inspection.

What would be better in this case? Should anyone be able to show up to an airport, pay for a ticket and board a flight anonymously?

I'm a pretty staunch libertarian and even I can see the benefit here. Until we reach the border-less, one-world utopia that so many people seem to be gunning for, it's valuable to know who is coming/going from your country.

That's not consent, manufactured or otherwise.

In season 1 of the X-Files the 'Lone Gunmen,' a group of conspiracy theorists, was added to the show to make Mulder appear more credible and down-to-earth. One of their 'crazy, batshit insane,' conspiracy theories was that the government was recording all of our phone calls.

think of all of the circumstances we've become used to now that were the territory of conspiracy theorists 25 years ago.

Is there anything Canada could do, if the US started targeting overflights aggressively, forbidding travel by dual citizens from certain countries, etc.

This isn't space unilaterally claimed by the US. It is delegated by the ICAO, as one of the articles using that image mentions [1]. If the US has the infrastructure to control that airspace, and typically charges less than nearby countries such as Canada, then I see no objection to US control.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air#First_free...

I can't recall specifics, but look at this:

http://wikitravel.org/en/Avoiding_a_transit_of_the_United_St...

The US doesn't allow "sterile transit". You MUST clear customs if you land in the States. And it requires a visa for most people. FTA:

The US also has a "no fly list"; if your name is on that, you cannot board a flight that will pass through US airspace, even if the flight does not land in the US (eg. flights from Mexico to Canada).

i.e. there is every reason to believe that someone on a "no fly list" who accidentally lands in the States will be arrested. Similarly, anyone without a visa is breaking the law, and can be arrested.

> I would also venture that in 2004 noone had or needed a direct feed to the NSA, the Internet would already do. In case you do not remember, how 2004 was, by 2000 you have Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Hotwire, Tripadvisor all launched.

That doesn't cover airline bookings that happened via travel agent or directly into the booking system. Many airline reservation systems pre-date the internet (SABRE, for example, came online in 1964), and much of the architecture driving the airline industry is archaic (which is one reason why a system outage can have such a massive impact on flights).

I'm not the OP but it doesn't strike me as absurd to imagine that if the security apparatus doesn't like you, they'll happily take whatever flimsy pretext presents itself to ruin your day.

E.g. if they can get you for some silly "illegal landing" violation they will, if not they'll try to trump up some other charges.

The post sounds a little off to me too but why do you think no one would openly talk about the NSA before 2006? Nerds have been telling each other ghost stories about ECHELON since the 90s at least and Bramford's books and many other disclosers are even earlier.

> A flight which does not start or end in the USA rarely has the need to fly over it. Europe/Asia - Central America would and not much else -- and there are very few such direct flights, mostly only to Mexico City.

How about Canada to Central/South America? There are nonstop flights from Toronto/Vancouver to several cities. There are also flights from Canada to southern Europe that pass through the US. Even flights within Canada (Toronto to Vancouver) pass over the US. And routes from Canada to Asia fly over Alaska.

> 13 years ago, that is 2004 noone would openly talk about the NSA

Nonsense. The movie Enemy of the State came out in 1998 and the NSA was involved in the production, though the agency was portrayed negatively, to its chagrin.