Federal agencies want to monitor Internet on airplanes

Federal agencies want to monitor Internet on airplanes

With the airline companies in the United States starting to offer Internet connectivity in their planes while on flight, the federal agencies in the United States are seeking permission to get control over their implementation. They want to maintain proper surveillance on the facilities available to the travelers in the space to meet the government’s concerns about terrorism.

Some of the powers these authorities are seeking include the ability to intercept, block, or divert e-mail or other online communication to and from aircraft after obtaining a court order. This would require the airline operator to allow government monitoring within 10 minutes of a court order being granted. The agencies would be able to electronically identify users by their seat numbers and be required to collect and store records of the communications for 24 hours.

These powers are much more than what the federal agencies have on the Internet usage on the land connections. However, the FBI, Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security have jointly made these requires to ensure the safety of the people traveling on the planes. They fear that the services provided on the planes to connect to Internet can be used by terrorist groups to coordinate an attack with more facilities in hand.

In fact, there are also possibilities of detonating a bomb on board on planes using the Internet connectivity. However, a digital rights policy group claims that if the federal agencies were given the permissions for monitoring these activities in planes, they would soon ask for similar powers on the landline connections.