Plane Finder Phone App Called An 'Aid To Terrorism,' Even If It's Just Using Public Data
from the look,-up-there-in-the-sky,-it's-a-clue dept
Slashdot points us to the news that security experts and the US Dept. of Homeland Security are apparently worried about an application called Plane Finder, which is available on the iPhone and Android phones. Among other things, it lets you point your phone at an airplane in the sky, and it will provide info on that plane, including the height and speed, as well as its destination, and a "likely course." The fear, of course, is that terrorists could potentially use this to shoot down a plane.Of course, in blaming this app, everyone seems to be missing the real target. This app is using Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasts (ADS-B), which is transmitted by many aircraft these days, and can apparently be read with a $200 receiver. In other words, if terrorists wanted that data, they'd go out and get that $200 receiver. The "problem" (if there really is one) isn't the Plane Finder app (which actually sounds kind of cool), but the fact that all that data is being made available publicly. Blaming the app sort of misses the point, because if the data is available so easily, you can bet those who wish to do harm with it, have already figured that out. In the meantime, the Plane Finder app itself doesn't appear to actually have that many downloads. The report claims 2,000 sales on iTunes, and in the Android store, it looks like less than 500 have been purchased. Of course, now that it's in the news...
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That is kinda cool
It sounds like a program my coworker uses to track (and subsequently screw with) my boss when he flies in from NY.
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Re: That is kinda cool
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Same thing with ships (AIS)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system#AIS_data_on_the_Internet for details.
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It's a matter of personal connection...
But that makes for a shitty headline. The point of newspapers isn't to inform, it's to sell papers. Look at the two (amplified) headlines below, and guess which one will resonate fear in people:
1. Using public data and a $200 dollar mystery device, terrorists might know where your plane is going....
or
2. A terrorist with an iPhone is going to blow up your plane! LOUD NOISES!!!!
The reason the iPhone is important to the story is because people have smart phones. It resonates. It connects. Mystery devices don't matter because they don't connect. People's brains shut off when thinking about what they imagine is some hard to get, niche market mystery device thingy....
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Re: It's a matter of personal connection...
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Re: It's a matter of personal connection...
" A terrorist with an iPhone is going to blow up your plane! LOUD NOISES!!!!"
I am interested in seeing what you can come up with
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Re: Re: It's a matter of personal connection...
"DEMOCRATS ALLOW OBAMA TERRORISTS WITH IPHONES TO SHOOT DOWN YOUR PLANE WITH CONCENTRATED BEAMS OF SOCIALISM! READ MORE ABOUT IT NOW BEHIND THIS MOTHERFUCKING PAYWALL!"
Meh, it's only a first attempt....
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Terror has become that much easier in the United States. With the new PlaneFinder app, terrorists---
Read more at Rupert Murdoch's paywall for $10 the first minute and $5 for each additional minute! Join the fun!
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Re: Re: Re: It's a matter of personal connection...
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Much ado over nothing, which is too bad because it sounds like a neat app.
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And also... Air Force One is the call sign given to *any* plane that the president is on... Not just the two 747s that most people think of. When he vacationed in Maine over the 4th of July, a Gulfstream carried the call sign.
So, knowing the ADS-B identifier doesn't tell you who is on the plane. Just what plane it is.
@Robert - all aircraft in North American Air Space are supposed to be ADS-B Out equipped by 2020... But there is no other mandate that I can see out there.
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Assuming one can read a signal from an at altitude aircraft while on the ground, someone standing even a mile away from Andrews AFB could read the signal when the President takes off and relay his possible destination.
The concept of planes broadcasting their routes to any who will listen just smacks of 'non-secure' design...sorta like the internet ;-)
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http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/enroute/surv eillance_broadcast/general_information/media/factsheet.pdf
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Security Theater.
This is just hand waving and gnashing of teeth for no real threat.
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Next headline: Terrorists locate coordinates for no less than 3 satellites at a time with AN iPHONE!!!
FTFY
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I should be a writer...
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Range of a Stinger missile
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Re: Range of a Stinger missile
And you save the money you would have spent on an iPhone. You get a bonus for staying under budget, and that might mean a promotion from martyr to junior terrorist (great health benefits: you don't have to blow yourself up).
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Level of sophistication
The Time Square bombing failed not due to lack of availability of material or techdata for the manufacture of the bomb, but because the bomb making process was significantly more difficult to perform than the capability of the recruits the Taliban could acquire. We achieve this by two means, one discouraging recruitment and two increasing the level of complexity required to preform an attack. If TNT and det cord were widely available the attack wouldn't have failed because Shahzad could have easily put together his IED.
Keeping the minimum threshold of competency required to preform an attack above the capabilities of the enemy is what provides security. It's how the system works, the "capabilities gap" is what protects us.
Now do I think this is necessarily the largest part of the capabilities gap required to shoot down a plane? No. Do I think that it is part of it? Yes. Does the social benefit outweigh the public risk? Probibly. But that's not what DHS is evaluating, its more of a congressional issue than one regulated to DHS.
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Uhm...this is just me but, if I was (hypothetically) going to shoot down a plane, I would need, like, at least a five minute warning (to set up the gear, locate the target, etc) before I was even ready to aim and fire. Life isn't Call of Duty. Shooting down a plane isn't as easy as pointing the gun to the air and pressing the trigger and the missile will hit the aircraft no matter what I do.
So, if the aircraft must be "that close" for me to identify it, I probably wouldn't even have enough time to identify my target and fire at it before it was out of range. That App is useless for terrorism.
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DIY???
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Late to the game.
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