Documents show Gogo boasted of helping law enforcement agencies spy on in-flight wifi

[Newsjock]

Source: PandoDaily

We already know that there’s almost nowhere on earth you can go to escape the warrantless snooping and panoptic surveillance of the US government. Now it turns out you’re not even safe 30,000 feet up in the sky.

That’s the news buried in recent Federal Communications Commission filings about in-flight wifi company, Gogo. In those documents, first flagged by the ACLU’s Christopher Soghoian, the FCC notes that Gogo worked with government officials to develop “capabilities to accommodate law enforcement interests” – capabilities that the agency says go “beyond those outlined” under federal law.

... By its own admission, Gogo has apparently gone even further than the surveillance statute requires, giving law enforcement officials even more potential power to monitor communications through its system. That power is buttressed by Gogo’s terms of service, which tell customers that using in-flight wifi authorizes Gogo to “disclose your Personal Information… if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary” to “comply with relevant laws or to respond to subpoenas or warrants served on us” or to “protect or defend the rights, property, or safety of Gogo, you, other users, or third parties.”

The prospect of in-air surveillance has been a periodic controversy during the last few decades. Back in the early 1990s, for example, NBC News reported that French intelligence agencies were using Air France as a base for in-flight surveillance of U.S. businesspeople and government officials. More recently, the UK Telegraph reported that the European Union has been funding and testing surveillance systems on planes involving “a combination of cameras, microphones, explosive sniffers and a sophisticated computer system” to monitor passengers. Meanwhile, Gogo’s major competitor for in-flight wifi service is ViaSat, a defense contractor that specializes, in part, in surveillance.

Read more: http://pando.com/2014/04/07/documents-show-gogo-boasted-of-helping-law-enforcement-agencies-spy-on-in-flight-wifi/

[KeepItReal]

1. Does GoGo also get paid by the Alphabet Agencies they let snoop on their customers?

As a GoGo customer, I am pissed about this surveillance, but not surprised given what happens to companies that don't play ball with the security state.