This is the Shared Security Weekly Blaze for August 6, 2018 sponsored by Security Perspectives – Your Source for Tailored Security Awareness Training and Assessment Solutions and Silent Pocket. This episode was hosted by Tom Eston. Listen to this episode and previous ones direct via your web browser by clicking here!
Show Transcript
This is your Shared Security Weekly Blaze for August 6, 2018 with your host, Tom Eston. In this week’s episode: The Quiet Skies TSA surveillance program, SIM hijacking and the Reddit data breach and Sextortion scams.
The Shared Security Podcast is sponsored by Silent Pocket. With their patented Faraday cage product line of phone cases, wallets and bags you can block all wireless signals which will make your devices instantly untrackable, unhackable and undetectable. Visit silent-pocket.com for more details.
Hi everyone, I’m Tom Eston, Co-host of the Shared Security podcast. Welcome to the Shared Security Weekly Blaze where we update you on the top 3 security and privacy topics from the week. These weekly podcasts are published every Monday and are 15 minutes or less quickly giving you “news that you can use”.
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Ever feel like you’re being followed when you’re at the airport or while on a flight recently? Well you may actually may have been followed as the Boston Globe reported last week that federal air marshals are following US citizens that are not suspected of a crime at airports and on airplanes. The previously unknown program called “Quiet Skies” has caused controversy within the Transportation Security Administration (aka: the TSA) as thousands of US citizens that are not on any watch list are being surveilled and observed to see if they violate 15 rules which are part of a checklist that air marshals need to follow. Characteristics that air marshals look for include things like: excessive fidgeting, wide-open staring eyes and even if the subject slept on the flight or went to the bathroom. According to the report, about 35 passengers are targeted every day and there are 2,000 to 3,000 federal air marshals that conduct this and other air marshal duties across airports in the United States.
What I find interesting is that federal air marshal’s themselves are questioning the need for the Quiet Skies program. One air marshal said to the Boston Globe “What we are doing [in Quiet Skies] is troubling and raising some serious questions as to the validity and legality of what we are doing and how we are doing it”. Groups such as the ACLU are now involved questioning if passenger’s constitutional rights are being violated by this program given that people’s race, religion or mental health may put someone under surveillance. Of course, the TSA declined to discuss the Quiet Skies program but noted that “federal air marshals leverage multiple internal and external intelligence sources in its deployment strategy”.
As many of you are hopefully aware, the TSA in the United States has come under much scrutiny over the last several years due to treatment of passengers during screening as well as the federal air marshal program itself. It should be interesting to see how this recent revelation about the previously secret “Quiet Skies” prog
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