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United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

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Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a design flaw in AirDrop, not an "incident"

A design flaw it only becomes due to people’s violent acts. If the goal is safety, we should spend more time helping people process their shit and less on raising shields. They only make people more angry. Everybody draws the line differently, but pushing your data on somebody else’s device without their consent is an intrusion, and as such I consider it to be an act of violence. We need to grow up and understand how…

Unsolicited Dirty pictures via a protocol which is easy to disable (and rarely used anyway) vs getting punched in the face or shanked?

Really?

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a commercial passenger plane it's frowned upon. On planes in general, many people jump nude for their 100th skydive - the original and best video of this has been scrubbed from youtube, but a quick search shows others. Often screaming is included.

> the original and best video of this has been scrubbed from youtube More US censorship. Nude skydiving, terrible. Indepth reviews of how to kill things with insane levels of weaponry? Featured video time.

To be fair, the weaponry is far less floppy.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#803
post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Awful joke. There have to be at least some consequences for the kid, like getting banned for flying United for 10 years. Take a step back. You yourself describe it as a joke. Are you really saying that the quality of the joke ("awful") should result in the origin of the joke (a kid , even!) should be banned from a major air carrier for 10 years? Does this really seem like a proportional response? And this doesn't e…

> Was any of this a good idea? No, probably not, but people need to calm down. I can understand the safety concern - and I think the decision to turn around was ultimately the right call. Especially given that they had called for people turning off BT for some time. The fact that the device was not turned off suggests to me that the owner did not know they were the cause of this. If they had done this by intent and w…

> If it turns out they did this with full intent, there should be some _appropriate_ consequence

Sure, if evidence is uncovered of the guy say telling his friends "haha, I'm gonna make them turn the plane around", I can get behind the baying for consequences.

We're nowhere near that. There's plenty of non-nefarious ways this could all have come about, and people need to put down their pitchforks.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the plane blew up and it came out that some passengers had posted online that there was a “bomb” blue tooth device and they didn’t turn around This story is just stupid. If you actually think you have a bomb onboard, you divert to the nearest airport. (And if you think you discovered a bomb accidentally left discoverable, you don’t ask for it to be please turned off.) The pilots and crew knew they were being idi…

And if you think you discovered a bomb accidentally left discoverable, you don’t ask for it to be please turned off That was the most hilarious part for me.

I don't think it's as silly as people are making out. It at least proves a passenger is in control of the device, rather than it being stashed / hidden in the cabin. A device in the cabin not owned by any passenger broadcasting a signal is definitively more suspicious than one with a passenger in control. We don't know what their next step would have been - they might have asked everyone from row X to Y to turn their bluetooth back on to narrow down the search etc. They probably didn't expect that anybody would fail to respond to the first instruction.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone willing to start a fight over a tacky WiFi name should be committed. Seriously, what an insane thing to do. It's such an easy thing to not be bothered by. It sits in the background, invisible, and you're... just letting it live rent free in your head? There's so many more annoying things to flying than someone's dumb personal hotspot name. Can we just recognize how crazy of a scenario this is?

Do people get kicked out for offensive t-shirts and tattoos? How about bad cologne, good cologne, bad BO, or just for being so ugly that it's offensive?

[deleted]

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way a reasonable person would interpret that as a threat, it feels like you’re playing silly games trying to widen the Overton window by sanewashing an obviously unreasonable reaction.

A lot of people swap jew for zionist or israel to cover up their antisemitism, so yes "fuck jews" could be interpreted as a threat.

There is no more succinct way to describe a Zionist than by using the word Zionist. To assume anyone who says "Zionist" means "Jew" is to make an unnecessary leap in bad faith.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#807
post #672
post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is if the captain doesn't like you because you're Zionist they can remove you?

[flagged]

A few thousand pagers went off, quite a few in the hands of kids.

Terrorism by definition.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is trying to sanewash totally insane levels of risk aversion. Do you think terrorists are really going to name their Bluetooth speaker "bomb"? Do you think this behaviour has any meaningful true positives? This is the kind of brainworms thinking that has people throwing our their 150ml liquids out at TSA and taking their shoes off.

The really crazy thing is they returned to the origin instead of the nearest airport. If it was really an emergency they would have got out of the air at the nearest runway of suitable length instead of flying all the way back. Just theater.

[deleted]

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#810
post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Awful joke. There have to be at least some consequences for the kid, like getting banned for flying United for 10 years. Take a step back. You yourself describe it as a joke. Are you really saying that the quality of the joke ("awful") should result in the origin of the joke (a kid , even!) should be banned from a major air carrier for 10 years? Does this really seem like a proportional response? And this doesn't e…

> Was any of this a good idea? No, probably not, but people need to calm down. I can understand the safety concern - and I think the decision to turn around was ultimately the right call. Especially given that they had called for people turning off BT for some time. The fact that the device was not turned off suggests to me that the owner did not know they were the cause of this. If they had done this by intent and w…

> I can understand the safety concern - and I think the decision to turn around was ultimately the right call.

I don't, and I think it fits what Bruce Schneier called "Cover Your Ass" security (he was referring to the equally stupid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic)

It sounds like a fantastic DDoS opportunity, you could shut down an entire nation's aviation just by putting a few tiny bluetooth transmitters in places that air passengers might accidentally pick them up. The attack relies entirely on the overreaction to non-threats by ignorant buffoons in positions of authority.

Personally, I think the airline and its policies should be publicly ridiculed. If we don't punish the airline for doing this, and make unequivocably clear that it did the wrong thing, that its "what ifs" are meaningless and bluetooth/wifi channel names are not a security threat, then this nonsense will just continue.

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