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| FAA loosens rules for e-devices on airline flights - USA TODAY Posted: 31 Oct 2013 08:30 AM PDT Airline passengers soon will be able to use electronics such as readers and games during takeoffs, landings and throughout flights, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Thursday. Before the new rule takes effect, airlines must demonstrate that aircraft won't be at risk because of potential interference from portable electronic devices. That is expected to take place quickly and the devices approved for use by the end of the year in most of the nation's airline fleet. Connecting to the Internet remains prohibited when the plane is less than 10,000 feet in the air. Voice calls also are banned during the entire flight, under a Federal Communications Commission rule. Passengers should continue to follow all instructions from flight crews regarding the use of the devices, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said. "We found that we could protect aviation safety and at the same time address the passenger desire for use of their portable devices," Huerta said."The committee determined that most commercial airplanes can tolerate radio interference from portable electronic devices." "We believe today's decision honors both our commitment to safety and consumers' increasing desire to use their electronic devices during all phases of flight," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. Flight attendants welcomed the opportunity to ease enforcement of the prohibition against gadgets. Laura Glading, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, said the change in rules will benefit passengers and crew members. "Once the new policy is safely implemented – and we're going to work closely with the carrier to do that – it will be a win-win," Glading said. "We're frankly tired of feeling like 'hall monitors' when it comes to this issue." Delta Air Lines spokesman Paul Skrbec said the airline already has preformed the required tolerance tests on all of its aircraft and has submitted the necessary paperwork to the FAA for its approval, so that passengers might be able to use electronics as early as Friday, pending FAA approval. "All of our aircraft are ready to go," he says, adding that the airline is now awaiting word from the FAA. "That could come as early as today for us." JetBlue Airways also expects to be among the first airlines to allow electronics because it has a relatively small fleet less than 200 aircraft and only two types of planes, according to spokeswoman Jenny Dervin. "We intend to be the first airline to allow fleet-wide PEDs," she said. JetBlue Capt. Chuck Cook, who served on the advisory committee that recommended the policy change, said electronics were never a proven hazard, but they were never cleared of risk, either. Cook said now airlines will demonstrate the devices are safe. "With this guidance, the airlines are able to accurately assess the risk," Cook said. The policy change will take some time to be adopted because planes must be certified and crew members must be trained how to deal with electronics "I believe we will do it very briskly," Cook said. Electronics have always been allowed once a plane reaches 10,000 feet in the air. On planes that are equipped with their own wifi hot spots, passengers have been able to connect to the internet while the flight is cruising. But Thursday's decision marks a major change for passengers eager to keep reading an electronic book, listen to music or play a game while the plane is less than 10,000 feet in the air, when those activities have been prohibited. The decision follows a report Sept. 30 from a 28-member committee representing airlines, manufacturers, electronics makers, pilots and flight attendants. The prohibition against electronics began decades ago because of concerns about interference with cockpit communications and navigation equipment. But passengers have sought easier use of their gadgets as electronics become more widespread and as aircraft equipment has become less susceptible to stray signals. Consumer groups and lawmakers such as Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., have argued that electronic readers are no more dangerous than books during takeoff and landing. "This is great news for the traveling public—and frankly, a win for common sense," McCaskill, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, said of the FAA's decision. "I applaud the FAA for taking the necessary steps to change these outdated regulations and I look forward to the airlines turning around quick plans for implementation." The Association of Flight Attendants voiced support for the decision provided that electronic devices are proven not to interfere with onboard communications. "In order to expand the use of PEDs safely, the commercial aviation industry must first demonstrate that airplanes can tolerate electromagnetic interference from passenger devices," the AFA said. "At the same time, appropriate policies and procedures, supported by effective crew training programs and focused safety messaging from the industry to travelers, are needed to ensure that expanded use by passengers does not degrade safety and security." Huerta said in perhaps 1% of flights with low visibility, electronics will still be banned at some points in flight on some planes. "In those cases, passengers may be asked to turn off devices," Huerta said. "It's important for everyone's safety that passengers obey requests to store such devices if need be." |
| Tap on Merkel Provides Peek at Vast Spy Net - New York Times Posted: 31 Oct 2013 08:23 AM PDT By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID E. SANGERPublished: October 30, 2013WASHINGTON — It was not obvious to the National Security Agency a dozen years ago that Angela Merkel, a rising star as the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, was a future chancellor of Germany. But that did not matter. The N.S.A., in a practice that dates back to the depths of the Cold War and that has never ended, was recording her conversations and those of a range of leaders in Germany and elsewhere, storing them in databases that could be searched later, if the need arose. It is unclear how often they searched the databases for her conversations, if at all. But once she became the country's leader, everything she talked about on her personal cellphone — like her support of the Afghan war, the efforts of European allies to halt Iran's nuclear program, and Germany's central role in quelling the European financial crisis — took on greater importance for the American eavesdroppers. How the N.S.A. continued to track Ms. Merkel as she ascended to the top of Germany's political apparatus illuminates previously undisclosed details about the way the secret spy agency casts a drift net to gather information from America's closest allies. The phone monitoring is hardly limited to the leaders of countries like Germany, and also includes their top aides and the heads of opposing parties. It is all part of a comprehensive effort to gain an advantage over other nations, both friend and foe. What the United States has learned from Ms. Merkel's calls since 2002, the year when surveillance on her began, according to a database described last week in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, remains unknown. But no one has denied that she was being monitored. In testimony to Congress on Tuesday, the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., gave only the roughest sketch of the size of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, but suggested that the leader of the United States' most powerful European ally was a single fish in a very big sea. "We're talking about a huge enterprise here with thousands and thousands of individual requirements," he said, using a phrase that appeared to mean individual surveillance targets. Mr. Clapper said that the United States spies on foreign leaders and other officials to see "if what they're saying gels with what's actually going on," and how the policies of other countries "impact us across a whole range of issues." German political and intelligence officials went to the White House on Wednesday looking for answers to some of the questions the administration has been reluctant to discuss, and eager to use the incident to broker a far closer intelligence-sharing agreement with Washington that, among other things, would end the surveillance of its leaders. If put into effect, such an arrangement could begin to dismantle a system that has grown ever larger, and more sophisticated, during a decade in which supercomputers and the algorithms used to search vast databases have put the N.S.A. far ahead of rival intelligence services. President Obama has asked whether the technology has outrun common sense, and the Merkel episode has raised in a very public way the question of whether the benefits of spying on friends outweigh the damage if such spying becomes known. Even after the flood of information about surveillance operations made public by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, American officials are still loath to speak in detail about eavesdropping on friendly governments. But former officials with knowledge of the system described an intelligence apparatus with both a voracious appetite and a growing ability to warehouse huge amounts of data. The N.S.A. tries to gather cellular and landline phone numbers — often obtained from American diplomats — for as many foreign officials as possible. The contents of the phone calls are stored in computer databases that can regularly be searched using keywords. "They suck up every phone number they can in Germany," said one former intelligence official. The databases are different from those housing telephone "metadata" — information about phone numbers on each end of a call and the call's length — to find links between terrorism suspects. "Metadata is only valuable if you are trying to track the activities of a terrorist or a spy," said the former American intelligence official. By comparison, allied leaders are low-level priorities. In the "National Intelligence Priorities Framework," a matrix approved by the president and updated regularly, information on members of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the whereabouts of nuclear weapons in Pakistan or North Korea, or the conversations of nuclear scientists in Iran are all front-burner intelligence issues. Ranked just below them are questions about the leadership of adversaries, like Russia, China or Iran, or the state of their economies. 
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: October 31, 2013 An earlier version of this article misstated a word in the name of the party that Angela Merkel led a dozen years ago as a rising star of German politics and continues to lead today. It is the Christian Democratic Union, not the Christian Democratic Party. An earlier version also misspelled part of the name of the German weekly in which Helmut Schmidt, a former German chancellor, discussed the National Security Agency spying scandal. It is Die Zeit, not Die Ziet. And an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the person who said on behalf of the French government that "the N.S.A. director's denials do not seem very plausible." The person who commented, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, is a woman, not a "spokesman." |
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