Big Brother Loves You and is in Seat 27B

Airlines may be forced to fit antiterror cameras in seats - Times Online

I am no conspiracy theorist and I am certainly less paranoid than the typical information security professional but this one has me concerned on several fronts. First and foremost is what the architecture of such a beast would look like. Who will pay? According to the article the EU will expect the carriers to pay for these new systems. I can't see how the airlines with their non-existent profit margins and rising costs will be able to afford to design, deploy, and maintain these cameras and the communication gear needed to send the images to the terrestrial "mothership." I will assume the data will travel through an encrypted (SSL or IPSEC) tunnel via either satellites or terrestrial cellular towers. The costs associated with sending streaming video using either will be extremely expensive. Who will be watching? If this idea gathers momentum and is also mandated here in the US I can envision the TSA having juristiction and ownership of the systems involved in the processesing of the video streams. In Europe juristiction will become a major concern. As the plane passes over international boundaries where will this information go? Will the country of departure be watching the whole time? What about the country of termination? How about the countries between the departure and termination airports? What are the ramifications for countries that do not have similar statutes? Will a destination country that has this regulation allow an airplane from a non-participating departure country land? For instance, if country A has a law mandating cameras and country B does not, will an airliner from country B be allowed to land or take off from country A? What's the point? Quite honestly, this is the one that baffles me the most. This is very obviously what Bruce Schneier calls "Security Theater" and will have no real impact on our actual safety levels. I would hate to think that if I am coming back from a vacation sporting a nice tan and beard that the fact that I am sweating a bit and looking around nervously would mean anything more than the fact that I have a bit of gas but don't want to pollute the main cabin. I am not as concerned about the issue of privacy (you are of course in a public space and shouldn't have any expectation of privacy) but the idea of "big brother" watching me as I mouth the words to my favorite song or pick my nose when no(human)body is watching creeps me out to no end. My hope is that this is one of those ideas that are floated around to see if the public has the stomach for such a program. If not, my fear is that airline tickets will get even more expensive, we will be a little closer to a survaillance state, and in the end we will be no safer.