An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Record: A recently discovered FBI training document shows that US law enforcement can gain limited access to the content of encrypted messages from secure messaging services like iMessage, Line, and WhatsApp, but not to messages sent via Signal, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WeChat, or Wickr. The document, obtained earlier this month following a FOIA request filed by Property of the People, a US nonprofit dedicated to government transparency, appears to contain training advice for what kind of data agents can obtain from the operators of encrypted messaging services and the legal processes they have to go through.

Dated to January 7, 2021, the document doesn’t include any new information but does a good job at providing an up-to-date summary of what type of information the FBI can currently obtain from each of the listed services. […] While the document confirms that the FBI can’t gain access to encrypted messages sent through some services, the other type of information they can glean from providers might still help authorities in other aspects of their investigations. The content of the document, which may be hard to read due to some font rendering issues, is also available in the table [embedded in the article]. Of note, the table above does not include details about Keybase, a recent end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) service that has been gaining in popularity. The service was acquired by video conferencing software maker Zoom in May 2020.

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Source: Slashdot – FBI Document Shows What Data Can Be Obtained From Encrypted Messaging Apps

SpaceX’s Starlink unit is testing its space-based internet service with several aircraft and wants to offer in-flight connection to airlines “as soon as possible,” a company vice president said. From a report: Starlink is in talks with several airlines about offering in-flight broadband connections, Jonathan Hofeller, vice president of commercial sales, said Tuesday on a panel at the Airline Passenger Experience Association gathering in Long Beach, California. That would put the company in direct competition with Viasat, Intelsat SA, Telesat and others. Starlink is producing six satellites a week at its assembly site near Seattle, Hofeller said. It is also moving to a more sophisticated version.

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Source: Slashdot – SpaceX’s Starlink Is Testing Internet Service for Aircraft

Nasa has postponed a planned spacewalk outside the International Space Station due to flying “debris,” two weeks after Russia blew up one of its own satellites in a missile test that created clouds of zooming shrapnel in orbit. From a report: Washington’s space agency did not mention the Russian test in its announcement, but a Nasa official had warned a day earlier of a slightly elevated risk to astronauts due to the 14 November incident. The strike generated thousands of pieces of “space junk” that are now hurling around the Earth at about 17,000 mph (27,400km/h) — much faster than the speed of a bullet. At that velocity, even tiny flecks of paint can damage spacecraft, with spacesuits even more vulnerable.

On Tuesday, about five hours before the astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron were due to venture outside the space station, Nasa said on Twitter that the spacewalk to fix a failed antenna had been cancelled. “Nasa received a debris notification for the space station. Due to the lack of opportunity to properly assess the risk it could pose to the astronauts, teams have decided to delay the 30 November spacewalk until more information is available,” it tweeted. Moscow has said its test to destroy its own spacecraft, Tselina-D, which had been in orbit since 1982, was successful and the debris posed no “threat to space activity.”

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Source: Slashdot – NASA Postpones Spacewalk Citing ‘Debris Notification’ for ISS