Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlindner | Hacker News Reader

This confuses the issue though. ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement and if an aircraft was going to takeoff that had an unknown ICAO number he'd have someone at the airport to figure out it was Elon's jet that had changed it's ICAO number.

Your link will only be valid until he again changes his ICAO number.

More info: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy

View on HN

Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number? Or that on the ground spotters were required to find the new ICAO?

I know nothing about this, but was a rabbit hole to explore.

The tail number for his plane is well known. If you put that N-number into an ICAO conversion script (https://www.avionictools.com/icao.php), you get the same Hex number that you see from adsbexchange.com. From what I can tell, the script is using an algorithm and not doing a DB lookup. So, just based on the tail number, you could figure out the canonical ICAO code for the plane.

The strange thing is that adsbexchange also lists the plane as being part of the LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) program (but I don’t know the source of this annotation). AFAICT, LADD limits public display of information, but only for data distributed from the FAA. Crowd sourced data isn’t limited (nor could it be).

In order to address this privacy shortcoming, the PIA program exists. This would change the ICAO for the plane to be disconnected from the tail number. But from the tracking website, it seems like the ICAO number for his plane hasn’t been changed/anonymized(?!?). So either, they haven’t actually gotten the new ICAO number installed (after 10-ish months), or the plane isn’t eligible to be part of the program. PIA requires the plane to only fly domestically and have the right kind of transmitter. If the plane flys internationally, it can’t have an anonymized ICAO number.

See: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy

Otherwise, I don’t see how anyone could track this particular plane if it did have a PIA ICAO identifier and you only knew the tail number.

Like I said, I don’t know very much about this, but it is a fascinating rabbit hole. Anyone want to correct where I went wrong?

> Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number?

I'm not sure that it does at this very moment, but public statements by Sweeny himself said that it did indeed have a PIA ICAO number and that Sweeny de-anonymized it. It's possible Elon stopped using it because of that de-anonymizing.

> The strange thing is that adsbexchange also lists the plane as being part of the LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) program (but I don’t know the source of this annotation). AFAICT, LADD limits public display of information, but only for data distributed from the FAA. Crowd sourced data isn’t limited (nor could it be).

Yes LADD is a different system and you're not required to follow it as a data provider. FlightRadar24 for example follows it and does not list any LADD aircraft as they use FAA's data feed which requires as it's terms of use that you follow the LADD program.

> Sweeny himself said that it did indeed have a PIA ICAO number and that Sweeny de-anonymized it

I read that too, but haven’t been able to find any source that wasn’t Sweeny on that. Without another source, I’m more inclined to believe that the plane is part of LADD, but not PIA (or isn’t anymore). And that the plane from the Sweeney tweet from February 2022 may have been another plane entirely. Maybe Musk’s plane was enrolled at one point, but it honestly doesn’t make much sense to me to have a plane enrolled in PIA.

I mean, if I had a private plane, I’d like to keep the option of flying it internationally, which you couldn’t do with an anonymized ICAO (again, according to my limited reading).

Also, given the limited number of PIA planes, it would be trivial to look for ICAO numbers that disappeared at one airport and then for a new private ICAO number to appear at the same airport. The system only makes sense from a privacy perspective if you don’t have continuous monitoring of the ADS-B transponders. As things currently exist, with a small number of PIA planes, it would be obvious to find new codes.

That would certainly be an interesting twist on the story if it wasn't actually covered by PIA and only LADD. I haven't heard this variant before, but it would make a lot of things make sense, but it would give me more questions than answers.

Even if you have PIA though, I don't thing you're restricted from flying internationally. I don't see any comment on the PIA page that says you can't fly internationally with it. Wouldn't you just revert to your original ICAO when doing international trips?

> Wouldn't you just revert to your original ICAO when doing international trips?

The FAA site made it seem like changing the codes was a non-trivial “process” that wouldn’t want to do regularly. You’d have to reprogram the transponder back to your canonical code, because other countries don’t have access to the private PIA conversion lookup tables. The private ICAO numbers might also conflict with other countries “number space”.

Maybe this is an easy thing, but most changes in aviation don’t seem “quick”.

It might be possible that you’re not allowed to do this on your own as a pilot of a certified plane (and require to pay someone who is certified to do so) but I can change mine very easily from a setup screen in about 30 seconds.

It could be a procedural thing where after switching, the FAA won’t recognise your canonical one? That’s seems a little strange, though.

I don't think that's relevant past the point where Musk is on the record as saying that because he's such a champion of free speech he's not going to ban the account.

A masked stalker, dressed all in black, was following his young child in car thinking it was him. He then blocked the car and jumped on the hood: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603190155107794944

Imagine it were your child. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t change any opinions or practices when it came to personal security?

Maybe don't shuttle your kids around on a private jet..?

So you think he has good reasons for going back on what he claimed was his free speech position. Fair enough. It doesn't mean he hasn't gone back on what he said though, and it definitely fits with previous observations that he doesn't actually care at all about free speech and just does whatever he feels like that day.

Free speech absolutist not so tough when he and his are scared

Cut a free speech absolutist and a censorious fascist bleeds.

Nobody is a true free speech absolutist; and Musk least of all[0]. There are always limits to speech.

Things like libel, threats, blackmail, etc are also speech, and yet banned or restricted in some way. Social media are doing a lot of work exploring the edge cases of these, and it's possible laws need to be updated to account for the results.

[0] Years ago Musk cancelled a Tesla order from a critic. On Twitter, it didn't take him long to ban a lot of satirical accounts.

I agree with you, but I believe it is the case that Elon has previously described himself as a free speech absolutist, so this whole episode is exhibit 487 in the case for Elon having no idea what he's talking about.

He did, and it's both impossible and blatantly untrue. I just thought I should make that explicit. It wasn't meant as disagreement.

It's interesting because Elon agrees with free speech restrictions only when he or his own children are affected, but not others. Case in point, this one + alex jones' controversy ('My firstborn child died in my arms'). Meanwhile, he fired the entire child abuse monitoring section.

I get it but what is the relation with his private plane ?

"Free speech is peachy, until it hurts me. Then we need to come down on it like a ton of weight."

And remember, my pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.

And also at this point it's allegedly inciting violence, so his position might even be consistent given changing circumstances. Whether it actually is incitement is still debatable but a person of principle can still change their position without it being a flip flop. If Musk is taking legal action at least there is corresponding litigation for the account suspension for some sort of due process and objectivity.

I fail to see the connection between this video, which was posted well after the account was blocked, given that the account had not tweeted out Musk's location after Dec 12th.

The 'won't somebody think of the children' argument doesn't play nice with 'free speech as long as it is legal'.

If Musk is so concerned about his children's privacy and safety then maybe he should stop tweeting out their whereabouts in real time himself?

It actually is relevant in this instance.

The “speech” you speak of is automated broadcasting the movements of wealthy people in real-time. The primary group of people who have use for that information is kidnappers.

There’s zero connection between this “speech” and political freedoms.

Similarly, there’s a huge difference between you sharing you or your family’s location on social media occasionally on your own terms vs strangers tracking and sharing it regularly.

This always was the case and there are zero recorded instances of such so no need to trot out this argument. Musk himself has Tweeted out the location of his child in real time.

No, it's broadcasting the movements of a set of aircraft, using publicly available data. There is no information about who is on board those aircraft.

Nobody has any right to privacy regarding the flight movements of their aircraft, and indeed any idea in that light is antithetical to the entire principal of air traffic control and safe air travel. The idea that people would not be able to track his aircraft if this account is gone is ludicrous, as there are both other flight tracking websites, the ability in some areas to get full flight plans, and even if you're a stalker the ability to just listen into ATC radio near the routes his aircraft use.

You even have spotters who spend all their days at airports logging all aircraft and posting the results online, as they've done for decades, so there's no way for aircraft movements to remain secret for long.

By buying private jets and choosing to use them exclusively, Musk himself gave up his right to any privacy when flying on them. He has other options, such as flying commercially or chartering aircraft, as others in his position have done, but has chosen not to use them. He's now trying to change the rules for everyone else to carve out an exception for himself and other super wealthy individuals.

It's rank hypocrisy and bullying and I'm amazed so many people on HN are supporting him in this, and choosing to believe him rather than reading up on how open this data already is.

And publicly available satellite imagery can track the movements of your car. Depending on the country you live in, the fact that you own the car is also publicly available information.

That doesn’t mean somebody putting those pieces of information together and regularly tweeting your movements isn’t creating a security risk for you. The choice that you make to buy a car or drive it in public also doesn’t mean that you have to welcome automated stalking.

Show me how publicly available satellite imagery could offer anywhere close to the same level of tracking that is federally mandated and available for aircraft, and I might take that argument more seriously.

This account wasn't even 'putting those pieces of information together', he was tweeting it directly from ADSB Exchange, one of a number of collators of ADS-B Out data.

Aircraft movements are not private and haven't been for decades. If you want privacy in your air travel, don't fly everywhere on 1-3 well known private jets.

So these "kidnappers" you are talking about are smart enough to create a security risk for a multi-billionaire who can afford any level of security, but at the same time they are too stupid to combine a few pieces of publicly information themselves and would only be dangerous if some teenager on Twitter does it for them?

Publicly available satellite imagery can’t track my car in any meaningful way. At best you’d be able to figure out the color and (rough) size of it if you knew my address.

They might be creating a security risk, but it's a legal security risk and might even be moral too.

That said it's just as legal for Musk to kick anybody he wants out of his new club house and even be a hypocrite about it.

I just wish he'd get back to saving the world and setting up Mars for my kids. As a social media icon he's basically worthless to the world.

> I just wish he'd get back to saving the world and setting up Mars for my kids.

That was never going to happen. It's just a way to get people to work their asses off to further his real goal, to amass as much wealth as possible. Ironically, buying Twitter may well end up undoing that.

Free speech applies to all speech, not just political speech. If you want "free speech as long as it's legal", this should be allowed. If you don't that's also fine, but then you can't cite "free speech" as a reason to reinstate Trump (Which Musk did). Although regardless neither of these is a "free speech" issue (In the constitutional sense) since it's about a corporation banning certain things on its platform, which it's perfectly entitled to do. It's just very clearly shown the hypocrisy with which Musk now runs Twitter.

I heard some people walked in to a big building in DC after Trump tweeted which later got him banned. Imagine if it was your building! Or does free speech only apply to things Elon likes?

it me, the incontrovertible proof that is an 11s clip of somebody dressed like an 80s action film ninja inside a fuckin random-ass hyundai

What does this have to do with tracking his plane using public data? This is not about tracking his, or Grimes' or any other ex's car; not even about stalking them.

If you're the richest person in the world, you're going to have to expect that weirdos are going to follow you around. Many employ private security details. That's just how things are.

That’s not relevant to whether he’s a hypocrite. All that’s relevant is “would he have done the same thing if it was someone else’s location being tweeted out?”

Given he had no problem calling a random person a “pedo” knowing it would cause harassment, I’m going to go with “no.”

He'd say "one two gerbil gerbil fourteen spiders singin' to me" if it would affect the stock price of anything he's planning on buying or selling, or harming something that cuts into his earnings.

Previous strategy to appeal to tech was to pick last week's top post on /r/iamverysmart and state it as his philosophy.

Current strategy now that tech has soured on him the past few years, is transitioning to parroting fascist dogwhistles.

In two years he buys Whole Foods and will be ranting about holistic lifestyle chakra healing.

Not even sure I fully trust Musk on this, after he lied about holding his child that died; when it turned out the mother did and it was SIDS related, he's got form on using his children to manipulate the outside world.

https://twitter.com/justinemusk/status/1595506087570333696

I'm not a Musk fan but "died in my arms" doesn't have to be read literally and i wouldn't consider this as a lie.

> My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat.

That is pretty literal

The guy is an absolute toad.

Not under the "always assume best intentions" principle, I have read similar descriptions from people that were near someone dying without actually physically holding them.

> Not under the "always assume best intentions" principle, I have read similar descriptions from people that were near someone dying without actually physically holding them.

In such a case: "Died in front of me" would be accurate. "Died in my arms" is a lie.

That only applies to people who haven't repeatedly proven themselves to be acting/speaking in bad faith.

If Lucy pulls away the football 27 times, you aren't required to go running at it the 28th.

it depends if lucy is idempotent

She may have hidden internal state. Or she may be pure. How many tries before we are going to make an assumption?

I'm very fortunate in that none of my children has died.

But I expect there's something particularly poignant about the moment of death.

So to me, Musk's inaccuracy about that detail is very significant.

Since I onow people whos children actually did die in their very arms, using such a dramatic experience and be untruthful about it is simply dispicable. Especially since having your child die in front of you doesn't need any further dramatization at all.

Hunter was Joe’s child. If Twitter not publishing Hunter’s pics is a conspiracy, I don’t understand why this isn’t

Hunters penis however is something that is apparently of great public interest.

Hunter was using clout of then vice-president Biden to do some shady deals.

It was relevant to an election Biden was about to become the President. The hookers and meth was there to entertain the more base urges of audience.

Could be, but there is no proof of deals in Elon’s Twitter files. Just Hunter’s naked pics

Did you actually read the files? They don't have any naked Hunter Biden pics (thank God).

It's mostly about Twitter fabrication of Hunter Biden was hacked (discovered during laptop dissembly) and the connections between federal government and Twitter's staff.

I did. Did you? There were links to pictures of Hunter in Elons posts.

Elon? I read Matt Taibi's report.

I'm grateful I was spared from H. Biden wang.

I meant Elon commissioned posts that Matt Taibi posted. Links to Hunter’s pics were among them. If you are curious it was Tweet 8. Biden wasn’t part of federal government then FYI. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394

>Links to Hunter’s pics

Links? You mean a picture of an https addresses that leads to a deleted tweet.

> Biden wasn’t part of federal government then FYI.

Sure but he had connections, and way to pull those images. See twit #8.

> Links? You mean a picture of an https addresses that leads to a deleted tweet.

Yeah, obviously those pictures and associated tweets are deleted. That is why we are here. However, those are archived in WaybackMachine(archive.org). Copy/paste those links there.

I did try a few, and they were deleted from archive.org :/

So a picture of a link, of a deleted tweet, you have to access via Internet Archive, that's also deleted.

You know links are usually click and go, not transcribe, click, go back, go to Internet Archive and try there. Then do some internet sleuthing.

I just checked. I can find it on archive. I don't want to post that in a public board. Please do your due diligence

On recheck the 2020 page did contain the pics in question, for some reason they didn't load.

Still this isn't a case of they posted links to materials. Anyone that wants to find them needs to invest some effort to actually find them.

>A masked stalker, dressed all in black, was following his young child in car thinking it was him.

I mean, maybe?

I don't see a masked stalker doing much of anything in that video. In fact, the masked stalked in the car seems afraid of the person doing the filming (a security guard?). Certainly not showing much aggression. The claim is that this person then got out of the car and jumped on the hood of Elon's car preventing it from moving, but that wasn't caught on video?

Of course an event like this would cause me to rethink my position. But I don't think I would wait until it actually happened to my child.

People have been raising these kinds of concerns to free speech absolutists like Musk for a while, but until it impacts him they are theoretical concerns that aren't as important as his principles.

If he uses this personal experience as an opportunity to empathize with others and reconsider how Twitter handles speech which is legal but poses a safety risk to an individual or group then that is commendable.

Or, if he maintained his commitment to free speech in the face of personal danger to his family I would respect such a principled stance.

However, if he only bans those who might cause him (or people he likes) harm while allowing and even encouraging those who use free speech to incite harm against others then that seems hypocritical.

citizens deserve equal protection under the law. there's nothing special about his kid (or him). if anything, information about public figures, when in public, deserves less shielding.

Guess free speech is dead then. Elon killed it. Rewrite the US Constitution

No, I think it’s relevant because the banned account was not just “sharing public information”, but actively tracking Musk using a combination of online data and real word surveillance.

The fact that Musk previously said he wouldn’t ban the account, then changed his mind (apparently after a personal incident) just shows Musk changed his mind, is all.

It certainly demonstrates he didn’t think through his previous decision, suggesting it was a spontaneous comment and not a rigorous policy. Which is worrying, because publishers such as Twitter need to have a consistent and coherent moderation policy.

But it’s still relevant if we’re to decide which position we agree with, and whether Musk was “right” previously or now.

There is nothing 'real world surveilance' about following this link:

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af

That Musk 'changed his mind' on the one thing that he said would set Twitter apart from 'the rest' is where I have a problem: this is a matter of principle so dear that it should override his personal affairs because that is what he is on the record about. If Musk's principles only hold water as long as he isn't personally affected then I'm fine with that but then he should get off his high horse and stop pretending.

Twitter before Musk was not perfect, but it was perfectly usable (even if they got stuff wrong every now and then, and in those cases they usually - but not always - eventually corrected themselves). What is on display right now is capriciousness of an entirely different degree.

> There is nothing 'real world surveilance' about following this link:

There is about how you know which link to follow.

He is not using PIA right now, A835AF code is what is entered in the publicly available FAA register.

> Twitter before Musk was not perfect, but it was perfectly usable (even if they got stuff wrong every now and then, and in those cases they usually - but not always - eventually corrected themselves). What is on display right now is capriciousness of an entirely different degree.

So Twitter is now unusable because elonjet has been banned? Social media companies change their policies all the time. You don't have to agree with the decision but holding it up as something so consequential is just silly.

Assuming what he said about his son being accosted is true, how could he not change his mind? Should he really not stop something that threatened his kids life because of a promise he made to internet strangers?

If Elon uses this personal experience as an opportunity to reconsider how Twitter handles speech which is legal but poses a safety risk to an individual or group then I will commend him for finally maturing past the "free speech absolutist" position.

If he simply bans those who would cause him (or people he likes) harm but continue to allow and encourage "free speech" for those who would cause harm to others then that seems a bit hypocritical.

Twitter now is unusable because Elon bans anyone who does something he doesn't like.

This includes criticizing him in various ways.

Say what you will about pre-Elon Twitter; I never heard about anyone getting their account banned for saying bad things about Dorsey.

This is an extreme exaggeration. If you've used Twitter since the Musk takeover and come away with the impression that you can't criticize him there, you've had a completely alien experience to mine- it seems to be the main use of the site these days.

He has banned parody accounts that don't specify 'parody' in the username, he's threatened to de-amplify negative tweets, and he's banned the ElonJet account. I vehemently disagree with all of those moves, but the idea that the site is now unusable to say anything that he doesn't like is absolutely hyperbole.

As he originally announced his non-banning as being due to his fundamental principles, it's more than just changing his mind. He should at least clarify how his attitude towards freedom of speech on Twitter has developed. Personally I think he's being disingenuous as he doesn't seem to care about other people's safety following even his own tweets, so although I can understand him putting his own family first, he should now appreciate that his previous stance on absolute free speech is untenable.

I wonder if he’d change his mind if this was someone else’s incident.

He perhaps wouldn't have. Then again, so? Incidents happening to us and our family, hit us harder, and can move us to take specific action more often, news at 11.

So free speech only counts when it doesn't affect you personally, got it.

I don't think anyone would really care about this had he not made purchasing Twitter all about trying to save us from the evil Twitter censorship demons.

>So free speech only counts when it doesn't affect you personally, got it

Yes, people are less accepting of things that personally are meant to spite/hurt them, even if they match their general principles. News at 11.

Besides, free speech is about sharing opinions and such, however controversial. Petty "I'll share your itinerary to the world" is not real speech, opinion, let alone an argument. It is doxxing/stalking - that the information is publicly available in aviation registers is irrelevant (lots of stalking information is: the doxxing/stalking/threatening part is extracting it from its normal location, highlighting, it and making it more public).

It's not doxing if it's public information. News at 11.

This incident clearly shows why there should be a firewall between owners and moderation. This is in no way a way to run any social media site.

Indeed. Which is why the golden rule used to be 'do not moderate the forum that you participate in'. That solves most of those problems.

Yes you've nailed it. Totally human to react to a personal incident. Needs to be guarded against.

How is this different than what Twitter does through its advertising partners though?

It is very relevant in the context of claim that ElonJet only reshared information that was already public.

We need to be careful about not (unintentionally) spreading misinformation.

(Your objection to Elon is correct of course.)

This is the root of it all for me. I’m not against banning the account for doxxing Musk, as it would be fair to ban in other similar cases.

That won’t stop me saying he’s a hypocrite for doing so. Does he feel so strongly about accounts doxxing “the libs?”

There's a number of valid arguments for why the plane tracker may not be doxxing, and a couple tenuous, but valid arguments for why to ban the plane tracker account.

But no matter how you slice it, this account (and it's owner's personal account) were targeted purely because they irked Musk, and he has given zero indication that he plans to enforce this rule for basically any other account.

I agree with your assessment.

But Musk owns Twitter and he can pick and choose what accounts he wants to allow.

I guess it is akin to me removing unwanted comments on my blog. His site, his rules, policies and ToS.

He absolutely can but he’s going to get called out as a hypocrite when he acts like one.

I suspect we're quickly approaching the point where impotent cries of hypocrisy will no longer be considered even worth issuing. Maybe we're already there. The charge is inert, it does not sting, it changes no minds, and is slightly entertaining to haters, who chuckle for less than a second, and then get on with their lives.

So? Everyone keeps saying this over and over, but leaving out the most important part. In the same tweet he admitted it’s a direct threat to his personal safety! Can you comment on that part? Because it seems like people want, with Elon and other celebrities, to be put in harms way, in the name of keeping these doxxing accounts online. Which by the way are made by some college kid who probably doesn’t realize the ramifications of what he’s doing.

I wonder if the founding fathers had an opinion on temporary safety vs liberty. Shame there’s not a quote about that.

Here's one https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-06-02-01...

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

I wonder why what some guys wrote centuries ago is taken as holy scripture...

Especially when it's not even accurate, not to mention being misunderstood:

https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-be...

Right now it seems like he's willing to defend he and his friend's personal safety (his friend's safety as an after thought mind you), but he doesn't much care about the safety of people he's upset with.

Meh. Musk has no problem handing information to journalists like Matt Taibbi that included personal email addresses, all the better for Taibbi to accidentally publish.

Musk had no problem insinuating that Yoel Roth was a pedophile (as is Musk's style), reportedly forcing Roth into hiding.

Does Musk recognize the ramifications of what he was doing in either case? No. At any rate, it's pretty clear that the "threats to personal safety" is a mask, he clearly is fine with doxxing and threatening other people's public safety... as long as he is the aggressor, not the victim.

The ICAO number in the GP's comment is listed in the FAA registry for the N-number: https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberResul... (Mode S Code (Base 16 / Hex): A835AF). Are you saying that PIA program can make registry.faa.gov report data that's either obfuscated or out of sync? Why is it not reporting such data now? (Edit: Or maybe GP's comment is using a non-privacy ICAO number and the actual number squawked is private?)

The PIA program, from my understanding, removes the ICAO number from that page. It's possibly in a state that he's not registered with PIA at the moment.

> "ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program"

Only through a manual process that sounds like it can take a month or so to complete.

Perhaps, in future, this could be solved with technology that automates generation/randomisation of Aircraft IDs, much like MAC addresses on phones and laptops are randomised to prevent tracking?

Next-generation ADS-B transponders could communicate with the FAA (or appropriate local authority) via satellite or mobile network to generate/request a new, random ID before every flight.

Every measure like that introduces safety risk into the critical air traffic control system by increasing the odds of data inconsistencies and other things going wrong. I don't believe it's worth it just to preserve the privacy of billionaires and corporations.

Of course not, but what is the risk here to actual traffic? the plane still transmit its location so others can see it, they simply can't know the exact instance. Seriously asking out of curiosity.

The aircraft's type is not part of ADS-B Out data, it has to be looked up in a database using the hex code. This has implications for aircraft separation, as heavier aircraft produce more turbulence that can be harmful to smaller aircraft. A bad or missing weight category caused by something like PIA having a code collision or a failed update could lead to a fatal accident if the separation for a small aircraft is used for a large one.

A small risk, and something that could be mitigated, but still there nonetheless.

The proposals to encrypt ADS-B data, being driven by corporations and wealthy individuals, are more risky in that they add key management to the mix and make it much more likely that something will go wrong and cause widespread ATC failures or aircraft going dark on ATC displays and in collision avoidance systems at critical moments. Especially as there'll be a mix of encrypted/non-encrypted transponders for decades to come.

Presumably, just aircraft IDs would be encrypted, and not data that is safety-critical for collision avoidance? Things like callsigns (which can be changed each flight and don't necessarily have to be the aircraft's registration) and weight category could also be added, unencrypted, so that ATC screens wouldn't go dark if there was some sort of key management failure.

There is also an argument for some sort of cryptographic signing of ADS-B messages in order to prevent spoofing.

Aircraft IDs are used for type lookups and uniqueness. Callsigns are already in the signal and must be the registration for anything other than commercial or military flights, as they're registered and there's a process for allocation. Weight category and other data being added would require a whole new revision of the standard and will not reach most systems for decades.

Is all of this really necessary when billionaires have other means at their disposal to avoid scrutiny? Why add risk and complexity to a critical system just to make their lives easier?

Spoofing is not really a useful attack vector, for various reasons. In any case it's also not something that can easily be retrofitted for the same reasons, in that it takes decades to update these systems.

> ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement

Maybe he should just buy another jet or two, make sure the other jet(s) are in regular use (maybe shuttling SpaceX/Tesla/Twitter/etc employees around), and make sure he regularly swaps which one he is personally using. Extremely expensive solution, but not beyond his budget.

Or maybe he should just buy himself a private jet chartering firm. An even more expensive solution, but he can probably afford that too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com