My plane is not trackable without using non-public data | Hacker News Reader

My plane is not trackable without using non-public data

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66 pointsMzHN68 comments

Isn't ADS-B mandatory in the USA since January 1st 2020? Definitely for IFR...

edit 1: Presumably should be visible here, if airborne... https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ac70d2

edit 2: TIL about privacy ICAO, but not sure how effective. https://nbaa.org/aircraft-operations/security/privacy/privac...

edit 3: Also seeing this jet listed. (N-628TS) https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af , Seem to be a couple of jets used by elon musk and/or spacex. YMMV. At least some of them are trackable at least.

Looks like the popular ADS-B aggregators have deleted the data "at the request of the operator" which makes it sleazy at best to call it "private data."

- https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n900sx

- https://de.flightaware.com/live/flight/N900SX

How does that make the data non-public? His plane is still broadcasting it into the air and anyone with an antenna can pick it up and share the already public information. Sure, a few of them have been bullied by Elon into not doing so. But that doesn't make the information non-public. It just makes Elon a sleazebag who can't be trusted to hold his word.

I agree--it's public data that has been removed. It's disingenuous (at best) to call it private data. I clarified my position in my original comment.

Do I understand this correctly https://nbaa.org/aircraft-operations/security/privacy/privac...

So PIA in a nutshell means that you can request a private identifier for your plane, that is not publicly linkable to you.

And if the identifier is compromised, you can request a new one.

Which would make the identifier itself, and its real-time location, public information, but the knowledge of who owns the identifier would remain as private information.

> Which would make the identifier itself, and its real-time location, public information, but the knowledge of who owns the identifier would remain as private information.

Yes and no. Tracking airplanes is something hobbyists have been doing for decades; there are people who hang out by airports and record every flight in and out. The PIA program can be useful for realtime masking but the information is far from secret — nor should it be, imo.

> "Elon Musk, for example, has a Gulfstream and there's only so many people that fly that particular plane out of Brownsville, Texas and fly to the same airports," Sweeney told Insider.

> ...

> "These privacy mitigation programs are effective for real-time operations but do not guarantee absolute privacy," an FAA spokesperson said. "A flight can still be tracked in other ways such as a Freedom of Information Act request, www.LiveATC.com, ADSB Exchange, or a frequently departed airport."

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-appears-use-faa-to...

Would this count as stalking though? I pulled up a definition on Google and

> According to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), the legal definition of "stalking" means "engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for his or her safety or the safety of others or suffer substantial emotional distress."

http://www.oxfordlegal.com/legal-definition-stalking/

Using an antenna to figure out somebody's approximate location and publicizing it, when that somebody already has stalkers going after his children [1], seems like it would cause reasonable fear

[1]: https://nypost.com/2022/12/15/elon-musk-shares-video-of-craz...

If Elon Musk is legitimately afraid for his or his family's safety, it is strange that he did not file a police report and blocked people on Twitter for suggesting he do so.

https://nitter.it/pic/orig/enc/bWVkaWEvRmtBR0FsUGFjQUE4MjQzL...

https://nitter.it/@ZacksJerryRig/status/1603286484785586178

Moreover, the narrative he's presenting doesn't make sense. Not only did the @ElonJet account not tweet for over 24 hours prior to the alleged incident, but people have determined that the location doesn't make sense for what he's claiming.

> people have determined that the location doesn't make sense for what he's claiming.

Details on this?

Hard to find the specific comment I was looking for. I think this is one of the main sources, in addition to ElonJet not having tweeted on December 13th (the day of the alleged incident).

https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1603454821700452365

there are people who hang out by airports and record every flight in and out.

Don't worry they want to classify that as cyber stalking next.

I have seen some planes that were not broadcasting any signals... Maybe FBI.

Yes, some military and government aircraft are exempt from this requirement. It's otherwise illegal to disable ADS-B.

This is only sort of true. While not having ADS-B Out does limit where you can fly, it is not illegal to fly a civil aircraft without ADS-B Out equipment. The following rules are the most relevant:

If your aircraft is equipped with operable ADS-B Out equipment, it is illegal not to turn it on. 14 CFR 91.225(f).

If you wish to fly in Class A, B, or C airspace, within a Mode C veil, or in Class E airspace above 10,000', you must have ADS-B Out. 91.225(a) and (d).

There is no rule implementing a blanket requirement for all civil aircraft to have ADS-B Out.

You would be surprised how much airspace this leaves open to aircraft without ADS-B Out. You can in fact fly across the entire country, legally, without it.

And in my experience ATC could not care less whether you have ADS-B Out. 91.225 is riddled with "unless authorized by ATC," and practically speaking, in thousands of hours of flying I have never seen an aircraft turned away because of a lack of ADS-B Out. I've asked some controllers about this directly and it makes no difference to them.

EDIT: I should add that in Musk's case this ADS-B business is all a little bit of a red herring, because the second you get radar services, your data is public regardless of ADS-B status.

It goes beyond Musk in my opinion. The elite are annoyed that every peasant now has the technological ability to photograph and disseminate their actions and whereabouts. Show their lies and hypocrisy for all to see.

The cat is out of the bag though. The same technology that allowed Musk to become a cult figure can be used against him.

I recommend "Slowness" by Milan Kundera, he has some interesting thoughts about elite/popularity/celebrities. To be honest one can be pretty "elite" without gaining this amount of popularity. Elon is trying to become a celebrity with his actions so he shouldn't complain that people treat him like a celebrity.

It's hard for me to give an example of anonymous US billionaires, but the richest guy in Poland is pretty much anonymous. Last time I checked there were no photos of him, no biography, and even people in his big company didn't know how he looks sometimes.

Edit: His name is Tomasz Biernacki, here is a bloomberg article altough I can't pass the paywall https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-18/reclusive...

AFAIK if this is true then he's breaking the law, since ADS-B is legally required in the US.

The ultra-wealthy have complained for years about this. There's actually a method to get temporary and anonymous call signs for PJs through the FAA, but it's not supported internationally, so every time you leave US airspace you have to yank and reprogram the box. So basically Musk doesn't appear to be using the tools the government gives the ultra-wealthy to avoid scrutiny of their travel, probably because it's inconvenient, but he reserves the right to complain endlessly about it.

Time to use a twitter handle like @N628TS_Jet or @a835af_Jet and mention the obvious truth that Elon may or may not be on board...

All such accounts have been banned, as well as accounts that mention said accounts.

Are we at that point where the accounts that mention those who mentioned said accounts are banned yet? Twitter was banning journalists last night so I imagine they are going to be banning journalists talking about the banning of journalists.

We're going to have to rename the Streisand Effect before the end of all this.

At least one of the journalists suspended last night had just retweeted another journalist's post that had screenshot the @joinmastodon post linking to ElonJet there.

TjYyOFRT b64 for any enterprising individuals that want to see how good their detection is

De-anonymized public data is still public data.

If you are ok with Elon Musk (or any other plane) being trackable, you should be ok to have your license plate tracked and your movements published wherever you go.

I’m fine with planes being tracked, I’m not necessarily fine with cars being tracked.

Cars don’t have to broadcast their location to not get blown up by air defense. Planes do. And we’re legally allowed to listen to all wireless frequencies.

Your argument doesn’t make sense. If tracking plane registrations and making that data publicly available is ok to you - you should also be fine to have your license plate scanned and your movements made publicly available to everyone.

Otherwise you are a hypocrite.

Broadcasting your location to “get avoided being blown up by air defense” is just pure non-sense. Collision avoidance yes, but what country are you living in believing that the military would just shoot down planes from the sky?

Nearly every country will shoot a plane that’s not identifying itself out of the sky. Especially after 9/11. It’s actually policy in a lot of countries now.

Generally would happen after a visual confirmation though.

Anyway, cars don’t carry the same type of power that planes do. Cars are being tracked in most countries anyway, just that the data isn’t public.

Finally there is nothing stopping you from making a “install this software on your webcams to monitor car locations” is there? If you’re so non hypocritical, go make that software and convince folks to run it, because that’s how airplane tracking happens.

Unless you’re arguing that planes shouldn’t carry radios with them and that countries should be fine with unidentified planes in their air space?

Yes, I’m absolutely fine with unidentified planes in airspaces. And maybe could you cite how often planes were shot down because “they didn’t carry radios”? Such nonsense.

The data with car movements not being public is exactly the point. I’m certainly not going to start tracking people’s license plates and further accelerate some dystopian society.

And no: license plates aren’t tracked everywhere. EU laws for example are rather strict about that.

But Elon Musk’s license plate and movements are not being tracked?

I see your point, but planes and cars are not on the same level, in my opinion

They literally are.

So what you’re saying is that the FAA shouldn’t publicly post flight data?

Because that’s the issue, the data is already public. it’s not about whether we have a right to track planes or other vehicles, it’s that plane coordinates are already public information.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread” The law also requires rich and poor alike to register their private jets and broadcast their locations when in flight. I'm sure Elon has no problem not being allowed to sleep under a bridge, and I have no problem with my private jet being tracked. Cars is a bit of a false equivalence. If he wanted privacy, he could drive

Not all private planes are jets. There are >200k private aircraft in the US and the majority certainly isn’t jets…

Maybe we should also track all iphones and make that data publicly available. If people wanted privacy they could use Android…

License plates and cars are already tracked and that data, along with cell phone data, is sold to the highest bidder.

Palantir, founded by Elon Musk's friend Peter Thiel, is in-part responsible for making wide-scale invasive surveillance accessible to government and private industry. Elon Musk has personally hired private investigators to "stalk" people he doesn't like or suspects of wrong-doing.

I didn’t know that license plate movements of cars are publicly available in the US. That would creep me out.

This is not about “protecting Elon Musk”. But being sensitive about tracking individuals by the means of license plates / registrations.

It's a price I'm willing to pay for investigative journalism. But I will never be worthy of https://www.bellingcat.com/ attention.

Whatever you think of Elon up until this point, I don't see how you can find him reliable/trustworthy. He specifically said that @elonjet was ok and then reversed course on that.

He's obviously a liar at minimum.

It wouldn't be a lie if @elonjet posted something else more revealing other that it was bot'ed to do.

I personally think this is an emotional overreaction and, based on the location of the recent incident (far from his plane), I think @ElonJet was not involved (and probably doesn't pose any threat to Elon), but I don't think that means his previous statements were a lie.

Anyone would change their mind and overreact after an attack on their child.

And in a broader context, the new policy seems like a good idea. In general, I suspect real-time location tracking does more harm than good, and none of us would tolerate a website tracking our location.

an alleged attack, the evidence for which is a single video that was a shot not at the airport when the plane wasn't in the same city; note, too, no police report was filed about the supposed incident.

I generally take people at their word, but Musk in particular has used up every last bit of benefit-of-the-doubt credit I had for him. I pretty much gave up on Musk when he tried to insert himself into the Thai cave rescue, and wound up calling the guy who actually saved the kids a pedophile because his mini-sub idea was bad and he couldn't handle the perceived slight.

Do you think the video was staged?

Let's say it wasn't. Let's say it went down exactly as described. That leaves Musk with a lower threshold for banning legit journalists than he for filing a police report. Not impossible, but rather weird.

Why is there no footage from any of the multiple cameras on the Tesla that was allegedly attacked? It would be trivial for him to obtain that if it exists.

There won't be a police report. Many people have investigated Elon's claims, and determined that the alleged incident could not have taken place when or where he claimed it did.

Filing a false police report is a crime. It's only a misdemeanor, but if Elon's stupid enough to go down this route a conviction for a crime of dishonesty can be used against him in court to impeach any testimony he gives until his dying days.

> He specifically said that @elonjet was ok and then reversed course on that

Why did he reverse course? This part is missing from your appeal so I'm wondering if you know the answer, but just find it irrelevant.

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