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Comment by looping__lui | Hacker News Reader

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.

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“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…

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.

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.

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.

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

They literally are.

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

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