Tell HN: Musk's aircraft are not using PIA transponder codes

I believe PIA can only be used within the USA, N628TS being in the Middle East means it has to use its normal identifier.

However it does seem if you look at the history on ADSB exchange it is broadcasting as N628TS while in the US.

Elon is at the World Cup Final (he has disclosed this himself [0]) and so noting that N628TS is in Qatar isn't "Doxing" him.

0: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604490162976698368

Yep, absolutely correct.

Also, the history for N628TS shows "no data available" for Dec 6-12 and Nov 29-30.

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af&lat=34.765&lon=-...

Since there are gaps in the public location data, how can anyone make the claim that none of his aircraft have used PIA codes recently? Is that based on some additional history not on adsbexchange?

Difficult to prove a negative, but we can show that his aircraft have used non-PIA public codes for US flights recently. That makes it highly unlikely that PIA was used on other flights in between.

It also doesn’t explain why Musk’s Twitter also banned linking to ADSB Exchange and related trackers which, logically, would not have been able to track his aircraft when using PIA codes.

It's not proof that Musk is using PIA, just some holes in the evidence that he is not. I think further discussion would just be speculation without additional evidence.

The PIA codes can only be used on domestic flights, they are not recognized internationally.

(so my point is narrow one, use of the public codes on international flights does not indicate much about what codes are used on US domestic flights)

That is true, but you can look up recent flights of N628TS taking place only in the US and see it using its regular code there too.

Who cares about his private planes? It’s all a distraction from him wasting time at Twitter, running it into the ground, instead of running Tesla and SpaceX.

Seeing as though this is what has caused Musk to go even further off the deep end, banning journalists, causing more people to leave Twitter, and getting more unwelcome attention from regulators, I'd say it's directly related to him needing to spend even more time on Twitter and away from Tesla and SpaceX.

He could have opted to be more hands off, appointing a competent manager to run the place while he focused elsewhere. But he's chosen the opposite.

> Who cares about his private planes?

The many people that followed ElonJet before it was banned from Twitter.

In most ways, I agree with you. I don't particularly care and it is a distraction from real things.

The one area that I disagree is that it draws attention to the fact that Musk is doing things that are very bad for the environment while his main business is trying to convince customers that they're saving the planet buying his stuff. It's harder to sell that global warming is a crisis and everyone should get one of your electric vehicles while you're flying your private plane everywhere. Sure, other companies can also be bad, but Tesla has been (in part) selling a vision and a lifestyle.

For me, I don't care about the tracking, but the fuel usage and CO2 generated is interesting. For example, the average American produces 15 tons of CO2 per year [1]. Musk took a 9.5 hour flight on his jet to London producing 51 tons of CO2 [2]. I think tracking his flights and in particular their pollution does harm to Tesla's image as a green company and instead makes people think of Tesla as a project of a billionaire that isn't looking to save the world, but to enrich himself.

A decade ago, Musk was the environmentalist of the future. Since then, his image has changed dramatically as he's ranted against public transit and it's come to light that Hyperloop may have been an attempt to torpedo high-speed rail that would have competed with Tesla cars [3] and as the Boring company has gotten cities to bite and then ghosted them [4].

Instead of Tesla's electric cars being one portion of a green transportation future, we're seeing a CEO that's actively harming environmental efforts while trying to enrich himself. As people started calling him out on those things, he's quickly descended into right-wing propaganda - a place where he feels safe from those criticisms.

Yes, I don't really care about his private planes, but I do care about the fact that Musk and his businesses seem to be working against positive goals for the environment and society - and the private planes are one manifestation of that.

[1] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-unite...

[2] https://mastodon.social/@elonjet/109533137146004704

[3] https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali...

[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel...

Yes, one detail often omitted here is that the same person operates trackers for other famous jet owners. Elon is only the focus now because he called attention to it.

Twitter and Tesla shareholders that are concerned about the amount of CEO attention their respective company is receiving?

Agreed re: Tesla, but heads up that there are very few Twitter shareholders now, since, you know, Musk bought the whole company.

Yes, it's mostly a thing that continues just because it gets under his skin.

Musk does, he cares enough that he staged a false flag. If he has cars licensed to him then his terrible opsec endangered his family and waned him bad publicity. Where was his private security. He loled at Yoel Roth being n danger, this is all in light of that.

I know what he said about free speech absolutism, but this whole thing with tracking his plane is starting to get weird. I don’t care where his plane is and don’t think it’s really healthy for people to obsess about getting this piece of information out in the public domain.

I care about billionaires shutting down a means of transparency over their actions and about his erratic and irrational application of policies on Twitter that suit his mood, and what the consequences of both might be.

It's not just about the aircraft.

His response seems perfectly reasonable to me: no real-time stalking. If your main critique of him is his (hypocritical) carbon usage, post a weekly or monthly summary of his emissions. Or, as he is allowing, post the flight details with a reasonable delay.

To conflate real-time stalking with free speech is pretty absurd. He’s not even speaking in hypotheticals —- a nutcase intercepted his car.

Bellingcat have geolocated the imagery of the alleged stalking incident, showing it took place nowhere near an airport. It was also on a day when ElonJet wasn't operating.

Nor is there any way of knowing whether Musk or his family are on board any of these aircraft, as manifests aren't published.

He's not allowing posting the flight details with a delay either. That was a temporary rule change and rapidly walked back.

>It was also on a day when ElonJet wasn't operating.

This is false and easily verified for yourself.

Then why did you not do that?

ElonJet's last mention of N628TS before the attack was to report it landing at LAX the day before.[0] Nothing on the day of the claimed attack.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/ElonJet/posts/pfbid02Ldh5x93kQe6E6E...

The false flag was so damn desperate. It’s natural that we can’t look away. Especially considering I was raised to believe desperation repels people.

> Bellingcat have geolocated the imagery of the alleged stalking incident, showing it took place nowhere near an airport

It must be somewhere but can't find it on Bellincat's site. Do you have some pointer?

https://www.bellingcat.com/category/news/

Correction, someone in their community did and they confirmed it: https://twitter.com/eliothiggins/status/1603454821700452365

So why did Elon himself “conflate” sharing publicly available info about his travels with free speech? He literally used this exact example to demonstrate his commitment to free speech.

And after his family was endangered his opinion changed. Are you suggesting that it's not possible for someone to have a real life, personal experience that changes their opinion on a specific talking point? Are you so stubborn that your opinions never change?

It's not like this was an unknown possible outcome to free speech to someone who travels with security. If he didn't think it through before saying he wouldn't ban the account, then it's just another case of him shooting his mouth off.

He literally bought the company to unban people whose speech endangered people. But he wasn’t convinced the harm was real. I guess it’s all just vibes.

So he had no empathy for victims of stalking before, but once it happened to him, his opinion changed?

I don’t have “talking points”. I respected gay people before a close family member came out. I understand that many people in the world have lived experiences that I never will. And I try not to shoot my mouth off, and when I do, I apologize.

But that’s kind of the opposite of what’s going on here, right? He didn’t care that his new policies endangered people until it happened to him. Only being capable of empathy for yourself is not really something to celebrate.

To conflate real-time stalking with @ElonJets is pretty absurd.

But again, the info is publicly available, there is a mechanism to obscure it, and he is not availing himself of it.

Separately, the nutcase who intercepted his car did so miles away from any airport and there’s no evidence or police report to suggest that the flight details were what allowed this to happen.

I’ll also throw out there that he has a security detail for his family, which makes sense if you’re (one of) the richest people in the world, regardless of whether someone tweets your jet’s location. He’s actually far better equipped to deal with stalkers than the typical public figure. Doesn’t make it okay, of course, but look at what happened to Paul pelosi - the spouse of the 3rd in line to succeed the presidency gets his head smashed in - where’s the outrage over how their location was found?

> but look at what happened to Paul pelosi - the spouse of the 3rd in line to succeed the presidency gets his head smashed in - where’s the outrage over how their location was found?

Musk only had jokes for that one. For all the hue and cry about Twitter's "partisanship" there really is no principle here, it's only about who holds the gavel.

So if someone can afford a security detail, it's okay to stalk and attempt to harm them?

As to publicly available information... if it's so readily available, what is the point of (re)publishing live data if not to cause harm?

Sweeney enhanced the information with estimates of carbon emissions.

Then there's no need for it to be real time then.

It's not permitted at all, real time or otherwise.

It's been stated that it would be allowed with a reasonable delay (iirc 24h).

The point stands though... if the intent is anything other than harm, it doesn't need to be real time. If the intent is to show carbon use, than a monthly report would be more than enough.

The talk about a delay was walked back soon after. I’m guessing it was an idea by Irwin and then rejected by Musk.

This is already public information, as it is for all other aircraft. Delaying the Twitter feed by 24 hours makes no sense.

Publishing it to twitter real time makes no sense...

Worth noting that in many places voter registration and property owner, even vehicle registration details are also public information.

That doesn't make it okay to push your address out to Twitter either.

> He’s not even speaking in hypotheticals —- a nutcase intercepted his car.

This appears to be unrelated to any actual tracking of his plane. He was so concerned for his safety that he never filed any police report, instead asking Twitter to dox the assailant.

Moreover, he banned the elonjet account, and then banned anyone who linked to said account, which included journalists reporting on the ban. He then bailed out of a call when said journalists asked how linking to an account that is suspended and shows nothing can be considered doxxing. He also held a poll on when the elonjet account should be unbanned, redid the poll when "now" when, and still hasn't done anything when "now" won again.

This is false. He banned the so-called journalists for linking to alternative sources for Elon jet tracking.

Nope. Some were banned for linking to the LAPD statement, some for just asking him follow up questions.

Which either way is publicly available, fully legal information, given that as per OP, elon's jets aren't using a PIA transponder code.

> till hasn't done anything when "now" won again.

He's done something. He's banned other journalists who simply asked him a question while @tagging banned journalists. After the poll.

As best I can tell they're unbanned now. e.g. https://mobile.twitter.com/RMac18/

Oh like working with the FBI, DHS, and CIA ...plus third-party contractors (many of which are not based in the United States) to secretly shut down speech the government doesn't like? That kind of shutting down transparency?

> to secretly shut down speech the government doesn't like

Given that there were several press reports about this at the time it happened, how was it secret?

> I don’t care where his plane is and don’t think it’s really healthy for people to obsess about getting this piece of information out in the public domain

Same. But neither do I think that people shouldn't be allowed to do it if they want to.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that humans respond to such desperate behavior.

Who took him seriously about free speech? This week it as “doxxing” last week it was Andy NGO’s accusations.

> In fact, N628TS is airborne over the Middle East right now using its original assigned ICAO hex code of A835AF, not a PIA code.

He's at the football world cup final right now.

Sweeney himself says Musk's jet is using PIA. Sweeney told Musk about the program in the first place, so he was completely aware of the situation.

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

As I said, he may have at some point but clearly no longer is.

PIA only provides the anonymised codes, it's up to the aircraft owner to use them by recoding their transponder and as is clear from the evidence Musk's aircraft are using their original public codes.

I used to think <person> was smart. Then I discovered that he disagrees with me about <political issue>, and I realized he couldn't be, because no one who disagrees with me about <political issue> could be smart.

- relevant PG quote

Adjusting for our political reality - I used to think <person> was smart. Then I discovered that he thinks <basic fact> is a political issue, and seems unable to discuss it rationally.

Musk seems to express "the ends justify the means". “My cause is important enought that I can use X, it is justified”, for arbitrary X.

Seeing how he bulldozes ahead made me reflect over other instances of this, also among my acquaintances. Some think their take own take on politics is so lucid and important for the world that they justify telling people to their face that they are deranged, a threat to the world ahead and so on.

Can we really justify this? It's not easy to deal with a polarized world, but these people seem to be the ones meeting violence with violence and so on, and it's not looking like it makes anything better more than to entrench the culture war and similar things.

For myself I can't justify behaving like this.

I've always endeavored to be correct rather than accepted. I've also never accepted how people default to action instead of thinking. It seems that the tendency is to keep building more towers of complexity by forward-following implications, rather than looking at the overall qualities of what has been built.

I do recognize that this seems to be the vast majority of society though. And I guess it makes sense because deduction/determinism is much easier than induction/nondeterminism.

Due to this overarching dynamic, it's my ever present lament that whenever a topic I care about gets the limelight it inevitably goes sideways/backwards rather than forwards. Presently, concerns about free speech and critiques of the US empire are at all time highs. There's a store selling burritos in every neighborhood, and cryptocurrency is a thing. Me from decades past should be elated, right?

wow this is a garbage fire, Im leaving

- another relevant PG quote

Sweeney bragged about getting around Musk’s participation in the FAA’s PIA privacy program. https://twitter.com/scottwww/status/1490553502640140288

And even if the data were of public origin, that will never make its malicious use, its desire to harm, harass or persecute others legal. This attempt to deny the criminal nature of an act is disturbing.

As I said, perhaps the aircraft were using PIA codes before. They certainly have been flying recently without them though. That’s easily verified.

In any case, getting around PIA is not illegal, and is something the FAA explicitly warns aircraft owners is possible. PIA is just an obfuscation of the ICAO hex code, there’s nothing stopping spotters at airports from tying a new hex code to an existing registration, and there’s nothing spotters like more than a mystery. All entirely within the law.

There is no evidence that anyone tracking Musk’s aircraft, including Sweeney, had any desire to cause physical harm to him, nor that they had that effect.

> This attempt to deny the criminal nature of an act is disturbing.

What criminal nature? Nothing Sweeney or any other flight tracker did was in any way criminal. Not even Musk has claimed that it was.

As a Musk defender, thank you for making this post! It's very good to have some contradictory evidence.

Could you confirm how you know those three planes are the ones he uses?

These are the ones owned by Falcon Landing LLC, the company he set up for his aircraft.

It's also the list tracked by Sweeney / ElonJet. https://grndcntrl.net/falconlanding/

Thanks _djo_.

Do you know when Musk's jet stopper using PIA? Apparently it used to according to Sweeney: https://web.archive.org/web/20220203104313/https://twitter.c...

No idea. All we can show is that it frequently and recently uses its original ICAO code for US flights, and so isn’t making use of PIA to obfuscate those in the way intended.

Thanks. Would you be able to add a note to your post that it did at some point include it (with source) so that those who see you post AND have seen that archived tweet won't think you're lying?

I can’t edit that, but it already says he might’ve used PIA in the past.

Perhaps his aircraft have used PIA codes in the past, but they're not using them now.

> As a Musk defender…

A what now?

I’ve seen an HN post about a joke using the word “musketeer”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33932041 .

Someone who occasionally spends time on the internet writing defences against some of the more out there negative stuff that gets said about Musk. Got that "someone is wrong on the internet!" thing...

What's going on with this obsession over Musk? Calm down, it's just another social network, it might fail, it might not, but please ask yourself, what is so important about this that you are willing to invest so much time in it, so much effort stalking the guy? I'm worried you are not okay, please take a step back.

Without offering my personal view on the matter: there are individuals who believe that social networks, such as Twitter, have a non-trivial impact on public life (e.g., through political influence). These individuals likely believe they are essentially engaged in political activism by putting effort into this. There are also people who think he has enough on his plate with Tesla and SpaceX, and that these are more valuable ways to contribute to society than putzing around with a social media site. They'll put effort into this as well.

You are in no position to tell another person what they should be spending their time on.

The irony being the comment he’s responding to is doing just that?

I think you meant to respond to the parent of my comment. I didn’t suggest either group I noted was right (or wrong).

Idk why you think Musk should be treated like someone's shitty Dad trying to skip town. He's a literal billionaire, who could be trying to gain political and economic favors through who he meets. His actions have a very real material effect on the world, just ask any of the (now fired) Twitter employees.

This obsession is gross.

Desperation grabs attention.

Hello Elon. Nice to meet you.

That not every plane used by musk technically applied, or is able to apply, for a PIA kinda misses the main point. Sweeney )the jet tracker) has proudly claimed himself that he has cracked the PIA and will continue to post musk's location to matter anyone's privacy wishes.

https://www.globalair.com/articles/pia-privacy-program-no-ma...

You can't "well akshually," out of the privacy concern here.

I think it's more than fair for him to publish the information... that said, it's also okay for Elon to ban doing such things on Twitter.

It comes down to ease of access, motivation and intent... In the end, Elon doesn't want third parties to disclose the location details of other people. I'm not sure if this would include posting a selfie at a disclosed location with a celebrity in the background.

In the end, I think the message is pretty clear, "don't f*ck with Elon's family."