I’m a pilot, I know hundreds more pilots. Most individuals who own a plane (even a Cessna that costs less than a car) know about and often use this program.
It’s very much well known in the aviation community. And outside of that I’d say it would be more surprising to people that the general public can track any aircraft public or private! (Imagine everyone’s car being able to be real time tracked by license plate by anyone anytime)
Now, bringing some politics in, it does feel like aircraft movement for the purpose of public government use should be documented and available.
Except ... every plane is being tracked in real time by the FAA (or other aeronautical organizations) for the good of both those on the plane and those around it.
The question is not whether such tracking happens or not, but merely whether the data is publically available. The analogy with cars would require that someone is actually tracking car positions, which as far as we know is not happening at any significant scale.
So, perhaps to reword my “imagine:” imagine the government required a tracker on every car, AND that data would be available to anyone in the entire world who wants it at anytime with no restrictions whatsoever.
Except there often exists tracking even when ATC is not involved, e.g., a VFR flight.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Access_Transceiver
* https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/researc...
There's probably a way that the system could achieve the same safety benefits without invading privacy. Obviously, this FAA list is part of that. But there's probably even better tech that could achieve this too.
I'm not an aviation expert so I'll leave the details to those people. But we should be trying to find ways to improve the privacy of this system.
Give it time and people will try to justify real time tracking of all car traffic for "safety" reasons too...
Probably, but the FAA and aviation in general leans towards "use the dumbest, most reliable technology possible" (for good reason, this isn't a dig at that). A relatively cheap wing-attachable beacon that beep boops on a frequency with no handshakes, encryption, etc. is one of the simplest possible thing.
Look at the fact that piston engines in aircraft still use magnetos and manual mixture controls. :) There's a ton of literature on that, we've had real world examples of more reliable alternatives, and yet... Luckily magento replacements such as SureFly are making some headway (after long, long long last). But they're a tiny tiny part of aviation today.
But, even then, there may still be something clever that can be done to improve privacy without something as heavy-weight as, say, encryption. We should be open to the possibility.
It also works in case there's unlicensed, radio-silent flyers, which is bad, but you turn a bad situation worse if they can't get info on what other aircraft they might bump into.
The unencrypted broadcasting of their position is like a trailer beeping as they're backing up. It's an alert for others to pay attention to them and stay out of their way.
Do you think the article is speaking primarily to the "aviation community"?
Interesting approach.
JKCalhoun•5h ago
It seems though that simple elimination would reveal the "flights we're not supposed to know about". Or perhaps we'll get actual human "plane spotters" around the airports to log these radio-silent flights.
crote•4h ago
However, nothing is stopping you from creating your own flight detection network which doesn't follow the ignorelist. A well-known one is the volunteer-run ADS-B Exchange[1].
[0]: https://www.flightradar24.com
[1]: https://www.adsbexchange.com/
dawnerd•4h ago
trogdor•3h ago
petertodd•4h ago
The status quo is you or I can travel without significant non-government privacy concerns, as we blend into the crowd of millions of normal air travelers. Celebrities can't do that, as they get noticed by the public. Keeping the movements of their planes private just helps celebrities get to enjoy a similar level of privacy as the rest of us. I see nothing wrong with that.
Furthermore, it's good that celebrities value their privacy. Everyone should. We can all members of society to value privacy and for those values to filter down into laws that also protect it.
vincnetas•4h ago
reliabilityguy•4h ago
petertodd•4h ago
I'm not happy with the level of travel privacy out there and it would be definitely in my interests for it to be better. I have a very real risk that someone thinks I'm Satoshi and tries to track me down to get billions in BTC that I don't have.
wheelerwj•3h ago
petertodd•3h ago
Tell me, where am I right now? I traveled there recently.
Governments certainly can find out that information, as my recent flights are recorded in lots of databases accessible to the. But it's much harder for non-government entities not directly involved in the travel to find this out due to privacy laws (particularly in the EU).
tialaramex•4h ago