https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603587970832793600
Starting to think there might be some national security issues with one guy being the nominal linchpin of the US space program, satellite internet, and global public messaging infrastructure.
The data published was not just ADS-B data, but ADS-B data + content intended to violate the specific privacy ICAO.
I'm not defending Musks actions, simply providing additional context.
Even if it was there’s still nothing wrong with tracking the aircraft and nothing illegal about people matching the rolling ICAO hex codes to the real aircraft.
It frustrates me that we’ve allowed Musk to completely redefine the conversation around something that was already settled and accepted:
1. Flight tracking data, collected from ADS-B, is legal and publicly available. Aircraft ownership data is public too.
2. Nobody has a right to keeping their aircraft movements private, and aircraft movements != personal movements.
3. After much lobbying the FAA introduced LADD & PIA, but they say outright that it’s not a guarantee of confidentiality and just makes it slightly harder to track an aircraft.
4. PIA temporary ICAO codes can only be rotated every 60 days (going down to 20) and it’s pitifully easy for any aircraft spotter, as have hung around airports for decades, to match a new one to an aircraft registration.
Not legal in Europe. You can't legally collect this (or any other PII) for fun, you'd need particularly strong reasons to do so without consent.
Mobile phones also broadcast their IMEIs and location, it would be similarly illegal to collect and store those signals to track phone movements.
>2. Nobody has a right to keeping their aircraft movements private, and aircraft movements != personal movements.
While not all aircraft movements are personal movements, many are.
Private aircraft are neither private cars nor private phones and have he ever been treated equivalently under EU law.
You’re reasoning through false analogies.