zlacker

What exactly is this "legitimate" interest?

>>wfme+(OP)
The general premise about why flight data is public is because the planes are using a public good.

The airspace of a place is a commons, what happens in the commons is everyone’s to know.

>>wfme+(OP)
Tesla HQ is in Austin Texas, Twitter HQ is in San Francisco California. Tesla shareholders have been criticizing Musk for spending far more time at Twitter than he said he would while Tesla's stock has dropped. Therefore, there's a public interest in whether he is in San Francisco or Austin.

>>kasey_+B
Since military planes use this same public good, is their flight data also published?

>>Malloc+D
This reads along the same lines as "we must watch our employees because we don't trust them to get their work done". This doesn't seem like a genuine public interest so much as reaching for a justification given the circumstances.

>>kasey_+B
How is that different from e.g. cars? The roads are a public good as well, not?

>>wfme+y1
No but the most accepted premise is we give up public goods for national security not because rich guys don’t like it.

>>kasey_+B
The same argument could be used about cars using roads or even pedestrians using sidewalks.

>>stingr+l2
It’s generally accepted that reporting on car movements is allowed as well. You don’t have a right to privacy of movement on public roads.

Transponders are in planes mostly for safety. Their automated dissemination is part of the safety mechanisms of that transport medium and putting up with them (when required) is part of the privilege of using that public good. Similar to requiring drivers licenses to drive.

>>wfme+y1
You can actually track a large number of military flights on websites such as https://www.adsbexchange.com/ a large amount of the time they fly with there transponder on because they don’t want to hit other aircraft.

>>zajio1+v2
Yes. And it is. Pedestrians don’t have any right to privacy in public and we demand behaviors of them for the privilege of using public commons.

>>Malloc+D
So any time some shareholders are upset it automagically legitimizes the use of cyberstalking the private vehicles of the company’s executives?

Sorry, but that is a really weird justification. It seems to me that is just the type of issue that corporate boards are designed to handle without the need for vigilanteism.

>>stingr+l2
> How is that different from e.g. cars? The roads are a public good as well, not?

For one thing, it's different because there is no law that cars need an active transponder while operating.

But cars do have a license plate anyone is free to look at while they drive by so in that sense it's the same.

>>zajio1+v2
And when there is publicly available “who’s walking on the sidewalk” data they probably will

>>wfme+y1
In general yes, for example https://www.flightradar24.com/ shows right now FORTE10 plane (Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk) which is UAV heading toward Black Sea where it will be spying over Russian invasion of Ukraine and launches of Russian missiles from Black Sea in their bombing of Ukrainian cities.

Flights supplying Ukraine were routinely top viewed flights on that website (they were flying to Rzeszów in Poland, so there was no real risk of Russian shooting them down).

AWACS planes and tanker flying in holding patterns over Poland, Romania and Baltic Sea used to be top observed planes on flightradar24 but I should be now working not looking through flightradar24 planes over Poland ( so I will link https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60612255 that has video of inside one of them ).

Obviously planes flying combat missions are not publishing data there. Presumably ones training in restricted airspace are not either for also obvious reasons.

>>wfme+y1
In Western countries, in peacetime, and in regular shared airspace, yes. They broadcast on ADS-B and are visible on flight tracking websites too.

ADSB Exchange even has a ‘military’ filter to focus on them.

>>wfme+j2
I don't trust him to get work done. It's common knowledge he's not actually doing anything useful at any of the companies he "runs". There's a whole culture of "handling Elon" so he can't make terrible decisions and run a company into the ground. Twitter doesn't have that, so we're seeing everything out in the open.

>>wfme+j2
CEOs of public companies get special treatment.

In this context it is a bit of a reach but I don't think they're wrong, and I don't think there's a reason to expect normal workers and CEOs to follow the same logic.

>>wfme+j2
This is a ridiculous comparison because there is little to no power differential between Elon and his shareholders while a significant one exists between an employee and his employer.

These kinds of comparisons, where two vaguely similar situations are considered equal regardless of the wealth, power, or influence of the participants remind me of this quote by Anatole France:

> The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.

>>kasey_+B
Why would the public need to know which plane is where, as opposed to just a plane being somewhere?

>>kasey_+T2
>It’s generally accepted that reporting on car movements is allowed as well. You don’t have a right to privacy of movement on public roads.

This is certainly not true in Europe, and in the US there's generally zero restrictions on publicly sharing any kind of PII.

>>stingr+l2
Isn't it pretty established in the US that e.g. companies selling bulk license plate scanner data is completely legal, and any "right to privacy" isn't really a thing in public space? (very different in other parts of the world, but US seems to be the relevant context here)

>>rosnd+bj
My understanding is that in the US this kind of thing doesn't work on "need to" basis. It's something planes broadcast (for air traffic control reasons) unencrypted, anyone can receive it, there is nothing banning people "hearing" unencrypted radio from telling others what they hear. (Similarly to how police scanners or listening to ATC radio is legal)

>>detaro+ik
In Europe it's not always legal to listen to unencrypted radio transmissions if you're not the intended recipient, but this is heavily country dependent and not rabbit hole worth diving into here.

But what's definitely not legal anywhere in the EU is to record unencrypted radio transmissions, use it to construct a database full of PII, and distribute it like Flightradar and friends do.

E: can't reply below due to ratelimits

>Hence why I said "in the US"...

Hence why I said "in Europe"...

>>rosnd+ll
Hence why I said "in the US"...

>>wfme+j2
But in this particular case there is a lawsuit that says he is not doing his job. This isn't a micromanger checking door access logs for every employee, this is a manager saying "X isn't getting his work done and there are rumors he's not even showing up. Check the logs."

>>wfme+(OP)
holding people in power accountable (musk visit D.C. musk flies to china. whatever).

tracking & pointing out grossly polluting means of travel.

market making information (musk spends more time visiting ___ faltering plant or ignoring ___. Musk makes trips to __ location, acquisition in the works)?

elon is a public figure and his movements/actions create legitimate news. same as any other celebrity or politician.

gawker did this first and that was actually stalking precise irl real time locations of celebs.

>>kasey_+53
Would love to read HN reactions if pedestrians were mandated to wear a GPS bracelet when outside.

>>forgot+wz
We all do it already with consent, using our phones.

>>jeanlo+QE
Not everyone holds a cell phone onto them neither there's public data for the position of each one.

>>forgot+wz
“We should remove transponders from private airplanes as the occupants privacy is more important than the safety they provide” is certainly a plank someone could run on if they wanted to change the current laws.

>>kasey_+101
Instead of removing transponders, perhaps just randomize identifiers before each fly, so individual planes cannot be tracked?