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.
This article from TC confirms:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/15/elon-musk-suspends-mastodo...
Also I get journalists are feeling threatened, but it's a shame to see such a clear emotionally charged article from TC, I used to trust them for unbiased tech reporting.
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.
The GDPR even covers you just writing notes into your diary about what your neighbours have been up to.
Some people still use unencrypted wifi networks, is their traffic "public"?
What about baby monitors? Do you think that unencrypted baby monitor traffic is "public" in any reasonable sense of the term?
With wifi, an unencrypted network is an open invitation to connect to it, as this is the way to connect through portals which transfer to encrypted tunnels. Intercepting other traffic on the network is not OK since you would be violating hacking laws since it isn't your network.
Same thing with cell networks. Your phone broadcasts its data, which is perfectly legal to pick up, but if you have to use any network resources which aren't yours then it's a no-go.
Overall, if it is being broadcast into my house I can capture it, but I can't send things back to the source and try and get it to do things.
Your argument falls flat, sorry.
Do you genuinely believe that you being allowed to spy on to your neighbours unencrypted baby monitor is a good thing that's helpful for society at large?
For example, in Finland this is legislated as follows:
Section 37 – Confidentiality of radiocommunications
(1) Radiocommunication is confidential and may be received only by those for whom it is intended. (46/2005)
(2) Whoever receives or otherwise has information on a confidential radio transmission not intended for him/her must not wrongfully disclose it or make use of the knowledge of the contents or existence of the transmission.
(3) The following are not considered to be confidential radiocommunications:
...1) initial transmissions of television and radio programmes;
...2) emergency calls;
...3) radiocommunications conducted using a public calling channel;
...4) the amateur service;
...5) shortwave radiocommunications in the 27 MHz frequency band; or any other radiocommunication intended for general reception. (46/2005)
The penalty for violating this law is a court-determined fine.
Do you think that this law is overall a net-positive or a net-negative for society? What good things come from you being able to listen to arbitrary transmissions intended for someone else?
Yes, there are a plenty of precedents in the usual sense of the word. Such as this case, https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-851
If you're going to argue (like _djo_) that this is not a precedent because it concerns a different type of a vehicle, you're entering into some rather absurd territory.
We have a clear example showing that simply storing pictures of car license plates by a toll road operator was a GDPR violation. Aircraft tail numbers are functionally exactly the same as car license plates.
The GDPR does not at any point discuss vehicles, from a GDPR perspective it makes no difference if the vehicle is a car, bicycle or your personal submarine. Or if there's a vehicle at all! GDPR concerns all PII for an extremely broad definition of PII.
Tracking locations of personal aircraft without consent is a GDPR violation, there really couldn't be a more obvious example of one.
PS. GDPR places the onus on the data controller to prove what they're doing is legal, not the other way around. You are guilty unless proven innocent. The reasonable question is to ask "Is there a precedent for this being legal?".
The answer to that is probably not, because the European flightradar24.com does have a privacy policy anywhere. This alone is blatantly illegal, but the reason they don't have one is almost certainly that their business is fundamentally not legal in Europe.
If what flighradar24.com and adsbexchange.com are doing was legal, they would have a privacy policy explaining the legal basis for their data collection. It's fundamentally impossible for their business to be GDPR compliant without one.
What does that have to do with anything?
It makes perfect sense to examine the positives and negatives, in this case I'd suggest that the negatives of allowing anyone to observe unencrypted radio transmissions far exceed the positives. Do you not think so? If yes, why?
This isn't really a hypothetical question, there are actually places which do allow this and places which do not.
Pushing unencrypted radio waves into a public space makes them public. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. If I plug an FM modulator onto my phone output and you tune to an FM station and hear my audio diary, that is my fault, not yours. Same as if I dropped a page of writing on the sidewalk. At that point, it is public.
If so, can you put in the least bit of effort to explain as to why?
You seem to be expressing an ideological belief that you have some god-given right to listen to any and all radio waves that you might be able to receive, but that doesn't in any way explain why you think the society at large should see things your way.
Because of how you seem to be approaching this, you've made no effort to explain why things should be the way you want them to be. You appear to simply treat it as axiomatic, i.e. a god-given right.
> should it be a criminal act to listen to radio waves that are in public? What would define 'private' and 'public' radio waves if that were the case?
An earlier comment in this thread addressed this in it's entirety by citing an example of real legislation which gracefully handles this.
> What would define 'private' and 'public' radio waves if that were the case?
There are radio waves which the transmitter intends you to receive, and radio waves which the transmitter does not intend you to receive. Generally you'd be fully aware if a transmission is meant for you or not, but the legislation referred to earlier would not impose any penalties on you for accidentally listening to transmissions not intended for you.
> if someone were pointing a video projector of their video baby monitor out of a window and it shown on your wall, do you think it should be criminal to look at it?
That would likely be an deliberate act by the transmitter, whereas the RF-based baby monitor example would not.
On the other hand, setting up cameras to look through someone's windows would certainly be a criminal act in many places (as IMO it should).
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What exactly do you think is wrong with this law?
> (2) Whoever receives or otherwise has information on a confidential radio transmission not intended for him/her must not wrongfully disclose it or make use of the knowledge of the contents or existence of the transmission.
The law essentially just mandates you to stop listening as soon as you realise the transmission is not meant for you. Only deliberate violations are penalized.
You are approaching this as if you broadcast something into the common airwaves it is yours and your secret, while I maintain it is no different than yelling that thing out your open windows and then claiming no one can listen to you. Just because it requires a trivial bit of technology to 'listen' to a radio broadcast doesn't make it any different than blasting sound or light waves. This is your issue -- you think that radio waves are somehow distinct from sound or light, when it is just another version of such things.
> Just because it requires a trivial bit of technology to 'listen' to a radio broadcast doesn't make it any different than blasting sound or light waves
In many cases it would be illegal to use a fancy (or not fancy) microphone to listen to your neighbours through a wall, and why should it not be?
It's one thing to accidentally overhear something, and another to deliberately go out of your way to spy on others. Even most(?) US states have wiretapping laws which prohibit such activities.
You are criminalizing receiving but not transmitting. I contend this is no different to yelling out of your window and criminalizing people hearing you. if you cannot come up with something other than 'it is wiretapping and private' to argue against broadcasting unencrypted radio into public airspace with a radio transmitter being by definition a public broadcast then I ask you not to respond because there is no answer to something like that, just as there is no answer to someone contending that listening to something people yell out of windows is a violation of privacy.
You are deeply wrong. Humans can not listen to radio transmissions without special equipment.
Listening to your neighbours baby monitor generally requires specific efforts on your part. Same is obviously not true of your completely ridiculous example.
A direct comparison would be listening to your neighbour using some special long range directional mic or a thru-wall mic.
>just as there is no answer to someone contending that listening to something people yell out of windows is a violation of privacy.
You are being deliberately dishonest at this point.
You can call me wrong all you want, but these are public airwaves, and the laws disagree with you. That Finnish law you quoted makes exceptions for public channels, so you are wrong about that as well. You can stand on your misguided principles and technological fetishism thinking that radio receivers mean that the airwaves are somehow different than those same exact airwaves with a different spectrum of EMF.
What am I wrong about? It obviously makes an exemption for CB radio which is intended for random people to socialize on.
"public calling channels" refers to a variety of specific channels such as 8.1 for PMR446 or 71,100 MHz VHF/RHA68.
> Twitter apparently suspended its open source competitor Mastodon from the service on Thursday afternoon. Just prior to its suspension, Mastodon (@joinmastodon) tweeted a link to the jet tracking account on its own service, according to archives.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.