Look carefully, especially if you live near an Alpha or Beta level global city NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, DC, Miami in the United States. FlightAware took out the wealthy's private planes from their database at their request. There's lodes of exceptions to tracking if you are monied.
What we need is more people running things like RTL-SDRs to acquire data the rich and powerful want hidden to avoid exposure for shady activities.
FWIW, this is the one good thing about loss of privacy and people actually tracking private jet movements of the really wealthy that those are a little bit harder to hide. Not impossible. Just harder.
There is reasonable argument that it is not much difference between tracking someone car and tracking someone private jet. But super-rich are outgroup so most people who would strongly oppose the first case would not care in the second case.
The fact that there is flight data system is not much relevant, it could be modified to anonymize data.
It is pretty common for private planes to be removed from Flight Radar and other websites - the FAA allows owners to request this and publishes a list for companies to consume.. it was likely gone from there for a long time. But the data is still broadcast as the plane flies and some sources don't filter them out such as ADSB Exchange (https://globe.adsbexchange.com/)
100% when it comes to getting legislation out that that limits what data companies can aggregate and sell. But I dont think the current location of the jets of the rich.... that's the starting point for the conversation?!
And as a reminder, these planes literally broadcast their location themselves to the public.
And I just pointed out to you that the movement of private planes is already far more public than the movement of private cars, and for good reasons. The account isn't (as far as I know, I've never looked at it) actually doing their own tracking; they are simply (I assume) collating public information from air traffic control authorities, etc.
A very good point that embarrassingly highlights my lack of knowledge about it. Thank you for the correction.
I suppose a decent, easy system for evading its tracking would just be for rich people to swap keys to their private jets. Or chartering. Or flying commercial. Etc.
Well, rich and poor people are equally subject to tracking when they travel in their private jets. That seems fair. They can use untracked modes of travel like public transit or cars.
We're okay with tracking planes. It's unclear why this should change when it's privately owned by an individual instead of by an airline.
There are actually plenty of reasons we might want to treat air traffic different, regardless of who's on board or who owns the plane. Whether it's because planes are significantly less private by nature of being very noisy and visible (i.e. there's less of an expectation of privacy because you're being very public), or because they're a greater risk to everyone because they're in the air and full of fuel (i.e. you have a legitimate interest to know whether one might fly near you).
Governments have developed so much surveillance technology that they can easily invade the privacy of many citizens, yet tracking the exact whereabouts of planes flying in the sky - something that for scheduled, commercial flights whose routes should very much be publicly known information - still seems out of reach? I find that fact a little unsettling.
There are tons of websites listing all commercial flights. If you don’t want to be tracked, you just need to travel like everyone else rather than on a private jet, the most wasteful form of travel.
There is also a pretty easy solution to this if you want privacy: sell the private jet and use charters. This is why Bernard Arnauld sold his recently.
The title is pretty unrevealing (I mean, hey, way back when Wall Street was filmed, this concept was featured in the film). What is interesting here is that the FAA has a privacy program that allows private aircraft owners "to keep their plane movements from public view." This program is now ending. Now people will be able to track where corporate jets are going and thereby, the article suggests, get insight into M&A discussions.
What we need is more people running things like RTL-SDRs to acquire data the rich and powerful want hidden to avoid exposure for shady activities.
https://www.propublica.org/article/off-the-radar-private-pla...
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