I think there's a hard public interest in tracking flights. They're so safe these days that we can kind of forget that we're talking about moving multi-ton vehicles over people's homes, churches, and schools, where anything going wrong can result in significant loss of life and property damage... At the very least, I want to know who and when as a societal tradeoff for the privilege of using the air over our heads freely.
(Also, that vested interest has been demonstrated in recent history. Keep in mind that it was ultimately plane-spotters who originally busted the extraordinary rendition policy of the US government open... They noticed planes had changed their regular flight patterns significantly).
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.
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).
Because the folks doing it are doing it for hobby and therefore it is good but corporations are doing it for profit so it is wrong.
Tracking others is okay for me but not for thee.
I'm only saying this partly in jest but I think it is conceivable that this line of defense is used by these communities and is absurd.
I do agree with you: a basic level of privacy should be there for everyone from (almost) everyone. In this particular case ATC should track aircraft and ensure that not everyone is going in any airspace willy-nilly.
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.
I can definitely get behind this, being tracked is a solid disincentive to flying, this could work the same way for driving to promote more public transit/walkable cities. If this goes to facial tracking that's a whole different concern though.
I think the argument being made here is more that it's non-consensual data collection which seems solid. By owning a plane you're consenting to it being tracked and same for a car, but I don't think a person just using the plane/car/train/street should be allowed to be tracked - just the vehicle
So what you’re saying is that the FAA shouldn’t publicly post flight data?
Because that’s the issue, the data is already public. it’s not about whether we have a right to track planes or other vehicles, it’s that plane coordinates are already public information.
It seems more attention seeking to me. If they really wanted the world to track the aircraft movements then they could post a list of names, aircraft and tail numbers. That would allow anyone to use FlightRadar24, FlightAware or the myriad of other tracking sites and their API's to track aircraft and would take the focus off the one person tracking them.
The "extraordinary rendition" program the CIA was using to disappear terror suspects into places they could be tortured was discovered in part by airplane-spotting hobbyists. Because planes are extremely hard to hide, and there are people who watch airports to see what takes off and lands for fun.
When they pooled their data, they were the first group to notice the military had started running flights to and from locations they didn't normally fly, and it didn't take much investigative journalism after that to discover those planes were carrying people.
Yes, I’m absolutely fine with unidentified planes in airspaces. And maybe could you cite how often planes were shot down because “they didn’t carry radios”? Such nonsense.
The data with car movements not being public is exactly the point. I’m certainly not going to start tracking people’s license plates and further accelerate some dystopian society.
And no: license plates aren’t tracked everywhere. EU laws for example are rather strict about that.
Nearly every country will shoot a plane that’s not identifying itself out of the sky. Especially after 9/11. It’s actually policy in a lot of countries now.
Generally would happen after a visual confirmation though.
Anyway, cars don’t carry the same type of power that planes do. Cars are being tracked in most countries anyway, just that the data isn’t public.
Finally there is nothing stopping you from making a “install this software on your webcams to monitor car locations” is there? If you’re so non hypocritical, go make that software and convince folks to run it, because that’s how airplane tracking happens.
Unless you’re arguing that planes shouldn’t carry radios with them and that countries should be fine with unidentified planes in their air space?
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.
If your neighbors are traveling by personal aircraft then it is very much the same thing. There are a lot of privately owned GA aircraft and many of us don't particularly like everyone snooping on us.
Many in this community get awfully nervous about things like police surveillance of cars, license plate tracking, etc. The Police say they need it just for special cases like crime, but we all know the dangers of dragnet surveillance. This is also dragnet surveillance; it's the same violation of privacy if the mode of transportation is different. Many on this forum think it's fun though because the mechanism is a bit nerdy and they aren't the ones being surveilled.
So we're saying that the reason jets should be able to be tracked by anyone, in real time, is so we can enable targeted moral shaming? Everyone, regardless of wealth or mode of transportation should have the right to not be publicly real-time tracked. Let's find more constructive ways to solve our larger scale societal problems than to fall back on mob rule.
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.
(Also, that vested interest has been demonstrated in recent history. Keep in mind that it was ultimately plane-spotters who originally busted the extraordinary rendition policy of the US government open... They noticed planes had changed their regular flight patterns significantly).
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