Its not like Jack Sweeney actually has ABS-B detectors of his own. All airplanes in the USA are going to have to have their ABS-B transponders on, to prevent mid-air collisions. You must broadcast your location at all times.
This government program was specifically designed to hide the link between an aircraft identifier and the owner of the aircraft.
If the link between Elon Musk and the aircraft identifier he flies with was meant to be publicly available, why does this program exist in the first place?
> Jack Sweeney was posting non public information.
I feel like the speculation going on in the discourse as to the mysterious ways that the tracking was able to perpetuate muddies the waters, so let’s make that clearer.
1. It is public information that SpaceX has a public address at 1 Rocket Road, Hawthorne[0].
2. It is public information that a jet is registered at FAA for an owner whose shell company has a public address at 1 Rocket Road, Hawthorne. Its tail number is N628TS[1].
3. The jet is required by law to broadcast publicly, unencrypted, its tail number. Hobbyist pilots and ATCs around the world exchange that information to keep track of what is in the air. That exact jet’s ACARS information contains both its tail number and ICAO address[2]. The PIA anonymization program can randomize the ICAO address, but here we find which one it is by going through all planes. There are just so few.
4. The jet is also required to broadcast ADS-B messages publicly. ADS-B contains the ICAO address and latitude / longitude / altitude / velocity[3].
> What I’ve since learned however is that tracking his jet requires a combination of public and private information. He’s part of a privacy scheme which routinely changes the plane’s identifier: https://mobile.twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/160385752457453...
My understanding is that he _stopped_ using this service and now his plane broadcasts the same tail number all the time.
An important distinction, I think, is that Sweeney (@elonjet) appears to use a different tracker than the publicly available one. PIA is the freely available and public flight tracker, but can be put into private mode which Musk does. Sweeney then (likely) reverts to using non-public ICAO addresses which he identifies by manually coordinating Musk's known plane location/history.
I'm not an expert here, just sharing what I've seen. Please offer corrections.
This is public information. His own plane reports it. Anyone can buy a receiver to pick up the transponder, and websites exist to collect that data from people who do. All this Twitter account does is report that for one plane in that database. Anyone, including stalkers, can make a script to watch it.
> Although I would guess a determined attacker could find it out given sufficient research.
You don't have to be determined; a college freshman on a lark found Musk, Gates, etc. and made Twitter accounts. This information is intentionally public; you can browse recent plane registrations at https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/RecentRegist..., export it to CSV, with full name and address of each owner.
I get a text message whenever my dad is seen in the air.
@elonjet isn't the problem here. (IMO, there isn't a problem.)
The data are broadcast from the plane itself, though, for the explicit purpose of allowing the plane's location to be known. That's definitely public data.
The aircraft tracking data itself is public, but what's not public is the information which links the temporary aircraft identifier to its owner when the owner is using that privacy program, which is the case for Elon: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603803508087537665
So if Elon's aircraft identifier was meant to be publicly accessible even though he is using that program, why does this privacy program exist in the first place?
> Which would make the identifier itself, and its real-time location, public information, but the knowledge of who owns the identifier would remain as private information.
Yes and no. Tracking airplanes is something hobbyists have been doing for decades; there are people who hang out by airports and record every flight in and out. The PIA program can be useful for realtime masking but the information is far from secret — nor should it be, imo.
> "Elon Musk, for example, has a Gulfstream and there's only so many people that fly that particular plane out of Brownsville, Texas and fly to the same airports," Sweeney told Insider.
> ...
> "These privacy mitigation programs are effective for real-time operations but do not guarantee absolute privacy," an FAA spokesperson said. "A flight can still be tracked in other ways such as a Freedom of Information Act request, www.LiveATC.com, ADSB Exchange, or a frequently departed airport."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Sweeney#Creation_of_fligh...
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