[someweirdperson]

Finally. Publish it all. Tracking of every vehicle, visible for everyone.

It has been that way with aircraft for a long time. Pilots, however, are such a minority that noone really cares.

Now that everyone is impacted, regulation might get updated (or someone might spend the time to identify existing regulation that prohibits this), and that would extend to other vehicles than those with wheels.

[pc86]

It's not even that pilots are a minority and that's why no one cares. It's that most air travel is commercial, and nobody cares if someone can see where exact UAL123 is at this moment. Nobody feels bad for some millionaire's private jet getting tracked, nobody feels bad for some expensive charter plane with $15k tickets getting tracked, and the only thing left is small GA aircraft, which nobody care about at all.

The pearl clutching from some pilots (not accusing you of this) around aircraft tracking, ADSB, etc., seems exceptionally silly to me.

[wongarsu]

> Nobody feels bad for some millionaire's private jet getting tracked

This might quickly change. Now people are somewhat routinely tracking millionaire's private jets and shaming them for what they perceive as inappropriate use. Given how the law correlates much more with the interests of the types of people owning private jets than with the interests of the average citizen, we might see attempts to get that outlawed.

[Ajedi32]

> the only thing left is small GA aircraft, which nobody care about at all

Why does nobody care about those? Is it because they're a minority? Seems like you might be contradicting yourself?

[pc86]

You can probably count on one hand the number of people who care where a specific Cessna 172 is at any given point in time. What's contradictory about that?

[Stupulous]

If nobody cares where a Cessna is, why is it mandatory that everyone can find out? You could count on a fingerless glove the number of people who care where my car is, but I'd prefer not to stick that information in a public database. Some percentage of Cessna pilots prefer to keep that information private, and the rest can continue sharing that information regardless, so it would be a strictly positive-utility change. For what reason, other than the fact that Cessna pilots are a tiny minority, has this not been changed yet?

[notch656a]

"flying is a privilege not a right", "you have no expectation of privacy in public," and "but we're safer from aircraft collisions etc and that justifies the reduced privacy" are what it boils down to. I'd be shocked if anything you here isn't a nuanced or refined way of saying one of those.

Life is a lot safer now, so ever more 'safe' things start to look dangerous. If you prefer liberty/privacy to safety you're quickly becoming a dinosaur and if necessary society will imprison you to make sure you don't interfere with democratic process of the majority.

[cjrp]

In the UK, people who are annoyed by GA plane noise will look up the owner’s details (these are held in a mandatory, public database by the CAA, equivalent to the FAA) and contact them directly.

[someweirdperson]

In Germany the aircraft registry is not public. But that's only a minor advantage. People who would need to look up my aircraft registration aren't usually interested when or where I'm flying. People who know me are interested. And they know anyway. Can't hide the license plate of my car from neighbors, can't hide the aircraft registration from family and friends.

[miniBill]

The difference is that "person went from airport X to airport Y" is WAY less private than, say "person went to Planned Parenthood clinic" or "person parked in front of union"

[ajsnigrutin]

yep!

There are so many people thinking "I did nothing wrong, who cares if I get tracked".... publish it all, and then have all the neighbours have access to that, the wife can see when you left the bar, your boss can see when you left, etc... only then will people be aware that it's not ok to do that.

There are also laws (not sure if accepted yet) that all cars should have remote shutdowns/blocks.. for "security reasons" (basically police can shut down your car if they want to)... and I'm just waiting for someone to hack the whole system and shut down all the cars around the world just for fun

[McDyver]

Even if you did nothing wrong and "have nothing to hide"(TM), knowing where you are can also tell others where you aren't.

It gives the possibility to infer patterns from your travels, or can, for instance, give a thief the opportunity to rob your place knowing that you are 200 km away and won't be home any time soon.

[hutzlibu]

"publish it all, and then have all the neighbours have access to that, the wife can see when you left the bar, your boss can see when you left, etc... only then will people be aware that it's not ok to do that."

If really everyone would participate, I would give it a try. Would disrupt a lot, but might end up with a honest society. But in reality, if you have money, you can circumvent tracking, in varius ways.

I believe it is also being done with planes today? People flying planes they control, even if they do not directly own it, so can not so easily be tracked.

So no, it is not ok, as it further increases the power imbalance. But with self driving cars and more and more sensors and safety regulations, it will likely come anyway.

[anders_p]

> If really everyone would participate, I would give it a try. Would disrupt a lot, but might end up with a honest society.

Do you really want your health insurance company to know that you parked outside a doctor's office, who specializes in skin cancers? You just went for a check-up, but they might want to increase your payments or even cancel your coverage entirely.

Then good luck finding another insurance provider, since they all have that information now.

Or how about all future potential employers knowing that you once visited a union office?

There are so many cases, where people "who have nothing to hide" can't imagine where this could bite them in the future.

You (or your wife/daughter/girlfriend/secretary, etc.) visit a Planned Parenthood? Everyone - including your pastor - now has that info.

You go to a job interview at a competitor? Your boss now knows that.

We have no idea who or what groups who might want to snoop in where we park our cars.

The possibilities for abuse are endless. And as always, we have no way of predicting what use-cases unethical individuals will come up with as these things roll out.

[aierou]

Bad actors already have access to the data, right? Would it not be better to legalize/regulate it? I'm not convinced that we can put the genie back into the bottle.

[spiderice]

> If really everyone would participate, I would give it a try

This isn't something you get to just temporality "try". Once it's a thing, it will always be a thing. No way is the government letting that one slip through their fingers.

Also, I'm envisioning a world where people are getting their retinas altered minority report style to avoid this.

[s1artibartfast]

This only holds true until you realize that crazy road rager on the highway can look up where you live and your children go to school

[daoist_shaman]

Yeah, this will be normalized in about a year after some low budget government and corporate gaslighting.

People are already complicit with keeping a device in their pocket that passively tracks their location.

Tracking people on camera and making them okay with it is the logical next chapter in this privacy erosion saga.

[is_true]

Ideally other people shouldn't care what you do. But reality is sad

[makeitdouble]

Even beyond nosyness, you might want your elderly parents to stay unaware that you’re checking retirement homes in their area. Or not let your son know you’re working a second job while he’s in college. Privacy is just so important from any angle we put it.

[is_true]

I don't particularly agree with both of your examples, but I share your opinion on the importance of privacy.

Citizen surveillance and corruption was the reason I started disliking cameras on public places.

[Spooky23]

I think the point is if this were public, we would end up with appropriate controls.

As it stands today, the only privacy that you have today in a vehicle is the amount of money it takes to get information from someone who runs a tow truck.

The police are mum, as the ever present LPR makes it trivial to track anyone. My buddy owns a local pizza place and has a bunch of cameras with LPR. He routinely provides data to the local PD. There’s no rule about it - he can give that info to me.

You can be sure that this information is collected and aggregated by many commercial entities and used to correlate where shoppers shop, where fleet cars go, etc.

[makeitdouble]

I am not as optimistic.

Beyond individual camera data, there’s already huge amount of behavioral data you can legally buy (usually from tracking apps the users either willingly chose to use as such, or didn’t fully understand it what it would do) and probably associate with other databases to get individual profiles.

Even full on data breaches associated with complete identifying data have had very little impact on the control we have on them. The companies leaking millions of records didn’t get much more than a stern look and a slap on the wrist from regulators around the globe, and the EU is the only entity starting to take it seriously at this point.

[jedberg]

> Finally. Publish it all. Tracking of every vehicle, visible for everyone.

I'd have no problem with this as long as there was a flip side that said that I get a cryptographically secure feed of verified identities of everyone who accesses my data. Including if law enforcement accesses it.

[gernb]

My current feeling is that, at least in SF, no one cares about traffic laws. The roads are public and traffic laws exist to organize sharing of the roads. I think I'd prefer the roads to be surveilled and more fines be levied. I'm sick of watching people just run red lights, turn right on no-right-on-red lights, block lanes that are illegal to block, stop in places marked "no-stopping", drive down bus only lanes, cross double white "no crossing line" etc... These all put other people's health/lives in danger and need to be enforced IMO

[0xfeba]

I'm inclined to agree. They could enforce many more laws with automation, today. Car has distance sensors for cruise control? Monitor and report following distance. Speeding. Changing lanes without signaling. Etc.

[Gys]

For most boats this is optional, but still most boats have AIS [0] as part of their comms and have it enabled. There are also several websites (like [1]) where you can locate any boat (with AIS) in the world.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste... [1] https://www.marinetraffic.com/

[e_i_pi_2]

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

[m463]

the next level would have to be - who searched and what did they search for?