[rosnd]

What adsbexchange, flightradar & co. are doing is almost certainly illegal in Europe under the GDPR.

This isn't exactly "public flight data", in many cases it's illegally collected and published flight data.

E: I can't reply to "imnotjames" below thanks to HN ratelimits, but here you go:

It's an obvious GDPR violation, just like it'd be an obvious GDPR violation to publish a similar database but with phone IMEIs and associated locations instead of aircraft.

[Nas808]

The FAA has a program called LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) and high-profile individuals, etc can sign up to it. The major players in the flight tracking business like FlightRadar24 or FlightAware follow that. But sites like ADS-B Exchange do not adhere to that, so you can see a lot more flights that are blocked on the others. Also anyone with a Raspberry Pi and a cheap antenna can build their own ADS-B receiver and get that unfiltered data.

[Xylakant]

I don’t see how it is an obvious GDPR violation. The GDPR is a lot more nuanced than “all private data is protected”. It has exemptions for data published based on a legal requirement (could be the case here), data that cannot easily linked to an individual (number plates are not protected by themselves) and data regarding companies is also exempt. This jet isn’t owned by musk, it’s owned by a company. Journalists (including citizen journalists) also have broad protections in European law and those must be weighed against the GDPR protections.

There’s so much nuance to this that it’s possible this might fall under GDPR, but it’s very far from obvious.

[jdong]

> It has exemptions for data published o based at n a legal requirement (could be the case here)

Couldn't, there's no legal requirement for anyone to record and publish ADS-B transmissions.

> data that cannot easily linked to an individual (number plates are not protected by themselves)

This is incorrect, number plates of cars belonging to individuals are going to be protected in almost any context you'd be storing them in.

> This jet isn’t owned by musk, it’s owned by a company

Doesn't matter, Musk isn't the only person with a plane. I own my own plane, it gets tracked by these sites.

> Journalists (including citizen journalists) also have broad protections in European law and those must be weighed against the GDPR protections

Websites like flightradar24.com are not journalists, but data brokers. That's simply ridiculous.

>There’s so much nuance to this that it’s possible this might fall under GDPR, but it very far from obvious.

No there isn't, this is crystal clear.

[seanhunter]

Not sure how GDPR is relevant since Elon Musk isn’t the EU data commissioner so it’s not up to him to enforce GDPR, and neither Musk, nor Twitter itself, nor the journalists, nor the sites concerned nor the information in question is in any way European[1].

Here’s the definition of personal data under GDPR[2] for anyone who’s curious. If this information hypothetically were to be published by a company with a European or UK connection about an EU or UK data subject and that person were to complain to their national data protection authority we might be in GDPR enforcement territory.

[1] or UK because UK GDPR is a thing even though the UK is no longer in the EU

[2] https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-...

[jdong]

Why should anyone involved need to be in European? The jet in question is known to visit Europe with Musk aboard.

> a company with a European or UK connection about an EU or UK data subject

If you have EU or UK data subjects, you have an European or UK connection and have entered GDPR enforcement territory.

[seanhunter]

Well Elon still isn’t anything to do with the apparatus of gdpr enforcement so it’s still irrelevant and secondly enforcement would be against the sites which are supposedly infringing rather than people linking to them on twitter. This is a sideshow.

[jdong]

Buddy, not everybody shares your weird Elon obsession.

There are interesting phenomena to discuss here, but Elon's mood swings aren't one of them.

[rosnd]

This is completely incorrect. Elon owns Twitter, Twitter is responsible for complying with the GDPR on their platform.

Elon in fact has a lot to do with the apparatus of GDPR enforcement.

[imnotjames]

How is it illegal?

[TulliusCicero]

Musk lives in the US, I imagine most of his flights are within the US. Not sure why you're bringing up GDPR.