this is a myth perpetrated by Elon to justify his banning of twitter account, there is nothing private about tail information, in fact it is required to be publicly available.
Genuine question, IANAL: how is this different from car registration plates, which Google blurs out to avoid this kind of problem for normal people? Ditto all the data protection issues about ANPR systems.
(This isn't to defended Musk, quite the contrary given he tweeted a number plate).
Many aircraft, particularly those flying IFR, are required by law in many jurisdictions to broadcast their location to reduce the risk of collisions and facilitate air traffic control. Check aviation transponder interrogation modes and ADS-B in particular
we track planes for safety reasons. when a plane disappear from the radar, it's a big deal. an educated guess why cars aren't tracked is privacy and there are too many.
but in a world where cars are going to be electric, these problems might go away.
Subreddits were banned for collecting publicly available on information in a single post. There used to be a subreddit documenting lives of Google CxOs, it didn't last one week.
I would have agreed and recently made the same argument on HN re the Twitter bans.
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...
At that point, I think the argument that it’s doxxing is justified to some extent.
> 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.
(This isn't to defended Musk, quite the contrary given he tweeted a number plate).