Wouldn’t a 24 hour delay be enough to satisfy the curious about Elon’s flying habits, without creating a possible security risk? I don’t know how real the risk is, but it is certainly not zero, as he is a controversial public figure.
ADS-B information is broadcast unencrypted in real time from every civilian aircraft all the time. Anyone can receive this information with easily available equipment and tell everyone about it on a website. I don’t think it’s technically possible to censor this information. If you’re worried about someone shooting you down or whatever then you’re going to have to find a different way to counter this. Maybe fit countermeasures or buy another two planes and keep people guessing which one you are on. But it seems overly paranoid TBH.
> ADS-B information is broadcast unencrypted in real time from every civilian aircraft all the time.
ADS-B information is available publicly, but what's not always available publicly is which aircraft (or rather, which aircraft identifier) belongs to whom.
Specifically, if an aircraft is subscribed to this program, then it receives a new temporary identifier every month, unconnected to the owner:
So I think the problem is not tracking some airplane, the problem is connecting an airplane identifier to its owner by other means and then publicly broadcasting that information (i.e. make it easily accessible), when its owner has requested the government for privacy protection under a government program which was specifically designed to provide that exact type of privacy protection.
Note the 'PIA' flag and lack of additional information that would normally be pulled from the registry. In fact if you searched the registry for A0FE01 you would not find the actual aircraft but a placeholder.
Musk uses three jets, N628TS, N272BG, and N502SX. None are in the PIA programme, all are easily visible on ADSB Exchange and most importantly have their ICAO hex codes listed publicly on the FAA registry, along with ownership information.
As was pointed out in responses to your independent post about this[1], aircraft enrolled in PIA still have public permanent codes, which they must use when outside the US, as Musk is now (at the World Cup in Qatar).
Linking to the adsbexchange page for that permanent code doesn't prove that no anonymous temporary PIA codes exist.
You should be more careful before accusing someone of lying.
You're right about international flights and I should have specified that, but you can view the aircraft's recent US-only flights and see that it also used its permanent ICAO code.
You're completely sidestepping the issue that the man is amongst the richest in the world, so the whereabouts of his private plane could be argued to be of public interest. Keep this in mind as well; his plane's whereabouts are being derived from obscured data and published. Not his own personal whereabouts. We don't know what car he takes and where he goes once he lands. What is he scared of? A scud missile?
For example, we know his plane is in Quatar. With the news he is trying to sell shares of Twitter at his purchased price, we now can investigate whether he is talking to Quataris about selling shares. Being amongst the richest and owning a social network puts you in the public eye.
> You're completely sidestepping the issue that the man is amongst the richest in the world, so the whereabouts of his private plane could be argued to be of public interest.
I'm guessing most participants in that privacy program are filthy rich and yet the program was still created.
You can argue that the whereabouts are in the public interest, but the real-time whereabouts are much harder to justify.
> Keep this in mind as well; his plane's whereabouts are being derived from obscured data and published. Not his own personal whereabouts. We don't know what car he takes and where he goes once he lands.
You'd do if you went to the airport before he lands.
> What is he scared of? A scud missile?
I'm guessing he's scared of someone hurting or kidnapping him or his family. You would be too if you were in his position, believe me.
No amount of hired security can completely mitigate the risk of your exact coordinates being broadcast in real-time, every single day.
It's amazing to me how much lack of empathy people have against other people, just because they're rich or famous. Or maybe it's just ignorance about the risks these people face every single day.
> For example, we know his plane is in Quatar. With the news he is trying to sell shares of Twitter at his purchased price, we now can investigate whether he is talking to Quataris about selling shares. Being amongst the richest and owning a social network puts you in the public eye.
You don't need his location in real-time for that.
That is the result of a myriad of security measures that they and their families take every day, including not publicly broadcasting where they are in real-time or exactly where they are going to be at a specific time, among many, many others.
And even when they have to do that occasionally (e.g. when the public knows that they are going to attend a public event), they have to take additional security precautions, to protect themselves against someone hurting them, kidnapping them or robbing them (or their families).
Even presidents/prime ministers of entire countries, who are not as rich or famous as Elon Musk, occasionally (or always) require extreme security precautions, like having bullet-proof vehicles, police escorts, streets being closed, dogs sniffing around for explosives wherever they go, and much, much more. And Elon Musk doesn't even have access to all these measures, because many of them are not available to private individuals in many countries.
But even if you could, you wouldn't want to take these increased security precautions all the time, it's just not realistic or desirable to have a police escort and/or the secret service following every rich person and closing streets everywhere they go.
> Security through obscurity is no security at all.
You say that like if that analogy holds for physical security...
Or do you think that physical security only truly exists if everyone knows exactly where you are all the time and they still can't hurt you? With regards to physical security, that's not a thing.
There are only a certain number of obstacles, and the more obstacles, the better protected you are. But there is no silver bullet, especially if you want to have a life and not live in some bunker somewhere.
Not all computer analogies hold in the real world. Cryptography doesn't give you physical protection.
> It's amazing to me how much lack of empathy people have against other people, just because they're rich or famous. Or maybe it's just ignorance about the risks these people face every single day.
I wouldn’t do any of this power hungry behavior while being a reason why society is so unfair. You’re defending a billionaire with empathy arguments while we have homeless people in the country and abroad.
I guarantee you if Elon gives me $1B I will never use security.
> You’re defending a billionaire with empathy arguments while we have homeless people in the country and abroad.
The argument you just used is called "whataboutism" and it's a logical fallacy in and of itself [1].
It's also a logical fallacy to imply that you can only have empathy for homeless people or for rich people, but not both.
So yes, I have empathy for homeless people. I also have empathy for rich people.
But apparently, not many people have empathy for the latter.
Mind you, I'm not saying that I'm perfect or extremely virtuous -- I have my own demons as well. But I don't have a grudge against rich people just because they're rich, in fact I admire these people because the wealth with which society has rewarded them implies that they have been doing a great service to their fellow humans (otherwise why would people give them money?).
I only have a grudge against people whose wealth was obtained by immoral/forced means (rich or otherwise).
I also think Elon Musk has made many mistakes with his Twitter acquisition and subsequent management, but since Twitter is his company, I also think he had the legitimate right to make those mistakes and to disagree with our opinion.
> I guarantee you if Elon gives me $1B I will never use security.
I guarantee you, if a billion people in the world knew you had $1B, you would need to be extremely careful with your physical security, in many ways that you wouldn't like. Unless, of course, you lived as a complete hermit in some undisclosed off-the-grid location.
It's easy to make grandiose claims in an Internet forum while sitting in your chair and not fearing for your life, but if you followed through with your claims while being very famous, it's very likely that reality would sooner or later punch you right in your face, as many have eventually discovered, unfortunately [2].
These things even happen because of your own family members (including spouses) and friends, not to mention the billion other complete strangers who would know you are very wealthy.
Mind you, I'm not saying that there aren't people with a billion dollars who are able to live normal lives without too many security precautions, but usually these people either are very strict about not advertising that they are very wealthy, or else, it is likely that they eventually learn the hard way the real security risks that they are under [2].
Regarding the list of kidnappings in [2], which also includes many murders of celebrities and/or their family members, keep in mind the following points:
1. It includes celebrities/famous people who already had reasonable security. Yet, they weren't able to prevent the kidnapping.
2. It doesn't include many publicly known cases of wealthy people that were kidnapped and tortured or murdered just because they were wealthy (I know of a few cases like these just in recent years, which are not included in the list).
3. Even worse, doesn't even include the vast majority of kidnappings, because for security reasons they are usually kept private, whenever possible/feasible.
4. Not to mention, it also doesn't include the many failed attempts, as these are not part of the list by definition.
My response never went through. I can send my [good faith] response if you are still seeing this. I'm guessing not. Otherwise thanks for your in-depth response.
>It's amazing to me how much lack of empathy people have against other people, just because they're rich or famous. Or maybe it's just ignorance about the risks these people face every single day.
No one else gets to opt out of the same thing. FYI.
Just because you make more money than me doesn't mean you're entitled to an exception from the same risks everyone else takes.
And for that matter, considering that everyone else is also getting spied on real time coordinates-wise based on mobile phone, but no one seems to muster the will to care it weakens his case substantially with the additional ATC interest.
> Just because you make more money than me doesn't mean you're entitled to an exception from the same risks everyone else takes.
But the risk that famous, very wealthy people have is not the same as other people have.
As an average Joe, you can publish your real-time coordinates on the Internet and usually, nobody will care.
Extremely famous and wealthy people simply cannot do that (unless they take many other security precautions which would greatly interfere with their lives).
They are under a much higher risk of being kidnapped, tortured and murdered than other people. And this risk is also applicable to their family members.
And yes, you can hire security, but you'd still be at a much greater risk, completely unnecessarily.
> And for that matter, considering that everyone else is also getting spied on real time coordinates-wise based on mobile phone, but no one seems to muster the will to care it weakens his case substantially with the additional ATC interest.
I agree that everyone else should not be getting spied on. But even when they are, this information is not getting publicly broadcasted.
And even if those mobile phone coordinates were publicly broadcasted in real-time, not only would it be illegal and there'd be a lot of outrage (in certain countries, at least), the physical security risk for ordinary people simply would not be the same as for famous high-net worth individuals and their families.
> Wouldn’t a 24 hour delay be enough to satisfy the curious about Elon’s flying habits, without creating a possible security risk? I don’t know how real the risk is, but it is certainly not zero, as he is a controversial public figure.
I agree with you, but I think the problem is that if you publish Elon's flying habits with a 24 hour delay, then you're effectively doxxing which airplane is Elon's jet, which would allow anyone to track Elon's jet in real-time for the next month, basically.
This could be somewhat avoided if Elon's jet received a temporary private aircraft identifier for every flight (instead of every month, which is how it works currently [1]).
But even then, if the airplane landed on a small airport (i.e. with few aircraft on the ground), it would still be possible to determine whether an airplane that is taking off is Elon's jet or not, based on the fact that Elon's jet landed there on the previous day and the destination for today's flight is [some place where Elon commonly flies to].
Could Musk successfully make the case that, despite this technically being public information, curating it in such a way to track him personally constitutes harassment?
I don't really see this flying in front of a court. This information is easily accessible publicly literally one search to get the aircraft registration number and a second one on Flightradar24 or any of the other sites/apps to see where it is. It's not "technically public" as onsite paper records at your mayor's office, it's widely accessible online public.
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?
Hmmm, at this rate we’re going to have to create Elon News ;)
I think it’s interesting to see somebody who thought content moderation was a simple problem realise that content moderation is actually an incredibly difficult and, in some ways, unsolvable problem. However it risks becoming a dominant conversation when there are plenty of other good conversations to have.
Whilst I've had a lot of fun arguing about him, Twitter etc, it is getting a bit stale now. Hopefully he quietens down a bit soon and we can move onto a big and important new topic like 2 spaces or tab!
It's beautiful because the information is public anyway and if Elon had acted like a reasonable human being, nobody would have cared about what he does with his plane.
This is correct. He is not ideologically aligned with the mob, so now it’s ok to do whatever. In fact it is encouraged, as if it were some act of rebellion.
Users flagged your comment. They were correct to do so, because it's not the sort of discussion this site is supposed to be for.
Joking isn't the problem; the problem is lazy internet snark/trope/flamebait style comments. Users here are generally quick to flag those because we all know from experience what sort of low-quality threads they lead to.
This is about the hypocrisy over free speech not ‘the left’. But I suppose that won’t stop you from mindlessly rallying behind him no matter how hard he clowns you and everyone else for his own pleasure thinking he is somehow on ‘your side’. Just like someone else…
I’m not sure I qualify as a spokesperson for the entire “left” ;)
It seems a lot of people are pointing out the massive amounts of hypocrisy Elon is displaying, as well as how fickle & fragile the concept of free speech is when it comes up against the personal opinions of a billionaire.
Plus a democratic vote, which is definitely not what a Twitter poll is, controlling speech is exactly the thing that many on the (if we’re using labels) “right” objected to once a truly democratic vote (within a flawed process) delivered a government that they didn’t want. True freedom of speech is a fixed principle, not dictated by the whims of current powers, votes or Overton window.
> It seems a lot of people are pointing out the massive amounts of hypocrisy Elon is displaying, as well as how fickle & fragile the concept of free speech is when it comes up against the personal opinions of a billionaire.
As Peter Kafka (heh) wrote over at Vox:
> But I think we’re better off if we face reality on reality’s terms: One of the richest men in history bought something many of us use and like. Because he could. And now he’s going to run it based on his whims. Because he can.
Indeed. The whole point all along was that Twitter as a private company could moderate content as it saw fit. Let us now try and score some internet points by pointing out that the new buyer disagreed with that idea enough to spend $44 billion to correct it. However once it was their private company and their opinions that could control the content, suddenly that idea of private control of a private entity is excellent and as it should be! This is simply one person changing their very publicly and steadfastly held opinion once the facts align to their own benefit.
This comment reads like something out of an Orwell book.
How accurate do you think it is to reduce human virtues, considerations etc to a model which simpliy splits the populations in two? Stop perpetuating football-team politics.
I think the spectrum exists most places but it’s a minority of countries where there is such a strong divide and intentional polarisation between only 2 political choices, with those in the relative middle having to choose the lesser evil due to lack of other choice.
In many other countries the political parties lie in different areas of the spectrum, with the US’s “left” still quite right leaning compared to many other countries. Where there are more political parties with influence it is more likely that politicians will seek to bridge divides to bring over supporters, rather than just polarise their current supporters to vote more. There are countries where left leaning communities will swing to the right if convinced to do so. But they are still left and right and if you compare the fringe parties I think you’ll often find the same polarisation and combativeness, just less so as it doesn’t win the middle. Basically the more the middle is in play, the less polarised the political parties tend to be (obviously with exceptions).
I don't understand the obsession with infantile "right left" division US politics has and is plaguing the entire world with. There is more nuance to this.
It’s a means of control. Convincing everyone that the bad people are whoever is the other side keeps us divided and is very useful to the people who are actually in control.
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 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?
Is it possible that this program is ineffectual, because of publicly-available information from other sources that can be cross-referenced?
If I were to put together a badly implemented privacy program that people can trivially circumvent without breaking the law, who should be blamed when people do exactly that?
Me, or the people doing the trivial yet legal circumvention?
>In most other cases that has been released illegitimately in the first place though
There is plenty of information in public records like people's addresses that are released legitimately. An address is enough information to SWAT someone.
This is not "hacking". This is information derived from publicly available information, presumably a quite trivial inference. If it is public information that x=2 and y=3, then x+y=5 isn't suddenly private information, just because it requires a trivial inference.
Photos taken on phones often contain GPS data. If someone publicly shares a photo they’ve taken and the data isn’t scrubbed, it’s trivial to find out where the photo was taken.
Just because it’s easy to uncover doesn’t mean it’s fine to go off and broadcast it. That’s doxxing.
Some have been for a couple months. In any case, figuring out which plane uses which PIA code might seem easy if the patterns are always the same, but that’s still not trivial enough not to be considered as a privacy breach. Everything here sounds a bit like the "yes the house was private but the door was open" robber excuse.
I wouldn't know. The person I replied to claimed that it was "private information of individuals". If it's public info by law then referring to it as private seems very misleading, wouldn't you say?
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
That source is a reply by Musk confirming a statement by another person (https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1603748611896283137?s=20&...) commenting about Musk being enrolled in the PIA program. That statement also has a link back to the creator of the tracker themselves also admitting Musk's plane(s) are/were in PIA but they figured out how to track it/them anyway.
