Starbucks says Niccol can live in his home in Newport Beach, California and commute to Starbucks’ head office 1,000 miles away on a corporate jet

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
24 points

Didn’t they change the law so you can’t track private flights anymore? Or was Melon Husk just trying to get that done? Or was that just me imagining things again? 🤔

permalink
report
parent
reply
35 points

As far as I know, you can still track Elon’s flights. It’s not illegal since it was all publicly available information to begin with.

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

It’s also not something that you can really stop people from doing.

You might be able to stop people sharing the information freely, but, the transponders that people track and the protocols and standards for the communication are well known internationally. It doesn’t take more than $50 in parts to set up your own receiver and connect it to a computer.

I’d consider any law prohibiting the observation of air traffic by the public to be impossible to enforce. How can you stop someone from listening by law?

Sharing the information, however, that’s a bit different.

permalink
report
parent
reply
25 points
*

They can’t prevent tracking because aircraft are required to broadcast their information when in flight.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillance–Broadcast

permalink
report
parent
reply
24 points

The FAA reauthorization act slipped in that ownership of private jets could remain anonymous. So you can still track them, because all flight plans are public and need to be for safety reasons, but they no longer have to tell you who owns what tail number. A dedicated tracker can figure out what plane belongs to who, either by showing up at the airport, or by comparing flight logs with other information about celebrity locations.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points
*

So you can still track them, because all flight plans are public and need to be for safety reasons, but they no longer have to tell you who owns what tail number.

I feel like that has a little bit to do with how journalists tracked down a bunch of FBI shell companies that operated spy planes over BLM(and other) protests.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Why use spy planes? Why not just use police helicopters? Police helicopters are a normal sight above any large scale demonstration

permalink
report
parent
reply

A Boring Dystopia

!aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

Create post

Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

Rules (Subject to Change)

–Be a Decent Human Being

–Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title

–Posts must have something to do with the topic

–Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.

–No NSFW content

–Abide by the rules of lemmy.world

Community stats

  • 6K

    Monthly active users

  • 520

    Posts

  • 9.3K

    Comments

Community moderators