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As somewhat of an aside, I think ElonsJet should be allowed to exist but I also think its a terrible thing to do and harassment. Do you not have a right to priv

• ce4 5y ago
  Thats information that is publicly available anyway - it's just that the presentation is nicer. ElonsJet can be replicated by anyone.
  • hef19898 5y ago
    And it should be if the original get's banned. Just waiting to get Nunes Cow back!
  • bko 5y ago
    Your license plate, address, and employer is likely publicly available. Doesn't mean I should broadcast it out.
    • esarbe 5y ago
      When you are moving in the public sphere - as Musk is doing - you lose certain rights to privacy that nobody John 'Random Person' Smith enjoys.
      • bko 5y ago
        So it would be okay to you to list the home address, movement and acquaintances of senators, congressmen, judges, etc? Who writes the rules about "public sphere"? If I donate to a cause that hopes to influence public policy, should I be doxxed? How much money? Does it depend on the cause I'm donating to?
        • pacerwpg 5y ago
          If I buy a private jet and use it to fly around the world, people would have access to the same information as they do on Elon Musk. He wants the convenience of having his own jet, that comes with a cost.
          • bko 5y ago
            Let's remove Elon Musk from this. If I buy a [legal private means of transportation] to travel, people should be able to track my whereabouts. Is this limited to private jets? How about private boats? Single engine airplanes? Or is there a price cap? Is a $50k plane allow you to maintain privacy? 100k? What's the cutoff? Should it be inflation adjusted? I'm just trying to understand
            • pacerwpg 5y ago
              My comment was about the known requirements for air travel. You have to register your flight and that information is available. He has other options that would more safely guarantee privacy. If the privacy of your travels is more important to you than the convenience of having a private plane available, then you choose another option.
            • stale2002 5y ago
              > Is this limited to private jets? How about private boats? Single engine airplanes? Or is there a price cap? Is a $50k plane allow you to maintain privacy? 100k? What's the cutoff? Should it be inflation adjusted? I recommend that you read this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki%27s_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki%27s_Wager One does not need to answer literally every single edge case or scenario, to answer other more obvious questions. Elon Musk is a public figure. A random person driving a car is not. And everything in between is a spectrum, and we don't need to know the exact specific cutoff point to know the obvious answers here.
      • mft_ 5y ago
        Geunine question: is, or how, or where is that enshrined in law?
        • esarbe 5y ago
          There's a long and healthy discussion about this question in many legal systems. The topic of discussion is the definition of 'public figure'[0] and what that entails. Public figures usually don't enjoy the same right to privacy as other persons. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure
    • Loughla 5y ago
      Except it is already being broadcast, on hundreds of sites. You can search for people on google and get literally all of their information. Address, phone number, job, family, friends, and anything else that is public knowledge. Presented in a very easy to read format. Why should the wealthy be special? Just because they have the money to stop it? I didn't opt in to having my information packaged nicely and presented to anyone who cares to search for me.
    • ce4 5y ago
      It's inferred data only. Elons jet is required to publish ADS-B location beacons for air traffic control etc. Crowdsourced platforms like ads-b exchange collect and publish these public/unencrypted airplane gps beacons worldwide. You just need to know the jet's registration to look it up.
  • chinathrow 5y ago
    That's not 100% correct. Yes, the ADS-B data packets are out there in the public ether but for covering longer flights you need access to a network of receivers. There are only a handful of ADS-B tracking networks out there. Most of them filter out certain airplanes if requested/paid by the owner (FR24, FlightAware). ElonJet exists solely at the mercy of ADSBExchange.com at this time.
• jf22 5y ago
  I think there is a difference between "tracking somebody in your office" and using public information in a more efficient way.
• elliekelly 5y ago
  I don’t disagree but I also don’t think there’s less sympathetic example on the entire planet to use than Mark Zuckerberg. He’s quite literally made his fortune exploiting the privacy of the rest of us. I’m certainly not going to lose any sleep over his privacy being violated.
• dmschulman 5y ago
  His right to privacy isn't being violated by ElonsJet. The information being used is public knowledge.
  • dahfizz 5y ago
    Your license plate, criminal record, and any property you own is all publicly available. Do you care to share?
    • creaturemachine 5y ago
• smoldesu 5y ago
  > Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy? No. You have a responsibility to be private, which can easily be neglected by underpaying the wrong people. C'est la vie!
• bombcar 5y ago
  Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you “have” to use your jet. You can charter another jet, fly first class, drive, any number of means of transit. In fact, once you have a jet you can strategically use it to deceive your movements. And maybe you can hire people to protect your garbage, I dunno.
• spupe 5y ago
  That information is of public interest, because Musk is a public figure that constantly talks about climate change.
• FireBeyond 5y ago
  > Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy? Interestingly, the courts have ruled that the ultra wealthy are "public figures" whether they act so or not, because of their "undue/oversized influence on public and social policy".
• CydeWeys 5y ago
  > Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy? Honestly? Maybe not. He's the richest person in the world, and as such he's incredibly influential (and unelected). It's absolutely in the public's interest to know what he's using all that money and influence on, in a way that isn't relevant for your average median-earning Joe Schmoe. Once you get that rich you become more influential than a senator, and senators certainly don't have a right to privacy for their constituents to not know what they're up to. On the private jet front, airplanes don't have privacy, necessarily so, because you need to know where they all are at all times to prevent collisions, protect airspaces, etc. So if you don't want people to know where you're traveling, don't use an airplane that has a 1-to-1 correspondence to you.
  • notpachet 5y ago
    Time to bust out the unlicensed jetpack and really blur the Elon Musk/Tony Stark lines.
  • bko 5y ago
    I believe privacy is a right. Rights have to granted equally otherwise they're not rights. If you cross a certain threshold and lose your rights then they are not rights. And if rights can be granted and removed arbitrarily without due process then they're certainly not rights. Do you believe privacy is a right?
    • foepys 5y ago
      This is an absolutist argument. In the real world lines have to drawn somewhere all the time.
    • CydeWeys 5y ago
      • bko 5y ago
        In your example about right to build whatever you want on your property, that restriction is limited to a property, not a person. So saying "this property is zoned for a building of X stories" is different than "if you're a 'public figure' your property is zoned for building X stories, otherwise its zoned for Y stories" Do you think we should broadcast the location and movement of sitting judges and politicians? They're certainly "public figures"
• esarbe 5y ago
  > Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy? Not if you are deliberately aim to be a person of public interest. Multi-Billionaires are persons of public interest by the power they wield given their wealth. So; you probably don't have a right to privacy if you are as obscenely wealthy as Musk or Zuckerberg.
• itsoktocry 5y ago
  >How about [unpopular politician]? Most of these people have public itineraries...
• btbuildem 5y ago
  I think that after certain threshold of wealth you're not quite human anymore and fair game. You definitely don't have much in common with 99.999% of others, and have effectively infinite resources to bend reality to your will. So yeah, eat the rich and all that.
• nickysielicki 5y ago
  Blame the FAA. ADSB data is stupidly simple to receive with an RTLSDR and a raspberry pi, and there are community sites where you can upload. Point being: his plane can be tracked as long as it’s flying legally with its beacon on. This wouldn’t be a problem if the FAA just pushed back harder on the FOIA request for his jet data, then it would just be another anonymous private jet in the system instead of Elons Jet. FOIA wasn’t meant to make every record the government has public, it was meant to prevent the government from hiding things from the people. I can’t FOIA your social security number. I probably shouldn’t be able to FOIA the cell phone tracking data firehose that the FBI has, either. What I should be able to FOIA is the fact that the FBI has such a firehose.
• smcl 5y ago
  I think the real harm @ElonsJet does to Elon Musk is not that his privacy is breached, if we learn where he's taking a plane a couple of times a week that's not exactly particularly intrusive[0]. It is that he is trying to position himself as the man who is directly tackling environmental issues by single-handedly bootstrapping an electric car company ... while frequently flying a private jet and having a carbon footprint thousands of times more than the average person. If you're a public figure want to project a certain image of yourself, it hurts to be exposed as being the opposite of that. [0] - not least because the source of the data is his own plane broadcasting its position