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This confuses the issue though. ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on

This confuses the issue though. ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement and if an aircraft was going to takeoff that had an unknown ICAO number he'd have someone at the airport to figure out it was Elon's jet that had changed it's ICAO number. Your link will only be valid until he again changes his ICAO number. More info: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy

madars 4y ago
The ICAO number in the GP's comment is listed in the FAA registry for the N-number: https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumberTxt=628TS https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberResul... (Mode S Code (Base 16 / Hex): A835AF). Are you saying that PIA program can make registry.faa.gov report data that's either obfuscated or out of sync? Why is it not reporting such data now? (Edit: Or maybe GP's comment is using a non-privacy ICAO number and the actual number squawked is private?)
- mlindner 4y ago
  The PIA program, from my understanding, removes the ICAO number from that page. It's possibly in a state that he's not registered with PIA at the moment.
mbreese 4y ago
Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number? Or that on the ground spotters were required to find the new ICAO? I know nothing about this, but was a rabbit hole to explore. The tail number for his plane is well known. If you put that N-number into an ICAO conversion script (https://www.avionictools.com/icao.php https://www.avionictools.com/icao.php), you get the same Hex number that you see from adsbexchange.com. From what I can tell, the script is using an algorithm and not doing a DB lookup. So, just based on the tail number, you could figure out the canonical ICAO code for the plane. The strange thing is that adsbexchange also lists the plane as being part of the LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) program (but I don’t know the source of this annotation). AFAICT, LADD limits public display of information, but only for data distributed from the FAA. Crowd sourced data isn’t limited (nor could it be). In order to address this privacy shortcoming, the PIA program exists. This would change the ICAO for the plane to be disconnected from the tail number. But from the tracking website, it seems like the ICAO number for his plane hasn’t been changed/anonymized(?!?). So either, they haven’t actually gotten the new ICAO number installed (after 10-ish months), or the plane isn’t eligible to be part of the program. PIA requires the plane to only fly domestically and have the right kind of transmitter. If the plane flys internationally, it can’t have an anonymized ICAO number. See: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy Otherwise, I don’t see how anyone could track this particular plane if it did have a PIA ICAO identifier and you only knew the tail number. Like I said, I don’t know very much about this, but it is a fascinating rabbit hole. Anyone want to correct where I went wrong?
- mlindner 4y ago
  > Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number? I'm not sure that it does at this very moment, but public statements by Sweeny himself said that it did indeed have a PIA ICAO number and that Sweeny de-anonymized it. It's possible Elon stopped using it because of that de-anonymizing. > The strange thing is that adsbexchange also lists the plane as being part of the LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) program (but I don’t know the source of this annotation). AFAICT, LADD limits public display of information, but only for data distributed from the FAA. Crowd sourced data isn’t limited (nor could it be). Yes LADD is a different system and you're not required to follow it as a data provider. FlightRadar24 for example follows it and does not list any LADD aircraft as they use FAA's data feed which requires as it's terms of use that you follow the LADD program.
  - mbreese 4y ago
    > Sweeny himself said that it did indeed have a PIA ICAO number and that Sweeny de-anonymized it I read that too, but haven’t been able to find any source that wasn’t Sweeny on that. Without another source, I’m more inclined to believe that the plane is part of LADD, but not PIA (or isn’t anymore). And that the plane from the Sweeney tweet from February 2022 may have been another plane entirely. Maybe Musk’s plane was enrolled at one point, but it honestly doesn’t make much sense to me to have a plane enrolled in PIA. I mean, if I had a private plane, I’d like to keep the option of flying it internationally, which you couldn’t do with an anonymized ICAO (again, according to my limited reading). Also, given the limited number of PIA planes, it would be trivial to look for ICAO numbers that disappeared at one airport and then for a new private ICAO number to appear at the same airport. The system only makes sense from a privacy perspective if you don’t have continuous monitoring of the ADS-B transponders. As things currently exist, with a small number of PIA planes, it would be obvious to find new codes.
    - mlindner 4y ago
      That would certainly be an interesting twist on the story if it wasn't actually covered by PIA and only LADD. I haven't heard this variant before, but it would make a lot of things make sense, but it would give me more questions than answers. Even if you have PIA though, I don't thing you're restricted from flying internationally. I don't see any comment on the PIA page that says you can't fly internationally with it. Wouldn't you just revert to your original ICAO when doing international trips?
jacquesm 4y ago
I don't think that's relevant past the point where Musk is on the record as saying that because he's such a champion of free speech he's not going to ban the account.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  A masked stalker, dressed all in black, was following his young child in car thinking it was him. He then blocked the car and jumped on the hood: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603190155107794944 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603190155107794944 Imagine it were your child. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t change any opinions or practices when it came to personal security?
  - TrickyRick 4y ago
    I heard some people walked in to a big building in DC after Trump tweeted which later got him banned. Imagine if it was your building! Or does free speech only apply to things Elon likes?
  - abc_lisper 4y ago
    Hunter was Joe’s child. If Twitter not publishing Hunter’s pics is a conspiracy, I don’t understand why this isn’t
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      Hunters penis however is something that is apparently of great public interest.
    - Ygg2 4y ago
      Hunter was using clout of then vice-president Biden to do some shady deals. It was relevant to an election Biden was about to become the President. The hookers and meth was there to entertain the more base urges of audience.
      - abc_lisper 4y ago
skissane 4y ago
> ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement Maybe he should just buy another jet or two, make sure the other jet(s) are in regular use (maybe shuttling SpaceX/Tesla/Twitter/etc employees around), and make sure he regularly swaps which one he is personally using. Extremely expensive solution, but not beyond his budget. Or maybe he should just buy himself a private jet chartering firm. An even more expensive solution, but he can probably afford that too.
Reason077 4y ago
> "ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program" Only through a manual process that sounds like it can take a month or so to complete. Perhaps, in future, this could be solved with technology that automates generation/randomisation of Aircraft IDs, much like MAC addresses on phones and laptops are randomised to prevent tracking? Next-generation ADS-B transponders could communicate with the FAA (or appropriate local authority) via satellite or mobile network to generate/request a new, random ID before every flight.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Every measure like that introduces safety risk into the critical air traffic control system by increasing the odds of data inconsistencies and other things going wrong. I don't believe it's worth it just to preserve the privacy of billionaires and corporations.
  - 2rsf 4y ago
    Of course not, but what is the risk here to actual traffic? the plane still transmit its location so others can see it, they simply can't know the exact instance. Seriously asking out of curiosity.
    - _djo_ 4y ago
      The aircraft's type is not part of ADS-B Out data, it has to be looked up in a database using the hex code. This has implications for aircraft separation, as heavier aircraft produce more turbulence that can be harmful to smaller aircraft. A bad or missing weight category caused by something like PIA having a code collision or a failed update could lead to a fatal accident if the separation for a small aircraft is used for a large one. A small risk, and something that could be mitigated, but still there nonetheless. The proposals to encrypt ADS-B data, being driven by corporations and wealthy individuals, are more risky in that they add key management to the mix and make it much more likely that something will go wrong and cause widespread ATC failures or aircraft going dark on ATC displays and in collision avoidance systems at critical moments. Especially as there'll be a mix of encrypted/non-encrypted transponders for decades to come.

madars 4y ago

The ICAO number in the GP's comment is listed in the FAA registry for the N-number: https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberResult?NNumberTxt=628TS https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberResul... (Mode S Code (Base 16 / Hex): A835AF). Are you saying that PIA program can make registry.faa.gov report data that's either obfuscated or out of sync? Why is it not reporting such data now? (Edit: Or maybe GP's comment is using a non-privacy ICAO number and the actual number squawked is private?)

mlindner 4y ago
The PIA program, from my understanding, removes the ICAO number from that page. It's possibly in a state that he's not registered with PIA at the moment.

mbreese 4y ago

Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number? Or that on the ground spotters were required to find the new ICAO? I know nothing about this, but was a rabbit hole to explore. The tail number for his plane is well known. If you put that N-number into an ICAO conversion script (https://www.avionictools.com/icao.php https://www.avionictools.com/icao.php), you get the same Hex number that you see from adsbexchange.com. From what I can tell, the script is using an algorithm and not doing a DB lookup. So, just based on the tail number, you could figure out the canonical ICAO code for the plane. The strange thing is that adsbexchange also lists the plane as being part of the LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) program (but I don’t know the source of this annotation). AFAICT, LADD limits public display of information, but only for data distributed from the FAA. Crowd sourced data isn’t limited (nor could it be). In order to address this privacy shortcoming, the PIA program exists. This would change the ICAO for the plane to be disconnected from the tail number. But from the tracking website, it seems like the ICAO number for his plane hasn’t been changed/anonymized(?!?). So either, they haven’t actually gotten the new ICAO number installed (after 10-ish months), or the plane isn’t eligible to be part of the program. PIA requires the plane to only fly domestically and have the right kind of transmitter. If the plane flys internationally, it can’t have an anonymized ICAO number. See: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy Otherwise, I don’t see how anyone could track this particular plane if it did have a PIA ICAO identifier and you only knew the tail number. Like I said, I don’t know very much about this, but it is a fascinating rabbit hole. Anyone want to correct where I went wrong?

mlindner 4y ago
> Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number? I'm not sure that it does at this very moment, but public statements by Sweeny himself said that it did indeed have a PIA ICAO number and that Sweeny de-anonymized it. It's possible Elon stopped using it because of that de-anonymizing. > The strange thing is that adsbexchange also lists the plane as being part of the LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) program (but I don’t know the source of this annotation). AFAICT, LADD limits public display of information, but only for data distributed from the FAA. Crowd sourced data isn’t limited (nor could it be). Yes LADD is a different system and you're not required to follow it as a data provider. FlightRadar24 for example follows it and does not list any LADD aircraft as they use FAA's data feed which requires as it's terms of use that you follow the LADD program.
- mbreese 4y ago
  > Sweeny himself said that it did indeed have a PIA ICAO number and that Sweeny de-anonymized it I read that too, but haven’t been able to find any source that wasn’t Sweeny on that. Without another source, I’m more inclined to believe that the plane is part of LADD, but not PIA (or isn’t anymore). And that the plane from the Sweeney tweet from February 2022 may have been another plane entirely. Maybe Musk’s plane was enrolled at one point, but it honestly doesn’t make much sense to me to have a plane enrolled in PIA. I mean, if I had a private plane, I’d like to keep the option of flying it internationally, which you couldn’t do with an anonymized ICAO (again, according to my limited reading). Also, given the limited number of PIA planes, it would be trivial to look for ICAO numbers that disappeared at one airport and then for a new private ICAO number to appear at the same airport. The system only makes sense from a privacy perspective if you don’t have continuous monitoring of the ADS-B transponders. As things currently exist, with a small number of PIA planes, it would be obvious to find new codes.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    That would certainly be an interesting twist on the story if it wasn't actually covered by PIA and only LADD. I haven't heard this variant before, but it would make a lot of things make sense, but it would give me more questions than answers. Even if you have PIA though, I don't thing you're restricted from flying internationally. I don't see any comment on the PIA page that says you can't fly internationally with it. Wouldn't you just revert to your original ICAO when doing international trips?

jacquesm 4y ago

I don't think that's relevant past the point where Musk is on the record as saying that because he's such a champion of free speech he's not going to ban the account.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago
A masked stalker, dressed all in black, was following his young child in car thinking it was him. He then blocked the car and jumped on the hood: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603190155107794944 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603190155107794944 Imagine it were your child. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t change any opinions or practices when it came to personal security?
- TrickyRick 4y ago
  I heard some people walked in to a big building in DC after Trump tweeted which later got him banned. Imagine if it was your building! Or does free speech only apply to things Elon likes?
- abc_lisper 4y ago
  Hunter was Joe’s child. If Twitter not publishing Hunter’s pics is a conspiracy, I don’t understand why this isn’t
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    Hunters penis however is something that is apparently of great public interest.
  - Ygg2 4y ago
    Hunter was using clout of then vice-president Biden to do some shady deals. It was relevant to an election Biden was about to become the President. The hookers and meth was there to entertain the more base urges of audience.
    - abc_lisper 4y ago

skissane 4y ago

> ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement Maybe he should just buy another jet or two, make sure the other jet(s) are in regular use (maybe shuttling SpaceX/Tesla/Twitter/etc employees around), and make sure he regularly swaps which one he is personally using. Extremely expensive solution, but not beyond his budget. Or maybe he should just buy himself a private jet chartering firm. An even more expensive solution, but he can probably afford that too.

Reason077 4y ago

> "ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program" Only through a manual process that sounds like it can take a month or so to complete. Perhaps, in future, this could be solved with technology that automates generation/randomisation of Aircraft IDs, much like MAC addresses on phones and laptops are randomised to prevent tracking? Next-generation ADS-B transponders could communicate with the FAA (or appropriate local authority) via satellite or mobile network to generate/request a new, random ID before every flight.

_djo_ 4y ago
Every measure like that introduces safety risk into the critical air traffic control system by increasing the odds of data inconsistencies and other things going wrong. I don't believe it's worth it just to preserve the privacy of billionaires and corporations.
- 2rsf 4y ago
  Of course not, but what is the risk here to actual traffic? the plane still transmit its location so others can see it, they simply can't know the exact instance. Seriously asking out of curiosity.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    The aircraft's type is not part of ADS-B Out data, it has to be looked up in a database using the hex code. This has implications for aircraft separation, as heavier aircraft produce more turbulence that can be harmful to smaller aircraft. A bad or missing weight category caused by something like PIA having a code collision or a failed update could lead to a fatal accident if the separation for a small aircraft is used for a large one. A small risk, and something that could be mitigated, but still there nonetheless. The proposals to encrypt ADS-B data, being driven by corporations and wealthy individuals, are more risky in that they add key management to the mix and make it much more likely that something will go wrong and cause widespread ATC failures or aircraft going dark on ATC displays and in collision avoidance systems at critical moments. Especially as there'll be a mix of encrypted/non-encrypted transponders for decades to come.