10 ms·

>Those journalists weren't reporting specific locations of his jet...they were reporting on a legit news story about it. Come on now. They were linking directl

>Those journalists weren't reporting specific locations of his jet...they were reporting on a legit news story about it. Come on now. They were linking directly to the tracker that Sweeney was banned for, not just reporting on the story about it. It was a childish petulant doxxing on purpose and they got treated the same as Sweeney.

TulliusCicero 4y ago
How is it "doxxing" to use public flight data? Am I missing something here?
- notinfuriated 4y ago
  I think of it as about the same as the recent complaints that Elon Musk posting 'prosecute Fauci' means he is responsible for Dr. Fauci receiving death threats, or whatever the actual consequence was of that. That is, the idea or information already exists and is publicly available to anyone, but it has been 'amplified' here and this makes it much more serious. (I disagree with the logic in both cases.)
- rosnd 4y ago
  What adsbexchange, flightradar & co. are doing is almost certainly illegal in Europe under the GDPR. This isn't exactly "public flight data", in many cases it's illegally collected and published flight data. E: I can't reply to "imnotjames" below thanks to HN ratelimits, but here you go: It's an obvious GDPR violation, just like it'd be an obvious GDPR violation to publish a similar database but with phone IMEIs and associated locations instead of aircraft.
  - imnotjames 4y ago
    How is it illegal?
  - Nas808 4y ago
    The FAA has a program called LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) and high-profile individuals, etc can sign up to it. The major players in the flight tracking business like FlightRadar24 or FlightAware follow that. But sites like ADS-B Exchange do not adhere to that, so you can see a lot more flights that are blocked on the others. Also anyone with a Raspberry Pi and a cheap antenna can build their own ADS-B receiver and get that unfiltered data.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Musk lives in the US, I imagine most of his flights are within the US. Not sure why you're bringing up GDPR.
  - seanhunter 4y ago
    Not sure how GDPR is relevant since Elon Musk isn’t the EU data commissioner so it’s not up to him to enforce GDPR, and neither Musk, nor Twitter itself, nor the journalists, nor the sites concerned nor the information in question is in any way European[1]. Here’s the definition of personal data under GDPR[2] for anyone who’s curious. If this information hypothetically were to be published by a company with a European or UK connection about an EU or UK data subject and that person were to complain to their national data protection authority we might be in GDPR enforcement territory. [1] or UK because UK GDPR is a thing even though the UK is no longer in the EU [2] https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-data/ https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-...
    - jdong 4y ago
      Why should anyone involved need to be in European? The jet in question is known to visit Europe with Musk aboard. > a company with a European or UK connection about an EU or UK data subject If you have EU or UK data subjects, you have an European or UK connection and have entered GDPR enforcement territory.
      - seanhunter 4y ago
        Well Elon still isn’t anything to do with the apparatus of gdpr enforcement so it’s still irrelevant and secondly enforcement would be against the sites which are supposedly infringing rather than people linking to them on twitter. This is a sideshow.
        rosnd 4y ago
        This is completely incorrect. Elon owns Twitter, Twitter is responsible for complying with the GDPR on their platform. Elon in fact has a lot to do with the apparatus of GDPR enforcement.
        jdong 4y ago
        Buddy, not everybody shares your weird Elon obsession. There are interesting phenomena to discuss here, but Elon's mood swings aren't one of them.
  - Xylakant 4y ago
    I don’t see how it is an obvious GDPR violation. The GDPR is a lot more nuanced than “all private data is protected”. It has exemptions for data published based on a legal requirement (could be the case here), data that cannot easily linked to an individual (number plates are not protected by themselves) and data regarding companies is also exempt. This jet isn’t owned by musk, it’s owned by a company. Journalists (including citizen journalists) also have broad protections in European law and those must be weighed against the GDPR protections. There’s so much nuance to this that it’s possible this might fall under GDPR, but it’s very far from obvious.
    - jdong 4y ago
      > It has exemptions for data published o based at n a legal requirement (could be the case here) Couldn't, there's no legal requirement for anyone to record and publish ADS-B transmissions. > data that cannot easily linked to an individual (number plates are not protected by themselves) This is incorrect, number plates of cars belonging to individuals are going to be protected in almost any context you'd be storing them in. > This jet isn’t owned by musk, it’s owned by a company Doesn't matter, Musk isn't the only person with a plane. I own my own plane, it gets tracked by these sites. > Journalists (including citizen journalists) also have broad protections in European law and those must be weighed against the GDPR protections Websites like flightradar24.com are not journalists, but data brokers. That's simply ridiculous. >There’s so much nuance to this that it’s possible this might fall under GDPR, but it very far from obvious. No there isn't, this is crystal clear.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  We are moving the envelope. Journalists doing their job is now "doxxing". This suits the elite who don't want their actions scrutinised. How many rich and famous have been disgraced in the last 200 years because journalists posted outside their hotel room or followed their car?
revetkn 4y ago
Maybe, but the last straw for me on that platform was preventing tweets from linking to arbitrary, non-doxxing Mastodon profiles (try it and see). I tested it to confirm and deactivated my account afterwards. Who would want to be on a social network like that?
- notinfuriated 4y ago
  Why didn't you leave when they blocked tweets that linked to the Hunter Biden laptop story?
  - RavingGoat 4y ago
    - Pxtl 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - godelski 4y ago
    You're allowed to be upset about more than one thing.
    - notinfuriated 4y ago
      Yes, you absolutely are. Nothing in my comment suggested you are not. The comment I responded to specifically was upset about censorship targeted at tweeting Mastodon links and not another version of censorship which came in the exact same form but targeted X links. I just gave X a name. I find it somewhat absurd that a person would become indignant when the link is Y instead of X.
      - revetkn 4y ago
RavingGoat 4y ago
One simply called out his lie about the attack on the car. He didn't even file a police report.
- hgdfhgdfhgdfbgf 4y ago
  - richbell 4y ago
    If you were attacked by someone and got a clear picture of their license plate, would you: a) report it to the police, who have direct access to vehicle registrations and can easily find the perpetrator or b) post on Twitter asking random people if they recognize a person's face or license plate? https://nitter.it/@ZacksJerryRig/status/1603286484785586178 https://nitter.it/@ZacksJerryRig/status/1603286484785586178 https://nitter.it/pic/orig/enc/bWVkaWEvRmtBR0FsUGFjQUE4MjQzLmpwZw== https://nitter.it/pic/orig/enc/bWVkaWEvRmtBR0FsUGFjQUE4MjQzL...
    - vultour 4y ago
      I'd wager asking a bajillion followers will have more success than the police.
      - richbell 4y ago
        The police can get precise information in a click of a button.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    Did you really make an account just to spam low-effort comments in Elon's favor in the comments of this article? Has his recent behavior been that defensible?
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    Well it would add some credibility to a man who has burnt up his benefit of the doubt quota.
MallocVoidstar 4y ago
His jet's location isn't doxxing and the public has a legitimate interest in it.
- wfme 4y ago
  What exactly is this "legitimate" interest?
  - kasey_junk 4y ago
    The general premise about why flight data is public is because the planes are using a public good. The airspace of a place is a commons, what happens in the commons is everyone’s to know.
    - wfme 4y ago
      Since military planes use this same public good, is their flight data also published?
      - kasey_junk 4y ago
        No but the most accepted premise is we give up public goods for national security not because rich guys don’t like it.
      - _kbh_ 4y ago
        You can actually track a large number of military flights on websites such as https://www.adsbexchange.com/ https://www.adsbexchange.com/ a large amount of the time they fly with there transponder on because they don’t want to hit other aircraft.
      - matkoniecz 4y ago
        In general yes, for example https://www.flightradar24.com/ https://www.flightradar24.com/ shows right now FORTE10 plane (Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk) which is UAV heading toward Black Sea where it will be spying over Russian invasion of Ukraine and launches of Russian missiles from Black Sea in their bombing of Ukrainian cities. Flights supplying Ukraine were routinely top viewed flights on that website (they were flying to Rzeszów in Poland, so there was no real risk of Russian shooting them down). AWACS planes and tanker flying in holding patterns over Poland, Romania and Baltic Sea used to be top observed planes on flightradar24 but I should be now working not looking through flightradar24 planes over Poland ( so I will link https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60612255 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60612255 that has video of inside one of them ). Obviously planes flying combat missions are not publishing data there. Presumably ones training in restricted airspace are not either for also obvious reasons.
sillysaurusx 4y ago
Not quite. Some of the journalists linked to a Facebook page about the topic, which is a small but crucial distinction. Banning for linking to peripheral news stories is pretty bad.
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
  The Facebook page is where Sweeney said you could find the tracker...
- jhugo 4y ago
  When did a Facebook page become a "peripheral news story"?
yurodivuie 4y ago
They were banned for including a link to where Sweeney moved. I wonder if everyone who posts a link to these journalists will get banned too. If it were an algorithm, everyone in Twitter would be banned by tomorrow. I hope it works.
EGreg 4y ago
Perhaps now we can see how Freedom Ain't Free. You can't claim to be a free speech absolutist, or a supporter of the second amendment, but then go ban stuff you don't like as soon as it concerns YOU. Doxxing isn't illegal. I thought Elon claimed that ONLY violation of national laws could be the basis for deplatforming. As if his understaffed team can make legal decisions on the spot, and output true/false about millions of tweets that fall into gray areas. They don't even KNOW the whole body of law, and they aren't the judge or jury either. I had two discussions with Noam Chomsky about how capitalism has co-opted Freedom of Speech, just like it has done with Women's Lib and many other things In 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HovxY1qBfek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HovxY1qBfek A year later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc
- hgdfhgdfhgdfbgf 4y ago
  How is the second amendment relevant here? Zuckerberg's jet account and others like it were also banned.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
nephanth 4y ago
I mean the location of his jet is public information (all flight plans are public records). Plus he's a public personality, so not really concerned by most of that "anti-doxxing" rule
- lovich 4y ago
  On that note, for anyone who would argue he didn’t consent to giving up his right to privacy on where he travels, he explicitly used his presence as a tool to endorse companies, people, and activities. You can’t actively imply people should give you and your business partners money because you physically showed up to a location and then be upset that people care where you are physically located
- lovich 4y ago
  On that note, for anyone who would argue he didn’t consent to giving up his right to privacy on where he travels, he explicitly used his presence as a tool to endorse companies, people, and activities. You can’t actively imply people give you and your business partners money because you physically showed up to a location and then be upset that people care where you are physically located
  - zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
    That's a ridiculous argument. Just because he does some public relations stuff doesn't mean it's ok to blast out his location to the world. Yes, it's public information, but so what? Would you want a Twitter account dedicated to broadcasting your movements to the world?
    - tluyben2 4y ago
      If I owned a private jet, I would assume it is broadcasted, because it has to be, legally. Nothing you can do. Anyone can find it, so what’s the difference if a Twitter account links it? Obviously it’s a different story if someone would indeed make his (and his family) real-time moves outside his jet known. But I haven’t seen that unless he announced it himself.
checkyoursudo 4y ago
How many degrees of separation from actually PII is allowed? Would posting a link to an account that posts a link to the tracker be an offense? Banning people for posting a link to someone else possibly violating the rules seems like a step way too far.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

How is it "doxxing" to use public flight data? Am I missing something here?

notinfuriated 4y ago
I think of it as about the same as the recent complaints that Elon Musk posting 'prosecute Fauci' means he is responsible for Dr. Fauci receiving death threats, or whatever the actual consequence was of that. That is, the idea or information already exists and is publicly available to anyone, but it has been 'amplified' here and this makes it much more serious. (I disagree with the logic in both cases.)
rosnd 4y ago
What adsbexchange, flightradar & co. are doing is almost certainly illegal in Europe under the GDPR. This isn't exactly "public flight data", in many cases it's illegally collected and published flight data. E: I can't reply to "imnotjames" below thanks to HN ratelimits, but here you go: It's an obvious GDPR violation, just like it'd be an obvious GDPR violation to publish a similar database but with phone IMEIs and associated locations instead of aircraft.
- imnotjames 4y ago
  How is it illegal?
- Nas808 4y ago
  The FAA has a program called LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) and high-profile individuals, etc can sign up to it. The major players in the flight tracking business like FlightRadar24 or FlightAware follow that. But sites like ADS-B Exchange do not adhere to that, so you can see a lot more flights that are blocked on the others. Also anyone with a Raspberry Pi and a cheap antenna can build their own ADS-B receiver and get that unfiltered data.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Musk lives in the US, I imagine most of his flights are within the US. Not sure why you're bringing up GDPR.
- seanhunter 4y ago
  Not sure how GDPR is relevant since Elon Musk isn’t the EU data commissioner so it’s not up to him to enforce GDPR, and neither Musk, nor Twitter itself, nor the journalists, nor the sites concerned nor the information in question is in any way European[1]. Here’s the definition of personal data under GDPR[2] for anyone who’s curious. If this information hypothetically were to be published by a company with a European or UK connection about an EU or UK data subject and that person were to complain to their national data protection authority we might be in GDPR enforcement territory. [1] or UK because UK GDPR is a thing even though the UK is no longer in the EU [2] https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-data/ https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-...
  - jdong 4y ago
    Why should anyone involved need to be in European? The jet in question is known to visit Europe with Musk aboard. > a company with a European or UK connection about an EU or UK data subject If you have EU or UK data subjects, you have an European or UK connection and have entered GDPR enforcement territory.
    - seanhunter 4y ago
      Well Elon still isn’t anything to do with the apparatus of gdpr enforcement so it’s still irrelevant and secondly enforcement would be against the sites which are supposedly infringing rather than people linking to them on twitter. This is a sideshow.
      - rosnd 4y ago
        This is completely incorrect. Elon owns Twitter, Twitter is responsible for complying with the GDPR on their platform. Elon in fact has a lot to do with the apparatus of GDPR enforcement.
      - jdong 4y ago
        Buddy, not everybody shares your weird Elon obsession. There are interesting phenomena to discuss here, but Elon's mood swings aren't one of them.
- Xylakant 4y ago
  I don’t see how it is an obvious GDPR violation. The GDPR is a lot more nuanced than “all private data is protected”. It has exemptions for data published based on a legal requirement (could be the case here), data that cannot easily linked to an individual (number plates are not protected by themselves) and data regarding companies is also exempt. This jet isn’t owned by musk, it’s owned by a company. Journalists (including citizen journalists) also have broad protections in European law and those must be weighed against the GDPR protections. There’s so much nuance to this that it’s possible this might fall under GDPR, but it’s very far from obvious.
  - jdong 4y ago
    > It has exemptions for data published o based at n a legal requirement (could be the case here) Couldn't, there's no legal requirement for anyone to record and publish ADS-B transmissions. > data that cannot easily linked to an individual (number plates are not protected by themselves) This is incorrect, number plates of cars belonging to individuals are going to be protected in almost any context you'd be storing them in. > This jet isn’t owned by musk, it’s owned by a company Doesn't matter, Musk isn't the only person with a plane. I own my own plane, it gets tracked by these sites. > Journalists (including citizen journalists) also have broad protections in European law and those must be weighed against the GDPR protections Websites like flightradar24.com are not journalists, but data brokers. That's simply ridiculous. >There’s so much nuance to this that it’s possible this might fall under GDPR, but it very far from obvious. No there isn't, this is crystal clear.
WeylandYutani 4y ago
We are moving the envelope. Journalists doing their job is now "doxxing". This suits the elite who don't want their actions scrutinised. How many rich and famous have been disgraced in the last 200 years because journalists posted outside their hotel room or followed their car?

revetkn 4y ago

Maybe, but the last straw for me on that platform was preventing tweets from linking to arbitrary, non-doxxing Mastodon profiles (try it and see). I tested it to confirm and deactivated my account afterwards. Who would want to be on a social network like that?

notinfuriated 4y ago
Why didn't you leave when they blocked tweets that linked to the Hunter Biden laptop story?
- RavingGoat 4y ago
  - Pxtl 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- godelski 4y ago
  You're allowed to be upset about more than one thing.
  - notinfuriated 4y ago
    Yes, you absolutely are. Nothing in my comment suggested you are not. The comment I responded to specifically was upset about censorship targeted at tweeting Mastodon links and not another version of censorship which came in the exact same form but targeted X links. I just gave X a name. I find it somewhat absurd that a person would become indignant when the link is Y instead of X.
    - revetkn 4y ago

RavingGoat 4y ago

One simply called out his lie about the attack on the car. He didn't even file a police report.

hgdfhgdfhgdfbgf 4y ago
- richbell 4y ago
  If you were attacked by someone and got a clear picture of their license plate, would you: a) report it to the police, who have direct access to vehicle registrations and can easily find the perpetrator or b) post on Twitter asking random people if they recognize a person's face or license plate? https://nitter.it/@ZacksJerryRig/status/1603286484785586178 https://nitter.it/@ZacksJerryRig/status/1603286484785586178 https://nitter.it/pic/orig/enc/bWVkaWEvRmtBR0FsUGFjQUE4MjQzLmpwZw== https://nitter.it/pic/orig/enc/bWVkaWEvRmtBR0FsUGFjQUE4MjQzL...
  - vultour 4y ago
    I'd wager asking a bajillion followers will have more success than the police.
    - richbell 4y ago
      The police can get precise information in a click of a button.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  Did you really make an account just to spam low-effort comments in Elon's favor in the comments of this article? Has his recent behavior been that defensible?
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  Well it would add some credibility to a man who has burnt up his benefit of the doubt quota.

MallocVoidstar 4y ago

His jet's location isn't doxxing and the public has a legitimate interest in it.

wfme 4y ago
What exactly is this "legitimate" interest?
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  The general premise about why flight data is public is because the planes are using a public good. The airspace of a place is a commons, what happens in the commons is everyone’s to know.
  - wfme 4y ago
    Since military planes use this same public good, is their flight data also published?
    - kasey_junk 4y ago
      No but the most accepted premise is we give up public goods for national security not because rich guys don’t like it.
    - _kbh_ 4y ago
      You can actually track a large number of military flights on websites such as https://www.adsbexchange.com/ https://www.adsbexchange.com/ a large amount of the time they fly with there transponder on because they don’t want to hit other aircraft.
    - matkoniecz 4y ago
      In general yes, for example https://www.flightradar24.com/ https://www.flightradar24.com/ shows right now FORTE10 plane (Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk) which is UAV heading toward Black Sea where it will be spying over Russian invasion of Ukraine and launches of Russian missiles from Black Sea in their bombing of Ukrainian cities. Flights supplying Ukraine were routinely top viewed flights on that website (they were flying to Rzeszów in Poland, so there was no real risk of Russian shooting them down). AWACS planes and tanker flying in holding patterns over Poland, Romania and Baltic Sea used to be top observed planes on flightradar24 but I should be now working not looking through flightradar24 planes over Poland ( so I will link https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60612255 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60612255 that has video of inside one of them ). Obviously planes flying combat missions are not publishing data there. Presumably ones training in restricted airspace are not either for also obvious reasons.

sillysaurusx 4y ago

Not quite. Some of the journalists linked to a Facebook page about the topic, which is a small but crucial distinction. Banning for linking to peripheral news stories is pretty bad.

NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
The Facebook page is where Sweeney said you could find the tracker...
jhugo 4y ago
When did a Facebook page become a "peripheral news story"?

yurodivuie 4y ago

They were banned for including a link to where Sweeney moved. I wonder if everyone who posts a link to these journalists will get banned too. If it were an algorithm, everyone in Twitter would be banned by tomorrow. I hope it works.

EGreg 4y ago

Perhaps now we can see how Freedom Ain't Free. You can't claim to be a free speech absolutist, or a supporter of the second amendment, but then go ban stuff you don't like as soon as it concerns YOU. Doxxing isn't illegal. I thought Elon claimed that ONLY violation of national laws could be the basis for deplatforming. As if his understaffed team can make legal decisions on the spot, and output true/false about millions of tweets that fall into gray areas. They don't even KNOW the whole body of law, and they aren't the judge or jury either. I had two discussions with Noam Chomsky about how capitalism has co-opted Freedom of Speech, just like it has done with Women's Lib and many other things In 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HovxY1qBfek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HovxY1qBfek A year later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc

hgdfhgdfhgdfbgf 4y ago
How is the second amendment relevant here? Zuckerberg's jet account and others like it were also banned.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

nephanth 4y ago

I mean the location of his jet is public information (all flight plans are public records). Plus he's a public personality, so not really concerned by most of that "anti-doxxing" rule

lovich 4y ago
On that note, for anyone who would argue he didn’t consent to giving up his right to privacy on where he travels, he explicitly used his presence as a tool to endorse companies, people, and activities. You can’t actively imply people should give you and your business partners money because you physically showed up to a location and then be upset that people care where you are physically located
lovich 4y ago
On that note, for anyone who would argue he didn’t consent to giving up his right to privacy on where he travels, he explicitly used his presence as a tool to endorse companies, people, and activities. You can’t actively imply people give you and your business partners money because you physically showed up to a location and then be upset that people care where you are physically located
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
  That's a ridiculous argument. Just because he does some public relations stuff doesn't mean it's ok to blast out his location to the world. Yes, it's public information, but so what? Would you want a Twitter account dedicated to broadcasting your movements to the world?
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    If I owned a private jet, I would assume it is broadcasted, because it has to be, legally. Nothing you can do. Anyone can find it, so what’s the difference if a Twitter account links it? Obviously it’s a different story if someone would indeed make his (and his family) real-time moves outside his jet known. But I haven’t seen that unless he announced it himself.

checkyoursudo 4y ago

How many degrees of separation from actually PII is allowed? Would posting a link to an account that posts a link to the tracker be an offense? Banning people for posting a link to someone else possibly violating the rules seems like a step way too far.