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Public or not, it is a security concern, especially for a celebrity/politicized figure/widely hated person. I wouldn't want my live location posted on the inte

Public or not, it is a security concern, especially for a celebrity/politicized figure/widely hated person. I wouldn't want my live location posted on the internet either, and there's a lot fewer people who want to hurt me than Musk (AFAIK, no one wants to hurt me).

emodendroket 4y ago
I don't find it credible that someone is committed enough to doing you harm that they're willing to rot in prison for the rest of their lives but not quite committed enough to look up the public data themselves instead of finding it conveniently collated for them.
- nearbuy 4y ago
  I'd like to think I'm smarter than the average nutcase who tries to assassinate a celebrity, and I would not have known how to get that information before people started posting it online. I wouldn't have even known it was possible. All you get from the flight tracking websites is flights with serial numbers. There's no obvious way to know which one belongs to Musk. His jet isn't registered under his name. People had to do some sleuthing. Edit: I think you're also implying that people who have attempted to assassinate or assassinated someone are a) rational, and b) believe they'll be caught. But often neither of those are true.
  - akiselev 4y ago
    > People had to do some sleuthing. The entirety of my sleuthing: google "site:faa.gov elon musk registration" That gave me the tail number and ICAO code in the first result. I had no idea what I was even looking for, just that I probably needed "site:faa.gov" - it worked on the first try. I'm working on my pilot's license so maybe I'm an outlier. I even knew that the FAA was in charge of aviation! :-)
    - nearbuy 4y ago
      I'm not sure how Google has associated that page to Musk, but notice that Musk's name is nowhere on that page. I suspect Google is able to associate that record to Musk because of the sleuthing people have done. Likely there are links to that page that identify it as Musk's jet.
      - akiselev 4y ago
        Look at the registered owner: FALCON LANDING LLC located at 1 ROCKET RD, HAWTHORNE, CA (Guess what other business is at 1 Rocket Rd on Google Maps) It wouldn't take much word association to connect the two without human involvement. It doesn't matter to the purpose of this discussion though, since Google has created this association it's available to everyone.
        nearbuy 4y ago
        If you're talking about tracking his jet today, then you don't even have to work that hard (or even know what the FAA is). Just googling "Musk jet number" or "Musk jet tracker" will find his jet. This information is plastered all over the internet. That's not going away. But it's all over the net because someone, possibly @elonjet, originally figured out it was his jet and posted it online. That made it easier for people to find his jet, and that is a security concern for Musk. I'm not saying this information was originally super hard to uncover for someone who knew what to do. I'm saying there is some increased security risk now that this information is easily accessible. I think most of us would be uncomfortable with being tracked live in his situation.
        deleted 4y ago
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        deleted 4y ago
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        mullingitover 4y ago
        It's not a security concern. If this was actually a security threat, the man could take chartered flights anonymously forever with a rounding error's worth of his money. Opsec is clearly not important to him. It's the Elon show. He needs the attention and doesn't care if it's positive or negative.
  - bburrito 4y ago
- rosnd 4y ago
  ADS-B transmissions are not "public data" you can look up, what you're referring to as "public data" are datasets of dubious legality from the likes of flightradar24 who operate ADS-B logging devices around the world. For example, in Europe what they're doing is strictly in violation of the GDPR.
  - guitarbill 4y ago
    Love the GDPR, but how is ADS-B data personal data?
    - jdong 4y ago
      How could it not be? Your plane's location data is just as personal as your car's, or your cellphone's. There's no special aircraft exemption in the GDPR.
      - kennywinker 4y ago
        A plane is not a person, a phone, a car, or a home. Elon Musk is often the passenger on his jet, but I am quite sure he is often not on board while it moves around.
        jdong 4y ago
        Why would a plane be treated differently than a car in a GDPR context?
        zimpenfish 4y ago
        > Why would a plane be treated differently than a car in a GDPR context? A car is generally registered to an individual. A plane isn't. You could also -maybe- argue that because there's multiple people on the plane (assuming Ol' Muskie isn't flying it himself) and that those people are potentially different every time, without a passenger and crew manifest, it's not identifying individuals (but I suspect you'd not get far with this.)
- zdragnar 4y ago
  That is literally what happened with the Pelosi attacker. He wrongly assumed she would be present (she was definitely not). He absolutely intended her physical harm- and attacked the husband with a hammer in full view of the police.
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    The Pelosi attacker got motivated by DECADES of Republican hate propaganda. Not responsible journalism speaking truth to power. The rich and famous cannot have anonymity because you can't be rich and famous being anonymous. Of course the elite wants to have it both ways: report only what I want you to report.
    - JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
      > because you can't be rich and famous being anonymous What about Satoshi? And funnily enough it was exactly Musk status circa 2017. A billionaire known only by people following the stock market and tech/auto sector specifically. He made his own bed ever since the accusation of pedophilia against Vernon Unsworth who was participating in the Thai cave rescue. The combined wealth of Brin and Page also would land them at #1 in the Forbes list but nobody knows them. So it's possible to a degree, it was never possible for Musk however because he has a deep need to be a primadonna
    - factsarelolz 4y ago
      > The Pelosi attacker got motivated by DECADES of Republican hate propaganda. Not responsible journalism speaking truth to power. Do you have a citations for this? His son seems to disagree with your depiction of DePePe's political affiliation. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11537665/Son-Paul-Pelosis-alleged-attacker-David-DePape-breaks-silence.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11537665/Son-Paul-P... > responsible journalism We haven't seen that in at least a decade.
  - jen20 4y ago
    Given what Elon has claimed about this, it’s probably not the best defense of his position.
- trap_goes_hot 4y ago
  Sure, and someone may disagree with your assessment. In the end its no big deal, its just a difference of opinion.
stonogo 4y ago
If Musk actually regarded flight tracking as a security risk, he would have signed up for the LADD program and restricted this info to FAA Source or added his aircraft to the Subscriber Level blocklist. He also could have requested a Privacy ICAO Address. Any of these things would have put an actual stop to @elonjet, and the PIA solution would have prevented harassers from simply picking up with FlightRadar or any other tracking service. The fact that he didn't do anything to increase his own security except for banning one of his company's users tells me this is not about personal security, but about exerting control over his company. That's his prerogative, but it's bizarre that he chooses to put up a facade instead of just adding "don't be an asshole to Elon" to the terms of service, which appears to be the actual endgame here.
- influx 4y ago
  As I understand it, he is part of that program but the person tracking him uses alternate methods to get it.
  - bburrito 4y ago
    The alternative method is just people ad-hoc tracking the aircraft with their own ADS-B receivers. LADD doesnt allow aircraft to stop broadcasting. Only that data vendors like FlightRadar must respect the privacy requests. But antenna owners can choose to share their data with vendors that dont respect the LADD program in which case there is 0 recourse. You can buy the antennas for like $100 and share the data in real time with whoever you want.
    - influx 4y ago
      Another speculation: https://twitter.com/scottwww/status/1490553502640140288?s=46&t=lhafYSCOIc2rLzlJG2FfRQ https://twitter.com/scottwww/status/1490553502640140288?s=46...
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    Given that you can view the accurate ICAO hex address for his aircraft on registry.faa.gov, it's clear that he's not part of the PIA programme. ElonJet didn't do anything other than automate an API feed from ADSB Exchange, which uses the hex from the FAA.
bburrito 4y ago
You do realize you can buy a $100 antenna on Ebay and pull the live-to-the-second location of every airplane in your visible sky, directly from the aircraft, right? There are websites displaying this exact same data where you can watch US Military Air Tankers in active refuelling operations with both US and other nation's aircraft in active war zones. The security risk is entirely overblown.
- eecc 4y ago
  Well, it won’t stop a dedicated stalker but having to plan an execute is already a significant barrier of entry for 99% of the bored, drunk, unstable minds that would come up with the idea of walking up to someone.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > it won’t stop a dedicated stalker A "stalker" is pretty much by definition "dedicated". Otherwise it'd just be a casual observer. But what it most important to keep remembering is that the whole discussion of elonjet account is a distraction. Sure, it's one guy posting the data for whatever motivation he has. But it doesn't matter at all, because the source raw data is public domain information available to the whole world for free on many other air traffic websites. Even if Elon were to shut off, somehow, every website in the world, the data is literally there for the taking out of the airwaves since it is being transmitted in the clear, by government mandate. There isn't any conceivably rational argument to claim this data is private.
    - eecc 4y ago
      Off the top of your head can you link to a couple of these easy to reach sources, or the hardware, the drivers and the configuration needed to capture this data. Let's see if its really that simple, reachable and affordable such that any mildly disgruntled oaf can do in an impetus.
      - JaimeThompson 4y ago
        Here you go https://flightaware.com/adsb/ https://flightaware.com/adsb/

emodendroket 4y ago

I don't find it credible that someone is committed enough to doing you harm that they're willing to rot in prison for the rest of their lives but not quite committed enough to look up the public data themselves instead of finding it conveniently collated for them.

nearbuy 4y ago
I'd like to think I'm smarter than the average nutcase who tries to assassinate a celebrity, and I would not have known how to get that information before people started posting it online. I wouldn't have even known it was possible. All you get from the flight tracking websites is flights with serial numbers. There's no obvious way to know which one belongs to Musk. His jet isn't registered under his name. People had to do some sleuthing. Edit: I think you're also implying that people who have attempted to assassinate or assassinated someone are a) rational, and b) believe they'll be caught. But often neither of those are true.
- akiselev 4y ago
  > People had to do some sleuthing. The entirety of my sleuthing: google "site:faa.gov elon musk registration" That gave me the tail number and ICAO code in the first result. I had no idea what I was even looking for, just that I probably needed "site:faa.gov" - it worked on the first try. I'm working on my pilot's license so maybe I'm an outlier. I even knew that the FAA was in charge of aviation! :-)
  - nearbuy 4y ago
    I'm not sure how Google has associated that page to Musk, but notice that Musk's name is nowhere on that page. I suspect Google is able to associate that record to Musk because of the sleuthing people have done. Likely there are links to that page that identify it as Musk's jet.
    - akiselev 4y ago
      Look at the registered owner: FALCON LANDING LLC located at 1 ROCKET RD, HAWTHORNE, CA (Guess what other business is at 1 Rocket Rd on Google Maps) It wouldn't take much word association to connect the two without human involvement. It doesn't matter to the purpose of this discussion though, since Google has created this association it's available to everyone.
      - nearbuy 4y ago
        If you're talking about tracking his jet today, then you don't even have to work that hard (or even know what the FAA is). Just googling "Musk jet number" or "Musk jet tracker" will find his jet. This information is plastered all over the internet. That's not going away. But it's all over the net because someone, possibly @elonjet, originally figured out it was his jet and posted it online. That made it easier for people to find his jet, and that is a security concern for Musk. I'm not saying this information was originally super hard to uncover for someone who knew what to do. I'm saying there is some increased security risk now that this information is easily accessible. I think most of us would be uncomfortable with being tracked live in his situation.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        mullingitover 4y ago
        It's not a security concern. If this was actually a security threat, the man could take chartered flights anonymously forever with a rounding error's worth of his money. Opsec is clearly not important to him. It's the Elon show. He needs the attention and doesn't care if it's positive or negative.
- bburrito 4y ago
rosnd 4y ago
ADS-B transmissions are not "public data" you can look up, what you're referring to as "public data" are datasets of dubious legality from the likes of flightradar24 who operate ADS-B logging devices around the world. For example, in Europe what they're doing is strictly in violation of the GDPR.
- guitarbill 4y ago
  Love the GDPR, but how is ADS-B data personal data?
  - jdong 4y ago
    How could it not be? Your plane's location data is just as personal as your car's, or your cellphone's. There's no special aircraft exemption in the GDPR.
    - kennywinker 4y ago
      A plane is not a person, a phone, a car, or a home. Elon Musk is often the passenger on his jet, but I am quite sure he is often not on board while it moves around.
      - jdong 4y ago
        Why would a plane be treated differently than a car in a GDPR context?
        zimpenfish 4y ago
        > Why would a plane be treated differently than a car in a GDPR context? A car is generally registered to an individual. A plane isn't. You could also -maybe- argue that because there's multiple people on the plane (assuming Ol' Muskie isn't flying it himself) and that those people are potentially different every time, without a passenger and crew manifest, it's not identifying individuals (but I suspect you'd not get far with this.)
zdragnar 4y ago
That is literally what happened with the Pelosi attacker. He wrongly assumed she would be present (she was definitely not). He absolutely intended her physical harm- and attacked the husband with a hammer in full view of the police.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  The Pelosi attacker got motivated by DECADES of Republican hate propaganda. Not responsible journalism speaking truth to power. The rich and famous cannot have anonymity because you can't be rich and famous being anonymous. Of course the elite wants to have it both ways: report only what I want you to report.
  - JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
    > because you can't be rich and famous being anonymous What about Satoshi? And funnily enough it was exactly Musk status circa 2017. A billionaire known only by people following the stock market and tech/auto sector specifically. He made his own bed ever since the accusation of pedophilia against Vernon Unsworth who was participating in the Thai cave rescue. The combined wealth of Brin and Page also would land them at #1 in the Forbes list but nobody knows them. So it's possible to a degree, it was never possible for Musk however because he has a deep need to be a primadonna
  - factsarelolz 4y ago
    > The Pelosi attacker got motivated by DECADES of Republican hate propaganda. Not responsible journalism speaking truth to power. Do you have a citations for this? His son seems to disagree with your depiction of DePePe's political affiliation. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11537665/Son-Paul-Pelosis-alleged-attacker-David-DePape-breaks-silence.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11537665/Son-Paul-P... > responsible journalism We haven't seen that in at least a decade.
- jen20 4y ago
  Given what Elon has claimed about this, it’s probably not the best defense of his position.
trap_goes_hot 4y ago
Sure, and someone may disagree with your assessment. In the end its no big deal, its just a difference of opinion.

stonogo 4y ago

If Musk actually regarded flight tracking as a security risk, he would have signed up for the LADD program and restricted this info to FAA Source or added his aircraft to the Subscriber Level blocklist. He also could have requested a Privacy ICAO Address. Any of these things would have put an actual stop to @elonjet, and the PIA solution would have prevented harassers from simply picking up with FlightRadar or any other tracking service. The fact that he didn't do anything to increase his own security except for banning one of his company's users tells me this is not about personal security, but about exerting control over his company. That's his prerogative, but it's bizarre that he chooses to put up a facade instead of just adding "don't be an asshole to Elon" to the terms of service, which appears to be the actual endgame here.

influx 4y ago
As I understand it, he is part of that program but the person tracking him uses alternate methods to get it.
- bburrito 4y ago
  The alternative method is just people ad-hoc tracking the aircraft with their own ADS-B receivers. LADD doesnt allow aircraft to stop broadcasting. Only that data vendors like FlightRadar must respect the privacy requests. But antenna owners can choose to share their data with vendors that dont respect the LADD program in which case there is 0 recourse. You can buy the antennas for like $100 and share the data in real time with whoever you want.
  - influx 4y ago
    Another speculation: https://twitter.com/scottwww/status/1490553502640140288?s=46&t=lhafYSCOIc2rLzlJG2FfRQ https://twitter.com/scottwww/status/1490553502640140288?s=46...
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Given that you can view the accurate ICAO hex address for his aircraft on registry.faa.gov, it's clear that he's not part of the PIA programme. ElonJet didn't do anything other than automate an API feed from ADSB Exchange, which uses the hex from the FAA.

bburrito 4y ago

You do realize you can buy a $100 antenna on Ebay and pull the live-to-the-second location of every airplane in your visible sky, directly from the aircraft, right? There are websites displaying this exact same data where you can watch US Military Air Tankers in active refuelling operations with both US and other nation's aircraft in active war zones. The security risk is entirely overblown.

eecc 4y ago
Well, it won’t stop a dedicated stalker but having to plan an execute is already a significant barrier of entry for 99% of the bored, drunk, unstable minds that would come up with the idea of walking up to someone.
- jjav 4y ago
  > it won’t stop a dedicated stalker A "stalker" is pretty much by definition "dedicated". Otherwise it'd just be a casual observer. But what it most important to keep remembering is that the whole discussion of elonjet account is a distraction. Sure, it's one guy posting the data for whatever motivation he has. But it doesn't matter at all, because the source raw data is public domain information available to the whole world for free on many other air traffic websites. Even if Elon were to shut off, somehow, every website in the world, the data is literally there for the taking out of the airwaves since it is being transmitted in the clear, by government mandate. There isn't any conceivably rational argument to claim this data is private.
  - eecc 4y ago
    Off the top of your head can you link to a couple of these easy to reach sources, or the hardware, the drivers and the configuration needed to capture this data. Let's see if its really that simple, reachable and affordable such that any mildly disgruntled oaf can do in an impetus.
    - JaimeThompson 4y ago
      Here you go https://flightaware.com/adsb/ https://flightaware.com/adsb/