5 ms·

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, ri

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/
      - eecc 4y ago
        And the response is: _This aircraft (xxx) is not available for public tracking per request from the owner/operator._ Which proves my point. A motivated stalker will dig in and research but that’s inevitable, but the other 99.999% losers will self-limit to whatever is available for the minimum effort. This translates to harmless yelling at clouds, unless some cheeky troll does the homework for them.
        JaimeThompson 4y ago
        You missed this part. Build a receiver with a Raspberry Pi For under USD$100 / EUR€80, build a Raspberry Pi with a USB ADS-B receiver that can run dump1090 and PiAware. View data locally or via FlightAware Users that share data with FlightAware automatically qualify for a free upgrade to an Enterprise Account.
        rbanffy 4y ago
        Next step is him taking over FlightAware.
        eecc 4y ago
        I don't quite understand if you're deliberately ignoring my point of if you're that out of touch. Perhaps you've forever lived in an academic/industrial bubble, but a significant part of the population and definitely the vast majoirity of those that would engage in taking a virtual confrontation to IRL, are borderline illiterate, have significant difficulty parsing simple manuals. You're describing setting up a computer with Linux, configuring an SDR and configuring some software to parse the data stream. To most people, that's lunar...
Thuggery 4y ago
Are people on HN of all places pretending to be cutely ignorant about doxxing? Back in the days of Internet forums it was understood to be a bad thing to publish someone's home adress or a picture of it. It's not that home locations were thought secret information, it's an invitation to random crazies.
- dekhn 4y ago
  we're not ignorant, we're taking many things into context. Musk is a public figure, he's being hypocritical, he's not actually being "doxxed", and his kid wasn't threatened by somebody who used the plane's location.
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
The tracking account used an API to track his family's movements. It didn't use an antenna per se. If I did that to you, you'd be pissed.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  If I own a plane and you track that plane, there's nothing I can do, since that information is public. Websites that publish that data through an API are publishing data they got from the aircraft itself. There's a number of ways one can avoid being tracked and Elon saying there aren't is a blatant lie.

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/
    - eecc 4y ago
      And the response is: _This aircraft (xxx) is not available for public tracking per request from the owner/operator._ Which proves my point. A motivated stalker will dig in and research but that’s inevitable, but the other 99.999% losers will self-limit to whatever is available for the minimum effort. This translates to harmless yelling at clouds, unless some cheeky troll does the homework for them.
      - JaimeThompson 4y ago
        You missed this part. Build a receiver with a Raspberry Pi For under USD$100 / EUR€80, build a Raspberry Pi with a USB ADS-B receiver that can run dump1090 and PiAware. View data locally or via FlightAware Users that share data with FlightAware automatically qualify for a free upgrade to an Enterprise Account.
        rbanffy 4y ago
        Next step is him taking over FlightAware.
        eecc 4y ago
        I don't quite understand if you're deliberately ignoring my point of if you're that out of touch. Perhaps you've forever lived in an academic/industrial bubble, but a significant part of the population and definitely the vast majoirity of those that would engage in taking a virtual confrontation to IRL, are borderline illiterate, have significant difficulty parsing simple manuals. You're describing setting up a computer with Linux, configuring an SDR and configuring some software to parse the data stream. To most people, that's lunar...

Thuggery 4y ago

Are people on HN of all places pretending to be cutely ignorant about doxxing? Back in the days of Internet forums it was understood to be a bad thing to publish someone's home adress or a picture of it. It's not that home locations were thought secret information, it's an invitation to random crazies.

dekhn 4y ago
we're not ignorant, we're taking many things into context. Musk is a public figure, he's being hypocritical, he's not actually being "doxxed", and his kid wasn't threatened by somebody who used the plane's location.

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

The tracking account used an API to track his family's movements. It didn't use an antenna per se. If I did that to you, you'd be pissed.

rbanffy 4y ago
If I own a plane and you track that plane, there's nothing I can do, since that information is public. Websites that publish that data through an API are publishing data they got from the aircraft itself. There's a number of ways one can avoid being tracked and Elon saying there aren't is a blatant lie.