I was arguing against the right to fly a plane secretly or obscure its transponder code from public consumption, yes. > So you'd equally have no concern at all

I was arguing against the right to fly a plane secretly or obscure its transponder code from public consumption, yes. > So you'd equally have no concern at all if there was a publicly searchable registry of every flight that every passenger was taking on a commercial carrier? There is a searchable registry of every flight already. The passenger thing is something you added that I never brought up. > The roads are managed by government and funded by taxpayers: should there be a publicly searchable record of every vehicle movement on the roads as well? Well the closest thing to an aircraft transponder is a license plate, and it's pretty well established case law that you have no right to obscure your license plate and that you have no right to privacy with regard to that license plate being recorded, being run by the police without cause or suspicion, etc. The fact that there isn't a publicly searchable record of automobile movements is simply because automobile movement isn't as strictly controlled as aircraft movement. If cars needed transponders in them and you needed a controller to give you permission to take an exit we'd have basically the same system for cars.