In late December, Swift’s camp hit Jack Sweeney, a junior studying information technology at the University of Central Florida, with a cease-and-desist letter that blamed his automated tracking of her private jet for tipping off stalkers as to her location. In the letter, attorneys from the law firm Venable accused Sweeney of effectively providing “individuals intent on harming her, or with nefarious or violent intentions, a roadmap to carry out their plans.”
Sweeney provided the link to that letter in an email to the Associated Press. In that message, he emphasized that while he has never intended to cause harm, he also believes strongly in the importance of transparency and public information.
“One should reasonably expect that their jet will be tracked, whether or not I’m the one doing it, as it is public information after all,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for Swift echoed the legal complaint, saying that “the timing of stalkers” suggests a connection to Sweeney’s flight-tracking sites. The spokesperson did not respond to questions seeking elaboration of that charge, such as whether stalkers have been seen waiting for Swift at the airport when her plane arrived or, alternatively, if there is evidence that stalkers have somehow inferred Swift’s subsequent location from the arrival time of her flight.
The legal letter likewise accuses Sweeney of “disregarding the personal safety of others”; “willful and repeated harassment of our client”; and “intentional, offensive, and outrageous conduct and consistent violations of our client’s privacy.”
Such statements are difficult to square with the fact that Sweeney’s automated tracking accounts merely repackage public data provided by the Federal Aviation Administration, a government agency. That fact did not dissuade the Venable attorneys, who demanded that Sweeney “immediately stop providing information about our client’s location to the public.”
The problem is more to do with ADSB I think. If I remember correctly, all aircraft in the US must have an ADSB transponder now. That info is broadcast for traffic awareness but also contains a ton of other info like speed, altitude, and most importantly the tail number. That signal can be picked up by anyone within range using very simple radio equipment, sites like ADSB Exhange do this and populate a map. So right now unless they want to rework the entire ADSB system, as long as you know the tail number, you can track anyone’s aircraft live. Delaying this data would make the traffic avoidance impossible.
Well not just adsb but I think all filed flight plans are public also?
As are aircraft registrations and pilot’s licenses. You can just…look up pilots by name and get their certificate number(s), address, lots of stuff. Which is how AOPA just…mysteriously starts sending you magazines and catalogs shortly after you get your medical certificate. The FCC is similar with amateur radio licenses, which again is why you’ll invariably find ARRL spam in the same load of mail as your technician license. You can just look up an amateur radio operator’s name, phone number and address given their callsign, so posting your ham radio callsign on Lemmy is basically doxxing yourself.
ADS-B is not required to be carried by all aircraft, but the requirements read like the Mode C Transponder requirements; it’s legal to take your Cessna up for an hour’s flight around Somewhere Regional Airport without one but it will prove necessary for aircraft engaged in basically any commercial operation.
Delaying the ADS-B system itself would render it useless, but it may be possible to delay any public-facing web display. Wouldn’t stop any particularly interested party from buying an ADS-B In unit and receiving the signals directly though. Or building a radio receiver and decoder from scratch; ADS-B messages aren’t encrypted, nor do they carry any authentication so…honestly the FAA probably doesn’t want to encourage people to start fucking around with ADS-B hardware and would rather they just download aircraft position data from their web portal.