How to upset Russian shipping companies, Elon Musk, Chinese authorities and TV celebrity Kylie Jenner? Tracking your planes.
Websites and Twitter accounts track flights and offer real-time information on air traffic – and, sometimes, are the source of important news such as Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan – but that exposure generates everything from complaints to the request for seizures of equipment.
Every year Russian air transport companies or Saudi aircraft owners, among other personalities, ask Dan Streufert, founder of the ADS-B Exchange website, to stop publishing their trips. Unsuccessfully.
“So far we have not withdrawn anything. They are public information. And I don’t want to be the arbiter who decides who is right or who is wrong,” explains Streufert.
In some cases there are limits, but those who publish such flight paths emphasize that the main source of information is legally available and accessible to anyone with the necessary equipment.
U.S. law requires that aircraft in certain areas be equipped with systems for ADS-B satellitewhich periodically sends the position of the device by radio to air traffic controllers.
A website like Flightradar24 has 34,000 receivers on land all over the world, being able to capture this type of signals, data that is sent to a central network and crossed with flight schedules and other information.
The case of Elon Musk
Identifying the owner of a plane is another story, according to 19-year-old Jack Sweeney, creator of the Twitter account @CelebrityJets, who found the private jet of tycoon Elon Musk after requesting information from the US government’s public archives.
Tesla’s patron offered him $5,000 to close the @ElonJet account, with more than 480,000 followers and which follows all the movements of the billionaire’s plane.
“People love to see what celebrities do, and the emissions thing,” Sweeney told AFP, referring to people’s outrage over the carbon footprint of flights.
Posting this type of information on Twitter “makes it easier for people to access and understand,” he adds.
–
The controversial publication that Kylie Jenner shared on Instagram: “Shall we take mine or yours?”
Instagram
–
–
–
–
In July, the account @CelebrityJets revealed that Kylie Jenner had taken a private jet for a flight from 17 minutes in California, causing a stir on social media.
“Working class people are told to feel bad about taking one flight a year on a much needed vacation, while celebrities take private flights every other day like an Uber,” one outraged user tweeted.
Neither Sweeney nor Streufert mentioned red lines about publishing these aerial tours.
“The data is already there. I just redistribute them,” said Jack Sweeney.
This activity also generates income, although the precise amount is not known. Dan Streufert acknowledges that he makes a living this way but refuses to give details, while Sweeney says his flight tracking accounts bring him about $100 a month.
For its part, Flightradar24 does not make its billing public.
Follow-up to authorities
Flight tracking can also have a major impact beyond the anger of celebrities and millionaires, as US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan on Tuesday demonstrated. Her flight was followed by more than 700,000 people on the Flightradar24 site at the time of her landing.
In August, an NGO report pointed out that the European border surveillance agency, Frontex, was working to prevent migrants from attempting the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean by relying on ADS-B data, while US media used it to report the presence of flights surveillance at anti-racist demonstrations in Washington in 2020.
Following these revelations, dozens of US parliamentarians called in a letter for the FBI and other government agencies to “cease surveillance of peaceful protesters.”
In other parts of the world, governments have clearly shown that this technology and this type of data are not welcome.
An official Chinese media reported in 2021 that the government had seized hundreds of receivers used by real-time flight tracking sites under the argument of “espionage” risk.
“In many cases, it’s the authoritarian regimes that don’t want this kind of visibility,” explains Dan Streufert.
–
