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Questions About The Future of ADS-B / MLAT / Mode-S, etc.

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  • Questions About The Future of ADS-B / MLAT / Mode-S, etc.

    This is my second try at this. The first time I tried to post this, i got timed out by the time I hit the "submit New Thread" button.

    I read an article today that goes back a little over a year ago on the subject of pilots wanting to block their flights from services such as FR 24, Radarbox, etc. They also mentioned individual people using SDR Dongles and a receiver to track Mode-S and ADS-B data from aircraft.

    The tone of the article was what I took to be "well, some bad people somewhere in the world might have bad intent with technology so no one should be able to use it" which is a very specious, dangerous argument that also comes off as laughable at the same time, but not something that should be dismissed either because in the article, it was actually mentioned that there is legislation pending that would give aircraft operators an actual right to privacy when using public, federal air navigation and air traffic control systems.

    Since when do we create laws based on what someone MIGHT conceivably conjure up in their thoughts or what someone MIGHT conceivably do at some time in their life? That's an AWFUL way to criminalize people who are committing otherwise wholly innocent conduct. In the article, there were mentions of 24-bit addresses that could change and then there was a concern that the data may still be public so someone said "oh, well, we can encrypt the 24-bit address" so, from what I read there, the FAA told these folks with all these concerns some time to come up with how these features would be used, when, etc.

    This creeps ever so dangerously to saying that there's a right to privacy when you're in public, and I see a hidden danger here whereby what everyone in those circles THINKS is a great idea, may actually be leading into "We don't want the FAA monitoring or tracking our aircraft anymore, so let's just not have an ATC / ARTCC system anymore because my mood about aircraft tracking changes everyday"

    It isn't JUST hobbyists that use ADS-B and services like FR24. There are journalists, concerned family members, concerned friends, and others with legitimate interest in accessing the data we are all currently able to access.

    Flight blocking should ONLY ever be performed for people with a REAL security risk. Ya know...national security flights, military ops during sensitive missions, the CEO's and their board members who run big multinational companies who are natural targets for criminal terroristic actors, not because of someone's mood on any given day. There's also a danger here to the 1st amendment right to gather data and the unnessacery burden it would place on the public since other avenues would be excessively expensive or excessively burdensome to use.

    Legislative and technical methods have been proposed to let operators block aircraft identify on flight-tracking services.
    Last edited by ChicagoCenter; 2017-04-24, 00:39. Reason: spelling and punctuation, typos
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