Congress Just Made It Basically Impossible to Track Taylor Swift’s Private Jet
Legislation just signed into law has made it exceedingly to difficult to track private jet activity.
Congress is working on issues that matter to the American people.
Like making sure the wealthy are even less accountable.
Its the Tragedy of the Commons. No single individual really has an incentive to stop flying, outside of the marginal impact on PR. So everyone just says its someone else's problem.
The FAA is toothless. The EPA is toothless. The individual industry leaders are more legally beholden to shareholders than any regulatory body. Even in aggregate, the emission volume of flights pale beside the emissions caused by coal stacks and automotive emissions and bunker fuel from bulk cargo shipping, so its the billionaire equivalent of saying "At least I'm recycling" when pushed about what you're doing to curb greenhouse gases.
At the end of the day, what we need is a comprehensive investment in high speed mass transit. But fossil fuel companies hate that. Aeronautics companies hate that. Politicians fixated on quarterly budget figures hate that. And the folks that would actually build rail in this country no longer exist.
So whatchagonna do? Shrug, blame "the system", and go with the flow because everyone else is doing it.
bill that was passed last week will allow private aircraft owners to anonymize their registration information
Private planes fly anonymously? Even if order and justice was restored to the world, we couldn’t find the next Epstein’s island.
And how will this affect drug trafficking? If you can’t trace private planes, it becomes the Wild West.
You don't know? Rich people is above suspect and law
And how will this affect drug trafficking?
Those planes will still be registered to the CIA
Even if order and justice was restored to the world, we couldn’t find the next Epstein’s island.
Which is probably the whole idea.
It’s about Swift and not one of the richest people in the world who lives in the kleptocracy that passed this legislation and historically has made a big fuss over this issue?
He is also in the article, yes.
As with the ticketmaster story, if you put Taylor Swift's picture on the headline it gets more clicks.
It's just that simple.
I blind clicked hoping that wasn't the answer
Not that you are wrong, but I think we should keep using Taylor Swift as the face of this because:
So get mad at her, use her bad image in this issue to push for change, and seriously, fuck her almost as hard as any other rich assholes. The fact that she is sligthly better than people pushing for a return to feudalism doesn't make her a good person lol.
Neo feudalism just checked another box against democracy.
Right, they did it for Taylor Swift.
Dammit, I guess we can't complain anymore about how much fuel they waste every day, so we are fine. Oh wait, no they are still pieces of shit.
It's a big club, and we ain't in it.
I’ve never wanted to be in that club. In fact, I think I’m happier because I’m not.
I'm glad for people like you, because I've spent a good chunk of my life desperately wishing to be in that club, and then another chunk being sad that I wouldn't be able to be. I was miserable and latched onto something that I believed would alleviate it, but I nowadays definitely think I'm happier not being in that club.
Unfortunately, this will also make aviation safety analysis more difficult for us.
The plane crash we don't hear about is one we don't worry about. Good news for the aviation industry.
So if the only thing hidden is the airplanes ID seems like it would still be relatively easy to have a program sift through the data.2
Yeah all we need is to track which private plane specifically went on the exact pattern of her tours
Personally I don’t care where celebrities are at any given time. But I do think it’s interesting, for example to see how international climate summits are some of the biggest environmental impacts as far as carbon footprint etc for example, or seeing how celebrities take personal jets to go to the convenience store
As much as I say fuck the billionaires, they have actually already had methods of doing this for about 50 years. Only the dumb billionaires who registered the planes in their name were annoyed about the rules. They could have always registered it under a trust, like almost every other rich person private jet out there. People can still figure out the plane tail registration and track you through that, and that will never change. So the billionaires that are happy about this regulation change still have their tail numbers known by the public to be associated with them and can still be tracked. Now they just have to change their tail numbers (giant pain) and wait for people to do slightly more difficult digging to figure out what plane is theirs.
This is going to help bring down everyday prices, stop Genocide and will ensure another Epstein type billionaire who privately flies people to his pedophile island will receive swift Justice!
So when her plane goes missing, we’ll all treat her like Amelia Earhart. She doesn’t fly her own plane though; not quite Amelia.
Yeah well figuring out who owns what jet will mearginally harder. Like with metadata if you have a few data points it will be easy to figure out who owns what plane. And it is not like these people don't travel much so the data points will Stack up fast.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Celebrities and billionaires have long complained that it’s just way too easy for random people on the internet to monitor how much fuel exhaust they waste as they flit through the skies via their private jets.
An amendment in the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill that was passed last week will allow private aircraft owners to anonymize their registration information.
Jet tracking has been made possible up until this point because private plane owners were forced to register aircraft ownership information with the FAA civil registry.
The Warzone originally reported that the new FAA reauthorization bill, which was introduced last June, will effectively make it impossible (or, at the very least, very, very hard) to track the jet activity of the well-to-do.
That’s a bummer, since in an age of environmental concerns, it’s been helpful to know which members of America’s gilded class are spewing jet fuel into the atmosphere.
Elon Musk famously threatened to sue Jack Sweeney, an undergraduate at the University of Florida, after the student made a Twitter account that tracked the billionaire’s private jet activity, ElonJet, in 2020.
The original article contains 598 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Is it "impossible" or is it "exceedingly difficult?"
So congress does actually work?
Of course they do, just not for you
I hope this does not negatively impact the spotter community and ADS-B feeds.
does this actually anonymize it or just give the jet a tracking number?
You will still be able to track jets by their transponder. Planes are required to broadcast their location at all times.
What has changed is if there is a name attached to that transponder. This lets the owners of private planes have the FAA remove their name from the public record.
Edit airplanes not crops
Bipartisan support for this bill but remember to vote blue no matter who 🤡
Remember to vote for the option that doesn't lead to fascism*
Is Burn Down the Capitol on the ballot?
You don't vote FOR people, you vote AGAINST people. That's how America is set up.
So it's more like "vote against red or your gay friends are dead"
The other fella literally did an insurrection against the country and stole boxes of classified documents.
Tracking of any wealthy person by terrorists could become a huge potential problem.
You misspelled solution.
For who?
As opposed to terrorist tracking regular citizens, like when they showered an outdoor Las Vegas show with bullets?
Good?
Tracking of a normal person by their stalker, preditor, or attacker, is just a normal problem?
I would bet that every single person commenting here thinks of him- or herself as being deeply invested in privacy, ranting against things like ad tracking, etc. But as soon as someone (or some ones) you don't like, or have no affinity with, wants to have the same privacy afforded to every single person who drives a car, all bets are off.
Or are you suggesting that people (including the police!) should be allowed to have real time, constant information about where you drive to every day?
Just because it's a plane, and just because it's a rich person, doesn't make it any less of a privacy violation.
Sorry, but once you're so filthy rich you can own and operate a private jet, you lose the right two things:
So "privacy for me but not for thee"? Despite your feelings about the individuals involved (which are fair enough) you do see that's exactly as bad as the "laws for thee but not for me" that we rail against? Balancing these rules is one of those thorny problems we have to address if we ever want things to get better for the majority, but just saying "you're filthy rich so you don't get privacy" isn't the way. Neither is saying that they can hide completely.
I think people are more upset about the fact that basic laws protecting the privacy of millions are not even discussed but when a few billionaires cry that they can be tracked a law is enacted swift-ly (hehe) and public data that the government collects is no longer public.
Maybe they should focus on the greater good.
And while your privacy argument could be a good point, a plane has no privacy and just like other registers the public had a legitimate interest to know.
Aren't all commercial planes currently tracked and have their data open to the public? Why should anyone be exempt except for military?
I think most people on Lemmy would agree that private planes simply shouldn't exist, at least on a personal use level. I don't actually care at all where these rich bozos are going, but the ability to shame them for their method of travel outweighs any potential privacy concern. Airports are public places, airplanes (were) a matter of public record. If they truly want privacy, they should find an alternative means of conveyance. If they absolutely need to travel incognito, they could just charter a plane, for Pete's sake.
They do have the same privacy afforded to every single person who drives a car. Maybe they should stay in the car, then?
there is nothing from us keeping a database and tracking cars like this, It is just not required by law to do this with active updates. I mean with all the cameras in cars (and I am sure their are insurance companies that are looking into putting more AI cameras in cars to track not only your driving [progressive did a massive push on this already] but also those around you) you can just machine learn those plates and pool them in a public area where we can all pull and push info about these drivers. The airways we can still do this with, and we will, they will anon the info, but I am sure it will be an easy thing to overcome.
Nothing is anonymized for me, wanna know my house address, just look up the name on the internet, it will give you an idea and then just call the local county clerk, they will hand over any details about properties owned by me in that area. Its a matter of public record. My car has an ID on it that is required by law to be shown and not hidden until asked for by the government. Hell all your siblings and children, they are a matter of public record, so I can find out a LOT about you, just by knowing small info about you. (try it, look up an old partner on a search engine, they will give you known addresses for like 20 years.)
So please dont make this about, they wanna just be as private as you are. I dont have shell companies to hide all my properties onto. I dont get laws that state I can randomize my lic plate on my car. And also least we forget, the police can already have access to your cars real time data, the car companies are selling that info, so is your phone provider.
This is actually a really good point and I'm not sure why you're being down voted for it. I hadn't thought about it that way
Because it's a false equivalence. Why should they be above the law? Cars and planes are not the same thing in the slightest.
It's a giga-stupid post, barely worth refuting, but private jets are not cars.
You can track every flight I've ever been on, if you know the flight number, or plane ID. Now billionaires have their own special carve out.
