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Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

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Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#531

Post by mbreese »

mlindner wrote: post #492
TehCorwiz wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flight information that twitter account was using is publically available and required by law to BE public. https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zygg/twitter-bans-elon-mus... "Sweeney has been using sites such as ADS-B Exchange to track the movements of private jets blogging to celebrities, tech billionaires, and Russian oligarchs for years now. By law, the movement of these plans is publicly available information.…

This confuses the issue though. ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement and if an aircraft was going to takeoff that had an unknown ICAO number he'd have someone at the airport to figure out it was Elon's jet that had changed it's ICAO number. Your link will only be val…

Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number? Or that on the ground spotters were required to find the new ICAO?

I know nothing about this, but was a rabbit hole to explore.

The tail number for his plane is well known. If you put that N-number into an ICAO conversion script (https://www.avionictools.com/icao.php), you get the same Hex number that you see from adsbexchange.com. From what I can tell, the script is using an algorithm and not doing a DB lookup. So, just based on the tail number, you could figure out the canonical ICAO code for the plane.

The strange thing is that adsbexchange also lists the plane as being part of the LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) program (but I don’t know the source of this annotation). AFAICT, LADD limits public display of information, but only for data distributed from the FAA. Crowd sourced data isn’t limited (nor could it be).

In order to address this privacy shortcoming, the PIA program exists. This would change the ICAO for the plane to be disconnected from the tail number. But from the tracking website, it seems like the ICAO number for his plane hasn’t been changed/anonymized(?!?). So either, they haven’t actually gotten the new ICAO number installed (after 10-ish months), or the plane isn’t eligible to be part of the program. PIA requires the plane to only fly domestically and have the right kind of transmitter. If the plane flys internationally, it can’t have an anonymized ICAO number.

See: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy

Otherwise, I don’t see how anyone could track this particular plane if it did have a PIA ICAO identifier and you only knew the tail number.

Like I said, I don’t know very much about this, but it is a fascinating rabbit hole. Anyone want to correct where I went wrong?

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#532

Post by mlindner »

madars wrote: post #526
mlindner wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This confuses the issue though. ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement and if an aircraft was going to takeoff that had an unknown ICAO number he'd have someone at the airport to figure out it was Elon's jet that had changed it's ICAO number. Your link will only be val…

The ICAO number in the GP's comment is listed in the FAA registry for the N-number: https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberResul... (Mode S Code (Base 16 / Hex): A835AF). Are you saying that PIA program can make registry.faa.gov report data that's either obfuscated or out of sync? Why is it not reporting such data now? (Edit: Or maybe GP's comment is using a non-privacy ICAO number and the actual numb…

The PIA program, from my understanding, removes the ICAO number from that page. It's possibly in a state that he's not registered with PIA at the moment.

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#533

Post by antonvs »

WalterBright wrote: post #501
pgodzin wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk disagreed with you until today, he explicitly said that he would be leaving this exact account up because he believed in free speech even when it was about his location.

It is possible for people to learn and change their minds. I'm pretty sure that doxxing is not allowed on HN, Reddit, and other platforms, including the D language forums. I'm good with that.

> It is possible for people to learn and change their minds.

In this case, it seems to be more about serving his self-interest. What do you think he might have learned beyond that?

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#534

Post by sangnoir »

minimaxir wrote: post #428
plandis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal action being taken against the person who pulled public flight information and published already public information? The sad part is I’m sure Elon can bury this guy in fees even if the lawsuit is ultimately ruled as entirely without merit.

Very many lawyers would love to work pro bono on this type of case.

...and many people would be ready to donate. I wonder if it's possible to crowdfund lawsuits against billionaires, a reverse Thiel (vs Gawker), in a way.

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#535

Post by mlindner »

mbreese wrote: post #531
mlindner wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This confuses the issue though. ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement and if an aircraft was going to takeoff that had an unknown ICAO number he'd have someone at the airport to figure out it was Elon's jet that had changed it's ICAO number. Your link will only be val…

Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number? Or that on the ground spotters were required to find the new ICAO? I know nothing about this, but was a rabbit hole to explore. The tail number for his plane is well known. If you put that N-number into an ICAO conversion script ( https://www.avionictools.com/icao.php ), you get the same Hex number that you see from adsbexchange.com. From what I can tell, the sc…

> Are you sure that plane actually has a PIA ICAO number?

I'm not sure that it does at this very moment, but public statements by Sweeny himself said that it did indeed have a PIA ICAO number and that Sweeny de-anonymized it. It's possible Elon stopped using it because of that de-anonymizing.

> The strange thing is that adsbexchange also lists the plane as being part of the LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) program (but I don’t know the source of this annotation). AFAICT, LADD limits public display of information, but only for data distributed from the FAA. Crowd sourced data isn’t limited (nor could it be).

Yes LADD is a different system and you're not required to follow it as a data provider. FlightRadar24 for example follows it and does not list any LADD aircraft as they use FAA's data feed which requires as it's terms of use that you follow the LADD program.

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#536

Post by cokeandpepsi »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #321
pgodzin wrote: post #310

Many people have been trying to get the point across that legal, unlimited free speech can put people in harm's way. Elon is happy to say that he's willing to trade harm to those people for his free speech principles, but as soon as his family is the one facing the repercussions, he's happy to change policy and sue.

Blocking speech that may be harmful to a handful of millionaires and billionares = Common Sense. Not promoting speech that may be harmful to tens of thousands of already marginalized people = Woke Mind Virus

No post body was provided.

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#537

Post by yborg »

karmicthreat wrote: post #290
hakanderyal wrote: post #96

Elon posted some info[0] that gives it some context: "Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood. Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family." Make that what you will. [0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603190155107794944

Could be true, could be a convenient lie. It's not like Elon is above the trust thermocline anymore.

Was there a police report? This sounds like something you would want to get law enforcement involved with.

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#538

Post by masklinn »

aeternum wrote: post #481
donatj wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it comes down to tangible harm vs intangible theoretical harm. Anyone can claim intangible harm from anything. Doxing someone is a real tangible harm with very likely dangerous outcomes. Having an opinion is not.

Knowing the location of your plane is theoretical harm. If someone actually attacks you based upon that location, now it is tangible harm. It's too easy to conflate the two.

Knowing the location of your plane is legal requirement as well.

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#539

Post by hackerlight »

donatj wrote: post #384
asdajksah2123 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking speech that may be harmful to a handful of millionaires and billionares = Common Sense. Not promoting speech that may be harmful to tens of thousands of already marginalized people = Woke Mind Virus

I think it comes down to tangible harm vs intangible theoretical harm. Anyone can claim intangible harm from anything. Doxing someone is a real tangible harm with very likely dangerous outcomes. Having an opinion is not.

This is an imaginary dichotomy, though. The proponents of content moderation on social media argue that hate speech causes tangible harm. For example, there are many mass shooters that say that they got radicalized purely online, such as Dylan Roof. This is not intangible harm, it is tangible.

Re: Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account

#540

Post by Meekro »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #321
pgodzin wrote: post #310

Many people have been trying to get the point across that legal, unlimited free speech can put people in harm's way. Elon is happy to say that he's willing to trade harm to those people for his free speech principles, but as soon as his family is the one facing the repercussions, he's happy to change policy and sue.

Blocking speech that may be harmful to a handful of millionaires and billionares = Common Sense. Not promoting speech that may be harmful to tens of thousands of already marginalized people = Woke Mind Virus

"Don't publish someone's location in realtime (24 hour delay is required)" seems like a simple rule that can be enforced even-handedly against both sides. On the other hand, "don't do speech that causes harm" is so vague that it guarantees endless battles.

If the New York Times writes an article criticizing someone, and then a crazy person shoots that someone, is the NYT now required to stop writing articles criticizing people? If not, then why should LibsOfTikTok be required to stop criticizing liberals or children's hospitals that do gender-affirming surgery?

U.S. case law sets the bar for incitement really high precisely so you don't have prosecutors trying to silence newspapers in the way I described above. Some people have argued that Twitter should adopt a lower bar in order to prevent harm, but I've never heard anyone describe a coherent principle that wouldn't also allow the NYT to be banned as I described above.

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