ICE uses celebrity loophole to hide deportation flights

https://jacobin.com/2025/08/ice-uses-celebrities-loophole-to-hide-deportation-flights/

by JKCalhoun • 11 months ago

141 34 11 months ago

JKCalhoun• 11 months ago

Why am I still surprised that the wealthy have special laws just for their privacy?

It seems though that simple elimination would reveal the "flights we're not supposed to know about". Or perhaps we'll get actual human "plane spotters" around the airports to log these radio-silent flights.

crote• 11 months ago

The flights aren't radio silent, as that would result in significant safety risks. They have just been put on an ignorelist which is voluntarily honored by most commercial flight tracking websites, like FlightRadar24[0].

However, nothing is stopping you from creating your own flight detection network which doesn't follow the ignorelist. A well-known one is the volunteer-run ADS-B Exchange[1].

[0] https://www.flightradar24.com

[1] https://www.adsbexchange.com/

dawnerd• 11 months ago

Super easy to setup your own for under 50 bucks. Plus if you feed to the tracking sites many give you pro/business accounts in exchange.

trogdor• 11 months ago

It doesn’t look like an ignore list to me. See “FAA Source” blocking here: https://www.faa.gov/pilots/ladd

petertodd6• 11 months ago

Why am I still surprised that the wealthy have special laws just for their privacy?

The status quo is you or I can travel without significant non-government privacy concerns, as we blend into the crowd of millions of normal air travelers. Celebrities can't do that, as they get noticed by the public. Keeping the movements of their planes private just helps celebrities get to enjoy a similar level of privacy as the rest of us. I see nothing wrong with that.

Furthermore, it's good that celebrities value their privacy. Everyone should. We can all members of society to value privacy and for those values to filter down into laws that also protect it.

vincnetas• 11 months ago

When you're a celebrity, you can't have a cake and eat it too.

wheelerwj• 11 months ago

What are you talking about? Since when can the general public travel in privacy?

tialaramex• 11 months ago

It has always been the case that the US was operated primarily for the benefit of those with capital, what is perhaps more novel is that where once economic growth was a 90-10 split between those who already had so much and those labouring, increasingly it's 100-0 or even worse, and so then there's no reason those doing the labour to achieve that growth ought to engage, better surely to eliminate the oppressors and reform the system. You would have to be really stupid to cause that but then, look at the people who did it, checks out.

mitchellh4• 11 months ago

All politics aside, I want to note that this is not a “little known” thing and I’ve never seen it talked about as a “loophole.”

I’m a pilot, I know hundreds more pilots. Most individuals who own a plane (even a Cessna that costs less than a car) know about and often use this program.

It’s very much well known in the aviation community. And outside of that I’d say it would be more surprising to people that the general public can track any aircraft public or private! (Imagine everyone’s car being able to be real time tracked by license plate by anyone anytime)

Now, bringing some politics in, it does feel like aircraft movement for the purpose of public government use should be documented and available.

relaxing• 11 months ago

You’re a pilot, you can probably think of some differences in the way aircraft operate versus roadcraft, that makes tracking them a much more reasonable proposition.

PaulDavisThe1st• 11 months ago

Imagine everyone’s car being able to be real time tracked by license plate by anyone anytime)

Except ... every plane is being tracked in real time by the FAA (or other aeronautical organizations) for the good of both those on the plane and those around it.

The question is not whether such tracking happens or not, but merely whether the data is publically available. The analogy with cars would require that someone is actually tracking car positions, which as far as we know is not happening at any significant scale.

miohtama• 11 months ago

There was this funny Twitter account that was posting when dictators visited Geneve airport, but looks like it is taken down

https://x.com/gva_watcher

mitchellh4• 11 months ago

Exactly right. That’s what I’m saying. The tracking itself for air traffic control purposes has an obvious good purpose. The side effect that any random public individual can access this from their couch does not.

So, perhaps to reword my “imagine:” imagine the government required a tracker on every car, AND that data would be available to anyone in the entire world who wants it at anytime with no restrictions whatsoever.

kevin_thibedeau• 11 months ago

Cars are being tracked at significant scale. Police and private entities commonly use ALPR systems and that data gets fed back to the manufacturer for resale on the capitalist surveillance market. Combine that with an IMSI catcher and you can derive identities without access to the license plate database. This works in conjunction with vehicles that have cellular modems sending GPS position to the manufacturer, for resale, and phones that send GPS position to the network operator, for resale. The non-flying public is extensively tracked.

amake• 11 months ago

It’s very much well known in the aviation community

Do you think the article is speaking primarily to the "aviation community"?

svachalek• 11 months ago

Isn't the motto "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide?"

bell-cot• 11 months ago

Might you have meant to type "Rules are for thee, but not for me"?

tastyface• 11 months ago

Oh, they definitely know they’ve done something wrong.

FridayoLeary• 11 months ago

This is one of the worst written articles I've read in a while. It feels like a confused jumble of the authors personal grievances, clambering over each other trying to be heard. It's repetitive and mixes facts and opinion. I read through half the article before it got to discussing the point and even then I still have no clue what the author is talking about. Is it ICE? Is it evil celebrities? Is it the sinister Jet Lobby? Or is it something else entirely?

notthemessiah• 11 months ago

Do you have any specific criticism? Or are you just bloviating?

whamlastxmas• 11 months ago

Agreed, it’s bad form to comment about this but good god is this writing bad. It’s like the first 5 paragraphs were repeating the same thing and only changing the wording

netfortius• 11 months ago

This part caught my attention: "People being flown out of the country by ICE are frequently shackled for the duration of the journey...". It made me think on how America was built: people forcibly put in shackles and brought in, from another continent, to work for free (for some), then other people shackled, when no longer of use (to some), when forcibly moved out.

Hizonner• 11 months ago

So there's a published list of aircraft that are trying to hide, but are still broadcasting their identity over the radio everywhere they go, while there's a whole hobby community receiving and sharing those broadcasts.

Interesting approach.

ICE uses celebrity loophole to hide deportation flights

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