List of blocked aircraft on Flightradar24 (2013)

http://forum.flightradar24.com/threads/5217-Blocked-flights/page5

by ce4 • 11 years ago

36 50 11 years ago

forum.flightradar24.com

jMyles5• 11 years ago

I require some context to fully understand what's going on here.

I imagine "blocked" means that the flights in question are not displayed? Despite a user presumably uploading the metadata for the flight in question as part of their feed?

And thus, can't someone still see these flights with their directly-connected SDR device?

And thus, can't someone just start a new FR24 service that doesn't censor these data?

There is a discussion on FAA meetings about encrypting the ADS-B signal. By angering the authorities, we will only speed up this process.

Holy hell, for real? At this point, there are vanishingly few laws with which I agree even in principle, but "if you are going to fly a 375-ton hunk of metal through the air, you need to clearly broadcast flight details in plain text" is a pretty damn reasonable one.

What possible justification can there be for targeting services like FR24?

adaml_623• 11 years ago

Lol. Take a step back and remember that some planes are privately owned.

And now imagine a website called numberplateradar24.com that aggregates the feeds from 1000s of number plates scanners around the country. Which means you can track an individuals car.... does this sound like an invasion of privacy. Where's the dividing line? I think it's totally reasonable that private planes are allowed to encrypt their identities. As long as their position is still trackable it doesn't matter if the general public don't know everything.

jMyles5• 11 years ago

I think I misunderstood - so it's just the identity that is being blocked (and, pursuant to this discussion, may be encrypted)? Not the actual flight data?

...and no, I don't recognize a right to "privacy" that is so tentacular as to prohibit people from walking around with a camera, running some computer vision on it, and sharing the result with like-minded hobbyists doing the same thing.

nodata• 11 years ago

Scale is the difference.

tallanvor• 11 years ago

If a bunch of hobbyists wanted to build a way to track cars using publicly available methods why shouldn't they have the right to do that? Could it be creepy? Yeah, but as long as they're not exposing information that's publicly available or targeting specific individuals, then it's not what I would consider to be morally wrong.*

*On the other hand, the government using public funds to do this, combining the data with private information, and trying to keep the fact that they do this secret is wrong in my book.

fred2133• 11 years ago

Somebody should build that.

Why should governments and corps have all the fun? (Insert sousveillance/transparent society/David Brin rant here).

Are there any decent open source number plate recognition libraries yet?

Zigurd2• 11 years ago

As long as all vehicles are visible, sure. Why should the government be trusted to monitor what needs monitoring and not abuse the information?

kjs3• 11 years ago

Position is nice, but you do want to know if that plane a couple of miles out heading in your direction is a Piper Cub doing 80mph or a 737 doing 400mph.

dagw4• 11 years ago

"if you are going to fly a 375-ton hunk of metal through the air, you need to clearly broadcast flight details in plain text"

Why? I obviously get why you have to tell all the relevant authorities and so on and so forth, but why do you have to tell your nosy neighbor where you went on holiday last weekend.

Or did you mean that the rule should only apply to "hunks of metal" 375 tonnes and over (which is pretty damn huge, given that an A330 has a maximum takeoff weight of around 230 tonnes)?

stephen_g• 11 years ago

They use these kinds of transponders for TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system), so yes, it should be plain text if you like planes not crashing in to each other...

_djo_2• 11 years ago

You're correct, these are cases where organisations have asked FlightRadar24 to not display any data about their aircraft. In some cases you can still see an aircraft on the site with all identifying details saying "BLOCKED", but as I understand it you can request for your aircraft to not display at all.

This doesn't prevent you from seeing those aircraft via your own ADS-B receivers like directly-connected SDR devices, nor does it apply to any of the other flight tracking applications or services like PlanePlotter, FlightAware or PlaneFinder to which an aircraft owner would need to apply separately.

I can't say I disagree with FR24's position on this, seeing as though if they didn't offer it there would be a lot more pressure on the FAA and others to introduce an encrypted form of the ADS-B standard and because when ADS-B was introduced nobody foresaw consolidated services like FR24 which could provide not only an extraordinary level of crowdsourced data but also historical data.

This is a problem for air forces, which are are required to use ADS-B in certain areas but for obvious reasons don't want other countries to be able to see exactly when, where and how their aircraft fly. It's also an issue for private companies, where the ability to track the movement of corporate jets might give competitors extremely good intel on what a company's plans are based on where its execs are flying to and when.

This has only been compounded by the introduction of multilateration[0] which allows for aircraft using only Mode-S and without ADS-B onboard or activated to be tracked with the same level of positional data.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration

golergka2• 11 years ago

you need to clearly broadcast flight details in plain text

And here I was, thinking that HN crowd is so pro-privacy.

spacecowboy_lon• 11 years ago

Ah yes but gubiment is the evils oh but I can do anything I want.

gadders2• 11 years ago

My key takeaway - Holy shit! The Crossfit people have a plane!!

sorenjan• 11 years ago

I noticed that too. Turns out it's a small single engine plane.

http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NN... http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/008612.html

tacticus• 11 years ago

It's an awesome plane though. I've met a few people who have flown the cirrus planes.

protomyth• 11 years ago

I was actually surprised more NASCAR teams aren't on that list.

pjc50• 11 years ago

Open flight information has in the past been used to track both the world's biggest illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout, and also the CIA rendition-to-torture flights.

troisx• 11 years ago

This is why they want the information blocked. If you look at the list of blocked names, it's the government and the wealthy.

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

Not really. I.e. they don't have to do something repugnant to want that information blocked. The military may not want to provide free intelligence about their forces to other nations. And "the wealthy" are pretty much at constant war with each other; tracking when a CEO leaves and where they go in order to gain advantage on the stock market is not unheard of.

mootothemax• 11 years ago

If you look at the list of blocked names, it's the government and the wealthy.

I wouldn't say this is very insightful; how many large jets aren't operated by the government or the wealthy?

luso_brazilian• 11 years ago

The position of the site admin [1] is:

> Quote Originally Posted by Mike
> Will will not publish any information in the FAQ just to keep this as low below "radar" as possible. Every exclusion request is handled manually and we will no comment or publish this process in public.
> Quote Originally Posted by Mike
> FR24 should work with authorities, and not against them. I think we will close this thread as there is nothing more to discuss. This is not about democracy or censorship, but about keeping our hobby alive without authorities enforcing new laws in order to limit ADS-B usage.
> UPDATE. Maybe I was not clear when I posted this before. There is a discussion on FAA meetings about encrypting the ADS-B signal. By angering the authorities, we will only speed up this process.

This is very similar to the policy of many sites, to enforce "self censorship" by accepting polite take-down requests in order to avoid harsher consequences.

This is reasonable from the perspective of the site owner. Sometimes an acceptable loss is worthy to keep the most freedom intact.

On the other hand there is a chilling effect on speech, the fear it cause in others potential site and service creators who could give up instead of creating for fear of this kind of public drama.

[1] http://forum.flightradar24.com/threads/5217-Blocked-flights?...

mdekkers• 11 years ago

lol @ N1757 - Google Jet - http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/N1757

Privacy is only overrated for others...

United857• 11 years ago

FYI - anyone can request to the FAA that their registration be blocked from tracking on these websites, and compliance is mandatory for users of the FAA data feed. (FR24 does use FAA data in U.S. Airspace.)

So likely FR24 is just basing their block list (at least for US registered aircraft) from this.

http://www.nbaa.org/ops/security/asdi/

List of blocked aircraft on Flightradar24 (2013)

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