Most airplanes, including Elon Musk's private jet, are required by law to broadcast their location throughout a flight in a well-documented, unencrypted digital format called ADS-B. This system is a critical part of aviation safety infrastructure. Several services, such as FlightAware, FlightRada...
"When you are on an airplane, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for your location." There is no reasonable expectation that the location of the aircraft shouldn't be made public, (since the FAA requires this information to be broadcast) but the names of passengers on board a privately owned aircraft is absolutely private. If Musk is serious about masking his location he should buy a decoy aircraft. (and hire me to fly it around the country...)
That you are broadcasting information means that you'll have a very hard time making a case for a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to it, but that doesn't make it a whit less personal.
While the tracking data is public, my understanding is that the data has been “anonymized” (Pseudonymized?), and that it is not possible to directly identify the specific flight plan information. To identify the plane, the tracking website uses elaborate cross referencing and other identifying means to highlight the data. Could this not be used for legal grounds?
@ScottC The kid doing the tracking has publicly admitted he used other kinds of data to identify Musk's plane due to it being "anonymous" (still broadcasting but not the same data as before).
From "Doxing" Wikipedia article: "Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this information from public databases and social media websites (like Facebook), as well as the publication of previously private information obtained through criminal or otherwise fraudulent means (such as hacking and social engineering). The aggregation and provision of previously published material is generally a legal practice, though it may be subject to laws concerning stalking and intimidation." So actually it is doxing, it's just (arguably) not illegal doxing.
Do you need any claim for legal action? You probably need some good claims to win a case, but I'm under the impression that in the US, you don't need much to take legal action. And Elon Musk has far deeper pockets to pay lawyers from than almost anyone else.
@Abigail one ground for dismissing a civil suit is "failure to state a claim," so if you include "file a suit and have it dismissed immediately" in taking legal action then you are right. But I think we can safely infer an additional clause such as "and have some reasonable chance of success" in this question.
@RobbieGoodwin I was responding to your comment, " Can you say why you think he might have grounds?" Your understanding of my comment was correct; I was answering your question by saying that I don't think he has grounds, but he seems to think so, because he has threatened legal action.
I'm sure he doesn't care if he has legal grounds. He can out-spend anyone so in the end he'll "win" because his opponent will be forced to give up due to lack of funding and he'll get a default judgement in his favor. Justice may be blind, but she sure loves the smell of money...
It is clearly doxxing and also probably illegal in several countries (including the whole of EU). Doxxing is bad, even if we don't like the victim (like in this case).
Of course the hypocrisy is that Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, is now censoring free speech the moment he is in power. Like most topics, it looks like Musk never really thought about free speech before he opened his blathering pie hole.
Discussion on question by Someone: Do…
Discussion on question by Someone: Do…