Elon Musk, who in November bragged that his free-speech absolutism was so pure that wouldn’t ban an account devoted to tweeting his plane’s in-flight location, reversed course with a vengeance earlier this week. He banned not only the @ElonJet account but all the accounts belonging to its creator, Florida college student Jack Sweeney. Then Thursday night he went still further, suspending more than a half-dozen prominent journalists who had been covering the controversy.
In his defense, Musk argued that tweeting information about his flights was equivalent to “doxxing,” a practice in which online harassers publish a victim’s address, phone number, or other personal information in order to encourage other people to harass them.
“Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” Musk tweeted Thursday night. (He said that a stalker had used the information to track his young child in a car, though he doesn’t have appeared to have filed a police report, and he hadn’t used his jet on the day in question.)
The controversy has put the spotlight on a previously little-discussed area of aircraft operations and raised the question: Why is aircraft location information made available freely and instantaneously?
It turns out there is actually a very good reason. “It’s a safety concern,” says Bob Joyce, director of aviation safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Certain parts of the country are saturated with traffic,” he says; flight tracking helps keeps planes from flying into one another.
The need to keep aircraft separated has been the impetus behind aircraft surveillance for decades. In 1986, a single-engine Piper Archer and an Aeromexico DC-9 passenger jet collided midair over Los Angeles, killing 82 people. In the aftermath, the FAA began mandating that aircraft operating in busy airspace carry transponders, electronic devices that tell air traffic controllers where aircraft are. In 2020, the agency began requiring a more advanced system called ADS-B, which continually transmits information about the plane’s identity, location, and speed to other planes and to a network of ground-based receivers.
This information is instantly available not only to air traffic controllers but also to other pilots, who can see in real time all the other traffic around them. Because the information is unencrypted and freely available, anyone at all can pick it up and do whatever they want with it, and there are a number of websites that allow anyone to view air traffic around the world.
Knowing where everyone is all the time is invaluable for accident investigation. “It helps us narrow down who, when and where. It’s a big part of our investigative process,” says Joyce. When MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea in 2014, for instance, ADS-B data from the first 40 minutes of the flight was one of the most important early clues about what had happened to the plane.
While safety is the primary point of the aircraft surveillance system, the FAA recognizes that some users might have privacy concerns as well, and that it isn’t necessary to know every detail about a plane’s ownership and flight history to keep it from having a midair collision. For that reason the FAA launched a service called the Privacy ICAO Aircraft Address program that lets aircraft owners apply for a anonymized identification code.
It’s a laborious process, and codes cannot be changed more than once every 60 days. This means they can be of limited utility, since astute observers might be able to use other clues to figure out an aircraft owner’s identify. Musk takes part in the PIA program, so some of his supporters have argued that Sweeney isn’t using publicly available information. But his plane’s well-known past behavior was a dead giveaway. “Elon Musk, for example, has a Gulfstream and there’s only so many people that fly that particular plane out of Brownsville,” Sweeney told the website Insider.
The ease with which Musk can be spotted raises the question of how much responsibility he should bear for the situation. While it’s understandable that a wealthy man might want to shield himself from the public eye, an important part of being discreet is how one comports oneself. There’s only so much privacy one can expect when engaging in act as fundamentally public as flying through the national airspace in a $66.5 million jet.
In the aftermath of @ElonJet’s ejection from Twitter, other social media outlets picked up the slack. There’s now a subreddit devoted entirely to the Musk jet flight movements and coverage of the Twitter controversy. Anyone trying to link to the site from Twitter, however, will receive a warning that it has “been identified by Twitter … as being potentially harmful.” (Similar warnings are being given to any link to Mastodon, where Sweeney has set up an alternate account.)
If Musk really wants to avoid detection in the future, he might want to take a page from the man who recently replaced him as the world’s richest. Bernard Arnault, the CEO of the luxury goods company LVMH, told a French radio station that to avoid being tracked he sold his private jet and now rents instead.
This story originally appeared in Slate on December 16, 2022.
@JeffWise:
I have recently listened to your reflections in the “1:43 mysteries” podcast interview on whether it is a “hole” or a “pile”. You said you wanted to go there with a dirt bike and a metal detector to look what’s there, but abandoned this plan, because you became convinced it is a “pile”. What is the big difference to you?
A hole can swallow a B777, yes, but a pile can cover up a B777.
So hole or pile, I don’t really see a big difference here concerning the meaningfulness of your planned adventure. If you really dare to look for what’s in that hole, you might as well investigate the pile …
Actually, can you post your sat image here ?
Peter, To be sure, you could bury a 777 in a pile of dirt; what ultimately convinced me that the pattern of dirt didn’t change much before and after the plane’s disappearance, suggesting it hadn’t been disturbed.
Let me see about getting a link to the images…
Peter, have you seen this?
http://jeffwise.net/2015/02/23/what-went-on-at-yubileyniy/
Thanks Jeff. Yes, I have read your article back then. But a lot of time has passed since, so I will revisit it. Is the satellite imagery you talked about in the podcast included in the article ?
Hi Jeff.
Sorry for the off topic question but was there ever any information released about the check in sequence of MH370 ?
Like which passangers chose their seats and which had them randomly assigned?who was the first to check in etc?
Looking forward to the Netflix documentary.
I forget but probably… there’s a lot there.
Brian,
That’s an interesting question, I don’t recall ever seeing that information. If you come across it let me know!
Jeff
Hi Jeff thanks for replying.
The only thing I could find was the passenger list that the bejing police released at the time.
https://twitter.com/varittweet/status/442150106767187968/photo/1
If the passengers are in order of check in then the Ukranians were 13th and 14th of 227,
not exactly a smoking gun but interesting anyway
Sorry for posting that, just noticed its it’s in alphabetical order. I’m an idiot
@JeffWise: this might interest you:
https://www.mh370search.com/2022/12/11/new-clues/comment-page-2/#comment-1818
@JeffWise and @Brian:
here is the passenger manifest:
https://www.mot.gov.my/en/Laporan%20MH%20370/MH370%20-%20Passenger%20Manifest.pdf
The (only) 2 Ukrainians were seated below the SDU.
The (only) 1 Russian was seated in the 3rd row, so close to the cockpit and the E/E-bay.
The mystery surrounding the Malaysian Airlines MH-370 is growing as each day passes with more mysterious silence shadowing the disappearance of the airline. More and more theories are beginning to surface about what may have happened. One new story has emerged involving the technology company Freescale Semiconductor. Freescale makes something called an ARM microcontroller ‘KL-03′ which is a new improvised version of an older microcontroller KL-02. The story is about how Jacob Rothschild gained full Patent Rights of an incredible KL-03 micro-chip due to the death of several passengers on the ill-fated flight.
A US technology company which had 20 senior staff on board Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had just launched a new electronic warfare gadget for military radar systems in the days before the Boeing 777 went missing.
Freescale’s shareholders include the Carlyle Group of private equity investors whose past advisers have included ex-US president George Bush Sr and former British Prime Minister John Major.
Carlyle’s previous heavyweight clients include the Saudi Binladin Group, the construction firm owned by the family of Osama bin Laden.
The fact that Freescale had so many highly qualified staff on board the Boeing 777 had already prompted wild conspiracy theories about what might have happened.
The company says they were flying to China to improve its consumer products operations, but Freescale’s fresh links to electronic warfare technology is likely to trigger more speculation and deepen the mystery.
This may sound far fetched, but I know what I know. I had a dream… I never really followed the MH370 news. I knew of the headlines and didnt pay attention beyond. So it had no influence on my dream. In the beginning of my dream, I saw the plane sitting on dry ground in a very remote area with white rock surrounding. The plane was sandwiched in these white rocks or tall cliffs, but fully intact. The stone reminded me of Greeces in color, really white. And there was clear blue water nearby that looked like Florida keys water. I somehow knew immediately in the dream it was MH370. There were men on the ground in dark militant type matching uniforms, shorter in stature, very cold and calculated, and trained. They seemed of darker Asian decent. On the ground were many passengers (the number 43 kept coming up) sitting around in that crevice of rock waiting their fate. Almost calm like they’d been waiting a long time and weren’t in immediate danger under the circumstances. In my dream I knew that the group holding the passengers hostage weren’t at all concerned that the plane would be detected. So I sense it was undetectable by air in a very remote place, but I saw no trees in that crack in the rock walls. Not much action in the dream, just a knowing based on the energy of the people in it as I watched everyone waiting around. Just before waking I suddenly became concerned for the passengers because I sensed the militant men had decided the passengers were of no value to them. The coldness of them made me suddenly scared for the passengers because they had no emotion about disposing of them. However, it hadn’t been decided before I woke up that thats what they’d do. It was just an energy or thought of the men in that moment. I woke up really distraught about their safety, because of how cold the militant group was in my dream. This dream was long after the disappearance, but I woke up knowing in my gut 1000% that they were still alive at that time! My suspicion is that at least one occupant on the flight, (maybe pilot?), was in on the plane diversion with the militant group on ground and it was planned as a negotiation move of some sort with leaders in the public eye somewhere. And whoever they were attempting to negotiate with refused to follow demands (and has also kept it hush for the sake of citizens holding them accountable for the passengers fate). And that’s where my dream came in, where they’d decided the passengers were of no use to them. Their hostage negotiation plan had failed. I think authorities know more than they let on and are protecting themselves. And it was poorly followed up on for that reason. Not my first dream of major events that later happened like this. Haven’t spoken about it till now, because who would take me serious and follow up on leads? But after seeing Netflix tonight, I’m hoping maybe something about this might trigger clues or leads for you and you’ll keep searching. Everytime I thought about the dream after, I kept feeling like, if whoever is still looking, would look for a very remote island with lilly white mountains and caves, somewhere in the span of location possibilities, they’ll find their clues towards answers. At minimum, evidence that the flight was once there.
The plane went missing. Planes don’t go missing.
All the information and data overwhelmingly used in our world planes don’t go missing,
I like your theory of the access to the planes operations in the “first class” by capable operators.
It’s very feasible planes don’t disappear so something “odd” happened. And that’s why I like your theory. People maybe critics like “no way” well planes don’t just disappear.
So yes, way. Hijacking. Makes plane disappear.
Hey Jeff, I watched your three-part documentary last night (3-15-23). I remember the incident from when it occurred, but like most folks, after the media dropped the case, I forgot all about it. But I have some questions.
1. From what I learned about the plane’s SDU, does it send a self-identifying code? In other words, do we know that the SDU signal that was tracked was actually from MH370 and not from another plane that crossed MH370’s path?
2. The SDU, not working like a GPS transponder, it does not provide speed data of the plane as the movie pointed out. But I would assume the ground unit that sends out the reply requests to the SDU sends its signal out in a predetermined time frame. So, was that time frame used to calculate the speed of the plane? I don’t remember that question being answered in the movie.
3. I also do not remember the movie resolving the questions about the U.S. AWACS plane(s). Did the U.S. Air Force admit that they were in that area where MH370 disappeared? Was there any follow-up to that? Why were they there?
4. What about the debris that the volunteer lady saw on her computer screen that was in the ocean and seemed to match the description of a Boeing 777? Where’s the follow-up to that?
Gary,
1. Yes, there’s an identification code.
2. That time frame was not used to calculate the speed of the plane. It’s complicated. I might need to write a blog post about it…
3. The AWACS stuff is pure fantasy.
4. The human brain is wired to see signal in noise.