If you read previous posts in the "Know your data" series, you surely know that corporations have amassed data on every aspect of your life, through various means including coercion, trickery, diversion, bargaining, and clandestine operations. Many people I talk to don't like to be tracked everywhere, don't grasp how they may be harmed, and even if they knew, they feel powerless to fight it.
The right not to be tracked is poised to become a civil rights issue. The recent news about Tesla CEO Elon Musk's sparring with a teenager who made the twitter account Elon Musk's Jet is illuminating.
Here is a BusinessInsider's most recent take on the story (link).
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The kid named Jack Sweeney made a twitter account which messages about where Elon Musk's private jet is.
Here's the example of a basic entry:
Essentially, the twitter account is a flight log exposed to the entire world. It's a powerful demonstration of what today's technologies are capable of: Sweeney didn't need data from Elon or Tesla; he could do all this from his room, and leverage platforms like Twitter to distribute the information broadly and quickly to large groups of people.
The existence of the twitter account is a poignant display of the culture toward data that has been pushed ferociously by tech leaders: no one asked Elon if he wanted his flight log to be published, nor would most industry leaders think of asking.
Elon nevertheless was not amused. He complained about the harm done by such tracking: "Can you take this down? It is a security risk."
Then, Elon attempted to buy his privacy: "How about $5k for this account and generally helping make it harder for crazy people to track me?"
This last tweet really explains the mindset of a tech CEO, whose company manufacture cars that collect huge amounts of tracking data on their owners. It's a security risk when his privacy is violated but what about the privacy of everyone who uses tech products? Stalkers have so many websites to choose from if they want to know where to find someone.
Aside from the belief that privacy comes with a price tag, he's splitting the world of trackers into two: the "crazy" ones who should not be allowed to track him, and the not crazy people who should (e.g. Tesla engineers). Apparently, Sweeney belongs to the crazies.
Or, is Elon milking this for publicity? Because he knows full well that after Jack demonstrates that tools and data feeds are available to make an Elon Musk Jet account, anyone who gets their hands on the same tools can emulate the work. He also knows that anyone who wants to can make similar accounts tracking any other private jet (indeed, any jet).
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This situation reminds me of the PleaseRobMe website created more than 10 years ago to highlight the potential harms of social media. That was when Facebook (and other companies like Twitter, Foursquare, etc.) encouraged users to message the world whenever they check in to restaurants, listen to music, watch a movie, etc. At the time, people tried to kill the messenger - saying that the PleaseRobMe website itself was abetting burglars. I never understood that line of logic. Do they mean, it's better if burglars using same open-source technologies on publicly available data build their own private versions of PleaseRobMe?
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So how is it possible to recontruct Elon Musk's flight log without access to private data?
Sweeney didn't even have to collect his own data. He took data from a public data feed, called ADSBexchange, which tracks all planes. According to the FAQ, anyone can start tracking planes: "The position data shown by ADSBexchange is available to anyone who can spend $50 on Amazon and put the parts together. It’s not secret." The site is an exchange that aggregates amateur feeds from all over the world, each feed tracking a subset of planes. This demonstrates the power of merging data from lots of overlapping data sources.
The site volunteers said 'As a group of aviation enthusiasts, our primary goal is to answer the question of “what’s up there” rather than “is grandma’s flight on-time'. (They hedged and said "primary goal" instead of "only goal". I don't know if anyone is paying anyone to go further as you can imagine, there are lots of companies, hedge funds, or governments who would be interested in buying data on "grandma's flights".)
[P.S. Wait, they do have a commercial API so they are probably selling the data plus more detailed analysis to people with money. "Any project for a commercial entity regardless of if the end results are being sold or used internally requires a commercial API license." Seems like Sweeney can't take that money from Elon, or else he'd have to pay up!]
What Sweeney did with the data from ADSBexchange is exactly what the staff avoided. Nevertheless, when they put the data up for free, and online, they knew that someone could take that extra step.
Commendably, the site owners also explain that theirs is the only uncensored data feed, so no one however rich can buy their privacy. Of course, since they don't publish details on the planes, or correlate the data to ownership, they have not directly trampled on anyone's privacy. The ethical conversation is complex, as you can see.
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Mark Zuckerberg famously owns all the houses around the house he lives in, presumably for privacy ("security") reasons. He also made the news last week - the stock plunge due to weak earnings, which was blamed on Apple doing some window dressing on privacy controls on the iPhone. I read the Facebook claim that Apple's restrictions would lead to a $10 billion loss of value. That sounds like the data collected from the majority of Americans have been turned into gold!
For the rest of us, we can buy our privacy if we can afford it. Or, is it that the richer you are, the more severe is the security threat, and so privacy is a right exclusively for the super rich?
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Another bit from the FAQ that's a tell is 'If aircraft do not want to be seen, (such as military aircraft on a mission) they can always turn their transponders “off”.' This was their justification of why it's okay to put up the data feed. Similar to: if you don't want your data sold to the highest bidder, just don't use our service. The onus is placed on the potential victim to take protective action. (As the pandemic showed, it may not be possible to avoid certain services when offices are closed.)
I don't know anything about transponders. Presumably, they serve a function, and not just decoration. Is it really something that can be turned off for the whole flight?
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