The Federal Aviation Authority delivers a new version of the data set every day, there are well over 300,000 records in the released data. Each record has the registrant listed, well most of them do and whether that registrant is an Individual, an LLC, a Corporation or a Partnership etc. The FAA does give a privacy option for individuals to request that their data isn’t released, a good thing to be fair.
If you are an enthusiast, in general you are only interested in the aircraft and the data around it – who is inside it or who owns it, well, not so much. Obviously if you are convinced that some celebrity would fall in love with you at first sight, you might find stalking their private aircraft a good way of planning that all important first meet. But from what I’ve seen over the years, that plan generally doesn’t work out very well – for either party.
With the advent of public facing aircraft tracking sites, along with the almost cult following encouraged by some individuals. I can see how this plays out, but at the source of it all is data and digital media – the very stuff an enthusiast needs for spotting. It is also what facilitates the unwelcome intrusion into celebrities privacy, not that I feel too much sympathy – remember in many cases there was a hard push to accrue these followers.
To protect or obfuscate the identity of people, the FAA does some strange things with the ADSB Data.
- There is LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed), the closest analogy that I can think of for this is to just ignore the number plate or cover it up. Anyone who takes data from the FAA feed agrees to filter some data out, this data is the ID of the aircraft – not the person on it or the owner!
- There is PIA (Privacy ICAO Address), for this the best analogy is fitting the car with false plates. For this one, the owner of the aircraft can request a false ID for the aircraft – try that with your car and you could earn some well deserved attention from law enforcement!
There is an enthusiast saying, that the best tool is the Mk I eyeball. It is more pertinent now than it ever was, both the above apply to the electronic ID of the aircraft – the painted number on the side still has to be there. So for the enthusiast, the old data recorded with a pen and paper in some cases is better than the new data.