| skylor |
11-06-2019 02:12 PM |
Private ICAO Address
Quote:
Originally Posted by airguy
(Post 1384571)
Right. It's going to come down to "convincing" the various 3rd party groups to play ball with the anonymous guidelines. Anybody with enough receivers under their own control effectively sidesteps the effort.
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I think the idea here is that the 1090ES transponders will be programmed with a "private" ICAO code that can't be translated into or traced back to an N Number. Obviously, if someone can get a visual or radio ID on an aircraft (and N number) while tracking it's ICAO code, this system can be defeated unless the codes change periodically. An aircraft owner can chose to have their identity removed from the public aircraft registration database if you really want privacy.
The 3rd party flight tracking vendors have already cooperated with the FAA for a number of years regarding requests to block N-Numbers from flight tracking providers. In the pre-ADSB days, N-numbers were not typically broadcast to flight tracking websites if you were not "in the system" with ATC, i.e. squawking 1200 and not on a flight plan or on flight following. However, if you were flying with a mode S transponder (even non ES) your N number would be visible on some tracking websites even while squawking 1200.
I put the pre-ADSB ID blocking system to test starting back in 2014. The reason for this was that an eccentric anti-aircraft resident near my local airport started sending threatening letters to aircraft owners telling us that we were flying over his neighborhood and would we please fly elsewhere or he would “elevate” the complaint. He indicated the street intersection location of the neighborhood but signed the letters under the name of a non-existent home-owners association and used a fake return address. Since this person's "neighborhood" was 2 miles upwind of the departure end of our field's runway, I figured that I was typically over 2000' AGL anytime I did a straight out departure, which is pretty rare because normal noise abatement practice is to make a right 45 departure from this runway which puts me well north of his area. Nevertheless, there was absolutely no way that he could be getting a visual ID on my 3 inch N-numbers so I figured that he must somehow be obtaining the registration info from a flight tracking website. As it turns out, our airport's Noise Abatement Office web page has a link to a real tracking site called "WebTrak" to display active aircraft and the noise monitor measurements. However, on the flights that I supposedly received the letters for, I was flying VFR and squawking 1200. Then I discovered that the other VFR folks that were receiving these letters all had mode S transponders and the real time flight tracking sites could display N numbers for “not in the system” aircraft squawking 1200 if they had MODE S transponders. After this discovery, I made a request through the FAA (they have a website for it) to have my N number blocked from flight tracking services. It turns out, the FAA doesn’t actually block the broadcast of N-Numbers to flight tracking web sites (actually, they can with a higher level request), but they have an agreement with these sites that in order to have access to the FAA tracking data, they must honor N number blocking requests. Nevertheless, since I made the request, I’ve no longer been able to find my N number on the tracking sites and I also stopped receiving the threatening letters. I realize that someone could also just listen to a radio to determine the ID of aircraft which is why some with a bigger privacy needs than me use anonymous call sign services like fltplan.com “dot com” call signs, but I think this is only available for turbine aircraft.
Skylor
RV-8
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