Frederic Bouvier wrote: > Quoting Vassilii Khachaturov : > > >>> It looks like a breach of individual's privacy to me. You can track >>> people's travel ( owner names are apparent ) and I doubt it would be >>> permitted this side of the Atlantic. >>> >> in this particular case the FAA tail number registry gives a charter >> company flying exec jets. No client names disclosed. >> > > Not true when people are flying their own plane. Here a counter example : > http://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N555CA > > And don't tell me a PA28 is an airliner ;-)
I think there is some gray area here. When you drive your car, you post your license plate # in plain and easy view both front and back. An airplane will also have it's registration number prominently displayed for all to see, and you need to transmit your identity and location in order for ATC to track you and maintain the safety of everyone in the airspace. When you enter the airspace (or the roadways) you give up some of your privacy and freedoms and agree to play by a common set of rules ... usually for the sake of safety, or the environment, or justified for some greater common good. I don't know what the correct answer is for this particular case, and being able to go back and lookup a complete history of a private pilot's travels (start, destination, times, dates, etc.) seems like it could be a little over the line. The ability of computers to collect and index and sort and preserve massive amounts of public information creates definite privacy issues. Where as before you were protected by being a needle in a haystack and an observer has to watch you fly over to get any public data on you, now anyone can specifically lookup all public data about your flights, and the sum of that public data might be infringing on your privacy rights. Interesting debate. :-) The gov't could track how well you hold your heading, altitude, and speed, and revoke the licenses of the bottom 10% every year ... there's all kinds of fun stuff you could do with this data. :-) Curt. -- Curtis Olson http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/ FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org Unique text: 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
