SpaceX asked the Federal Aviation Administration to block flight tracking data for Elon Musk’s private jet five years ago, public records obtained by Motherboard reveal.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Motherboard, the FAA disclosed that it received a block request for aircraft N628TS—which is the tail number of Musk’s private jet—on August 17, 2018. The request, which came from an email address called “admin@spacex.com,” was filed under the FAA’s Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) Program. The request asked for “FAA source blocking,” which is the most stringent type of flight-data blocking the FAA does.
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The LADD program “provides aircraft owners the ability to have their flight data filtered from distribution via the FAA System Wide Information Management (SWIM) data feed or filtered from public display by web sites that participate in the program,” the FAA says. The filtering option chosen by SpaceX, FAA Source blocking, means data “is limited to FAA use only. No FAA flight data will be available to external vendors. If you are considering limiting data at FAA Source, FAA flight data on your aircraft will not be available to internet web sites.”
The movements of Musk’s private jet, and therefore of Musk himself, were the subject of great controversy late last year after he bought Twitter and immediately suspended the account @ElonJet, which tracked and tweeted information about his jet’s flights using public data. Musk had previously said that his commitment to free speech was so great that it “extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.” Twitter then banned accounts “dedicated to sharing someone’s live location,” and went on to claim that the people tracking his jet were possibly responsible for an alleged stalking incident in Los Angeles. (Moments after stating that he cared about privacy, Musk asked his more than 100 million followers to identify the man he accused of stalking his child.)
The filing with the FAA showed that Musk and SpaceX proactively tried to block tracking data of his private jet, but that did not stop people from tracking it anyway. This is because, often, flight-tracking websites do not get their information directly from the FAA. Planes are equipped with transponders that broadcast something called ADS-B position. The LADD program prevents the FAA from distributing that information, but planes still need to keep their ADS-B transponders on to prevent crashes and other air traffic disasters.
The National Business Aviation Association, which has a series of pages about private jet privacy for business executives, explains that “LADD only addresses the use of data through FAA data systems. Non-FAA, third-party data sources are able to capture ICAO aircraft addresses [registration data] directly from ADS-B Out transmissions.”
The flight tracking site ADS-B Exchange, for example, explains that it is the “world’s largest source of unfiltered flight data,” and that “you’ll never see an aircraft censored or ‘blocked’ from our site. If one of our feeders is receiving it, the data will be there. This includes military, and other aircraft that attempt to be ‘unlisted.’”
In a frequently asked questions section of the site, ADS-B Exchange explains that there is no way to get an aircraft removed from its website: “The short answer: No. The long answer: No there is not,” it says. “If aircraft do not want to be seen, (such as military aircraft on a mission) they can always turn their transponders ‘off.’ 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. Air Traffic Control voice comms are not encrypted either, and contain similar (or more) information.”
Some flight tracking websites do comply with the FAA block list. For example, tracking site FlightAware did not display Musk’s flights to the public at the time that @ElonJet was banned. “This aircraft is on the FAA blocklist meaning it is not allowed to be displayed to the general public,” a spokesperson told Motherboard at the time.
To further combat sites like ADS-B Exchange (which, it should be noted, provide a great public service), the FAA allows private jet owners to essentially create a series of revolving, dummy tail numbers through what it calls the “Privacy ICAO Aircraft Address” program, which “enables interested aircraft owners to request an alternate, temporary ICAO aircraft address, which will not be assigned to the owner in the Civil Aviation Registry.”
The National Business Aviation Association suggests that private jet owners who wish to fly, uhh, under the radar, utilize this program. So does a lawyer who gives legal advice to private jet owners. The FAA has not yet responded to a FOIA request from Motherboard about whether Musk has enrolled in this program.
