If your neighbors are traveling by personal aircraft then it is very much the same thing. There are a lot of privately owned GA aircraft and many of us don't particularly like everyone snooping on us.

Many in this community get awfully nervous about things like police surveillance of cars, license plate tracking, etc. The Police say they need it just for special cases like crime, but we all know the dangers of dragnet surveillance. This is also dragnet surveillance; it's the same violation of privacy if the mode of transportation is different. Many on this forum think it's fun though because the mechanism is a bit nerdy and they aren't the ones being surveilled.

Your milage may vary but my experience of the GA community is that their concern is more based on being being 'busted' for any minor infraction of airspace rather than their neighbours knowing where they are flying too.

It's a bit like having a box in your car which automatically alerts the authorities every time you exceed the speed limit.

Wow, when can we have those boxes for cars please?

In theory, there doesn't have to be a power differential between the average car owner and the average aircraft owner. In practice, there is.

This is sousveillance, not surveillance.

I'd wager that the HN demographic skews just as wealthy as the hobbyist GA community. Indeed, your friend or coworker with a brand new Model X is probably wealthier than the person taking the occasional weekend flight in their used Piper Cherokee.

I think this situation is closer to corporations and other companies having to list an address in a public catalog. Anyone can start a business, even my neighbors. It's much cheaper than buying an airplane. But we've decided it's in the public interest to have that information available.

Small aircraft can be surprisingly affordable; many small used GA aircraft cost about the same as a nice car does new and they generally don't depreciate very quickly -- there are lots of perfectly safe small aircraft from the 1960s and 70s still flying.

You'd be surprised how many middle and upper middle class americans fly.

Government tracking (Prism etc) are generally not about tracking actions taken by dentists, doctors, skydivers, or whatever. The interest is in things like catching terrorists and criminals.

As you can see the same argument can be applied to any form of mass surveillance.

I don't want this to be taken as a blanket claim that there is no merit to considerations of privacy in this realm, but there is a critical distinction between flight tracking and license plate vehicle tracking. Am infinitesimally small proportion of people have to fly private planes without option. American society has become such that the same cannot so be definitively said about automobiles. For large segments of the population, their cars are, for better or worse, a necessity of their daily lives and opting out of their use would be tantamount to opting out of society as it is. Yes, people can move to places where cars aren't needed, either because other forms of transportation can fulfill they're requirements or because life becomes hyper localized and there's no need to travel the distances licensed vehicles are required for. But not everyone can do that, literally; hyper localized loves are typically underpinned by other people bringing crap to you in vehicles with license plates being tracked. For many people, getting between a job they need and a neighborhood they can afford to live in, requires a private car. Having those people movements tracked it's more of a concern to me than done rich person who decides to take their personal plane to Aspen for the weekend.

Not at all.

No, sorry, the world doesn't operate how you wish it or were told it does. And I don't think you yet comprehend the Snowden revelations, the military-industrial complex, the nature of powerful elites, inverted totalitarianism or reality. Please stop peddling the party-line lies of manufactured consent and educate yourself outside of the mainstream media and the many others who are also brainwashed but don't realize it.

I think you may need to re-read my post, my point was exactly that it's not a good argument :)