A car is generally registered to an individual. A plane isn't.
You could also -maybe- argue that because there's multiple people on the plane (assuming Ol' Muskie isn't flying it himself) and that those people are potentially different every time, without a passenger and crew manifest, it's not identifying individuals (but I suspect you'd not get far with this.)
From a GDPR perspective it also makes no difference whether it's 5% or 90% of planes that are owned by individuals as opposed to by companies.
edit: Specifically mentioning planes and their locations, I mean, not "extrapolating from cars to planes".
You have to be trolling. What leads you to believe that the GDPR which never mentions either aircraft or cars would treat these two kinds of vehicles differently?
Can you find anything in the GDPR texts to suggest that cars and planes would be treated differently?
ICO's guide to the UK GDPR does have a specific example of cars being identifiable[1] - "A vehicle’s registration number can be linked to other information held about the registration (eg by the DVLA) to indirectly identify the owner of that vehicle." Nothing about planes though.
[2] covers car registrations and explicitly discounts company owned vehicles from being PII - "The registration plates of commercial vehicles are not personal data of an individual as the vehicle is owned by an organisation."
All of Ol' Muskie's jets are owned by Falcon Landing LLC, a shell company.
[1] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
[2] https://sapphireconsulting.co.uk/is-a-car-registration-plate...
Car registration numbers is a very common kind of data for businesses to handle, of course it makes it on the list of examples.
Same is not true of planes, of course they don't make it on the list of examples.
>[2] covers car registrations and explicitly discounts company owned vehicles from being PII - "The registration plates of commercial vehicles are not personal data of an individual as the vehicle is owned by an organisation."
>All of Ol' Muskie's jets are owned by Falcon Landing LLC, a shell company.
This doesn't work, you can't wash off PII by tying one aspect of it to an organisation. My phone line might belong to a business, but that doesn't give the carrier a free pass to do whatever they want with associated location data.
I don't see how it could be, that seems like an entirely separate issue.
> Please provide some evidence of your repeated claim that they're illegal in Europe
What kind of evidence do you want exactly? This is crystal clear to anyone with the most basic understanding of the GDPR.
Except that they have never been treated equivalently in any legal venue or government regulation.
If not, why would we just not accept that GDPR treats aircraft exactly how it treats everything else? The law, as written, clearly offers no specific coverage or exemption for any types of vehicles.
You're the one arguing that there's some special exemption for aircraft, but have done nothing to substantiate that claim.
Besides, with the GDPR it works the opposite way. You have to justify why your data processing is legal, not the other way around.
And for fucks sake, neither of Flightradar24 or ADSBExchange even offer a GDPR-compliant privacy policy. ADSBexchange does not offer one at all.
https://www.privacy-ticker.com/decision-to-fine-the-norwegia...
No, I don't live in a country that censors the website - it's the company who owns the website that wants to do things with my data that my country (and myself) considers illegal.
There is no government censorship imposed on the content - it's a company that's unwilling to comply with the law.
Also, given that the GDPR only applies to people of the EU, I'd say it, at the very least, has something to do with living in Europe, since, umm, y'know, that's where most people with citizenship in an EU county live.
US company using Paypal to accept money from US persons? Paypal has presence in the EU and will hand your money over.
Really, it even has nothing to do with residency. It's all to do with jurisdiction, when Elon happens to be within EU jurisdiction he is protected by the GDPR.
When Elon takes his jet to visit Greece, he is indeed protected by the GDPR (even if just interacting with US based companies while he's on holiday, GDPR still applies)
For example in Finland you would likely be violating the radio secrecy laws by merely listening unless you're actively involved in aviation (e.g. flying a plane or sitting in a tower)
In all EU countries you would be violating the GDPR if you stored this data without a lawful basis. (If you're wondering what constitutes "lawful basis", here's a helpful tool https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gdpr-resources/lawful-b...)
> I doubt the EU courts would argue any other way otherwise we'd need to criminalize tracking of UPS trucks and the like
Why would the GDPR prevent UPS from tracking their own trucks? How is this even remotely related to what we're discussing here?
Somehow getting, storing, and sharing passenger manifests would constitute PII of the sort that falls under GDPR.
It sure as hell does, just like it applies to movements of cars and movements of mobile phones.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
It isn't! These are ephemeral radio transmissions which contain PII. You might collect those transmissions and publish them somewhere, but that would be illegal.
> nobody has been able to successfully make a case that aircraft movements are cases of indirect PII in terms of the GDPR.
So you're just trolling. That's not how the GDPR works, you don't get to make any kind of case at all. The government will when they eventually get to it after clearing decades worth of backlogs.
And for what it's worth, there are already perfectly applicable precedents https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-851
> you're just trolling. That's not how the GDPR works, you don't get to make any kind of case at all. The government will when they eventually get to it after clearing decades worth of backlogs.
To “make a case” for something means to provide a persuasive argument for it. If I had meant pursuing a lawsuit I’d have said so.
>There is no PII in these transmissions. You clearly have no idea what this actually is or how it works, you’re just looking for reasons to defend Musk. Bizarrely.
>To “make a case” for something means to provide a persuasive argument for it. If I had meant pursuing a lawsuit I’d have said so.
Are you kidding?
Nobody would even contemplate a public registry of car owners, for instance, but all of those countries maintain one for aircraft.
I’ve seen multiple attempts to make the same argument you are by disgruntled private aircraft owners every now and then. None have succeeded in any official venue.
Are you joking? Lots of EU countries have had this, and still do.
For example in Finland, https://www.traficom.fi/en/services/vehicle-data-and-tax-pay...
In Sweden you can text the cars registration plate to 72503 and get the cars owners info.
In Norway you can look up car owners by registration plate or VIN https://www.vegvesen.no/en/dinside/kjoretoy/finn-eier-og-kjo...
In Portugal anyone can request the registration certificate from the IRN, that contains the owners information.
The governments aren't bound by GDPR and can totally do this, but as a private party it would generally be illegal for you to scrape this data.
>I’ve seen multiple attempts to make the same argument you are by disgruntled private aircraft owners every now and then. None have succeeded in any official venue.
Same is true of literally all GDPR violations, we've only just introduced these laws and catching up on the enforcement backlog will take decades.
Not only that, but most governments are doing a very shit job funding the enforcement authorities.
The obvious solution will be to allow impacted individuals to litigate GDPR violations by themselves.
For example, in Europe what they're doing is strictly in violation of the GDPR.