There is no legitimate argument against ADS-B other than "I don't wanna." Not to say that that isn't legitimate and doesn't at least deserve a discussion, but that's really it. There's really no Constitutional or statutory argument against requiring ADS-B.

> There's really no Constitutional or statutory argument against requiring ADS-B.

You could argue it's not a very good one, but it does exist:

"This rulemaking provides an exception to ADS–B requirements, removing the transmission requirement for sensitive operations conducted by Federal, State and local government entities in matters of national defense, homeland security, intelligence and law enforcement."

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-07-18/pdf/2019-1...

Yeah I probably wasn't clear in that I meant I'm not aware of any legal basis for saying that requiring ADS-B for private/commercial air traffic is wrong. For example operating a 172 is not a constitutional right so tracking you while you do isn't isn't necessarily a violation of any particular right.

I think it's wrong that the government exempts themselves from it if they're going to require it of everyone else, but that's so far down my list of grievances with the government it's barely worth thinking about :)

Food for thought: what about driving a massive deadly hunk of metal through a community?

To progress in the same direction: what about having a static deadly hunk of metal at second floor of your house?

The point I am trying to make: most of things flying seem more dangerous (higher speed, higher reach, different fuel) than cars.

> most of things flying seem more dangerous

And yet somehow flying is safer than driving! As a sibling comment mentions, a lot of that has to do with all of the safety controls in place.

My point is that driving at modern speeds in modern vehicles is actually pretty dangerous, even if not as dangerous as aviation, and yet we as a society exercise very little oversight over the activity.

There are good reasons to not have "ADS-B for cars", mostly related to privacy. Unlike flying, many people heavily rely on cars to carry out their day-to-day activities. But I think it's at least worth thinking about.

Commercial aviation is safer than driving. General aviation is no safer than riding a motorcycle, and may be even more dangerous, so it is definitely not safer than driving. And the people complaining about ADS-B are going to be almost exclusively grumpy old guys flying around in J3 cubs.

Man, that discussion has been around for a long, long time- I'm a grumpy old guy that's been riding motorcycles of one type or another since I was 11, and flying since I was 16. Btw, I'm a huge fan of both ADS-B as well as TCAS... TCAS when I'm flying, ADS-B when I get to watch my son training at Navy Corpus.

Hanging around FBOs/flight lines/bars with pilots that also ride, it's come down to this:

After countless attempts and arguments while trying to normalize accident/fatal accident rates by converting hours flown/miles ridden, statistics do support that GA does seem to be a bit more dangerous than riding.

That having been said, my opinion is that most of the GA risks are in the hands of the pilot, while most of the risks of riding are external to the rider. Most of the worst motorcycle accidents I've seen or heard of involved the rider getting schwacked by a car or truck, while most of the worst GA accidents involved the pilot schwacking him or herself with poor judgement and/or skills that are below MIF. I put a lot of effort into minimizing pilot-induced risk when I fly, so scientifically speaking and all, I -feel- safer when flying than riding, and probably am.

Could you please reference some stats? I've googled before and have never been able to find motorcycle / GA stats... right now your comment sounds like someone quoting a nurse/doctor friend saying "donorcycles"

Well yeah, number plates?

I don't think that's comparable since there is no rideradar24 where you could check out every ride anyone takes with their car. Also, who owns which plate is not public information.

I believe that plenty of people would object to that level of tracking citing privacy reasons.

(I'm not against ADS-B myself.)

True, I suppose that is more like the tail call signs it whatever they're called - only recorded (possibly automatically like ANPR) if someone bothers too, not broadcasted or squawked and ident'd.

I can't bear it: of course I meant 'or whatever' and 'bothers to', typing from mobile.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a full-time cyclist, so you won't find a lot of car love from me. :-)

But I do think there's a difference in risk. Aviation has a pretty dang good record, and I think that the tradition of transparency in comms and telemetry is a huge part of that.

> Aviation has a pretty dang good record

While this is true about commercial airliners it is not true for general aviation. The safety of general aviation is roughly comparable to motorbikes.

Both general aviation and motorbikes have a track record (at least in relative terms) that's pretty good _with respect to injuring or killing third parties_, which I thought was the thrust of the inquiry.

    > I think it's an act of wanton corruption that law enforcement is now exempt from this requirement in some situations. 

Black helo's off ads-b for the purposes of intimidation are totally a thing and I agree wholeheartedly.

The only thing I can think of is for individuals who have credible threats against them. It could be easy enough to delay the relay of that information to the general public by 24hrs or something so that the data is available but poses less use to potential threat actors.

How are you going to delay the relay when anyone with a receiver can just receive and relay the data?

Hammer down on the aggregators, nothing easier than that.

Is it as easy as shutting down piracy sites?

Probably not with the current tech, but there are lots of ways to do it. You don't need to delay the signal, only the information tied to that signal. If you get away from static identifiers and use something like a rotating RSA key, then the data associated with that key could be released at a later time. Not ideal for transparency unless there's a strict retention/audit process for the gold copy (perhaps one of the few legit use cases for immutable block chain since all identifies should be unique too).

> ADS-B data is broadcast every half-second on a 1090MHz, digital data link.

For more than a decade I worked airborne geophysical surveying - hundred thousand to a million+ line kilometre grid draping at 80m ground clearance on routes planned in advance.

The planes ran stable known instrument configurations and were calibrated weekly to measure their individual magnetic and radiometric signature.

Aircraft positioning signals on long haul flights Australia -> India -> Fiji -> Mali weren't an issue.

Extraneous non required signalling during grid surveying was an issue.

A reasonable comprimise was to blip a quick position fix at the end of every fourth or fifth 20 kilometre line run (say) ... otherwise no broadcasts during instrument recording times .. and glow in the dark divers watches for the pilots or random chunks of metal casing there one day and gone the next.