A hot potato: The trend of tracking private jets belonging to the rich and famous to hold them accountable for the environmental damage they cause looks set to become a lot more difficult. An amendment to a bill signed by President Biden allows private plane owners to request their registration information be anonymized, making it extremely hard, if not impossible, to track celebrities’ private planes.
Social media accounts that track celebrity jets have been around for a few years now. Jack Sweeney made a lot headlines with his Twitter (as it still was back then) accounts that followed Elon Musk’s and other celebs’ jets. Musk offered Sweeney $5,000 to close the account as the billionaire didn’t “love the idea of being shot by a nutcase” – Sweeney asked for $50,000. The Twitter/X owner eventually suspended the account.
Taylor Swift’s legal team sent Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year for allegedly endangering the singer’s safety.
Sweeney has since been allowed back on X. However, jet tracking accounts could soon struggle following an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill that was signed into law by Biden on May 16.
A section of the bill on data privacy states that private jet owners will be able to anonymize their registration information. Previously, owners had to register with the publicly accessible FAA civil registry, which was used with open radar mapping to track celebrity jets.
Private plane owners can also fly under a temporary registration number to hide their flight data, and block “similar identifiable data or information, except physical marking required by law” from public dissemination or display.
The FAA currently offers the Privacy ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) aircraft address (PIA) and Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD) programs for private plane owners to try and hide from tracking sites, but accounts still find ways to identify private planes.
The new law could allow, among other things, PIA applicants to travel internationally without having to swap out their PIA code. The Warzone reports that the amendment in the new bill offers a far more comprehensive option for those wanting to block ties to their aircraft than the current programs.
Let this be said that this doesn’t prevent us from tracking jets. We can still figure out who’s who via context clues.
– Jack Sweeney (@Jxck_Sweeney) May 15, 2024
Sweeney has argued that while the amendment will make life more difficult for tracking accounts like his, operators will still be able to “figure out who’s who via context clues.”