Congress Has Made Fully Obscuring Aircraft Ownership Information a Reality
18th May 2024
A data privacy amendment buried within the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill will allow private aircraft owners to fully block aircraft registration information. Concealing this information will make establishing who owns private aircraft much more difficult, and render aircraft harder to track.
President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) re-authorization bill into law yesterday. Last week, it passed a vote in the Senate 88-4, before going on to pass a vote in the House of Representatives by 387 to 26 on Wednesday. The bill was introduced into the House in June of last year.
The FAA re-authorization bill renews the agency’s authority for the next five years, and authorizes more than $105 billion in funding for it from fiscal years 2024 through 2028. The legislation aims to improve aviation safety, as well as tighten protections for both airline workers and passengers.
Some people on the Internet make it a hobby to track the flights of billionaires and other famous people and publish this information to their followers. The people thus tracked, of course, consider this a security threat. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates are popular targets.