So much for my blocked tailnumber

[tawood]

Your Members can be anonymous as well. Or just make the sole member an offshore corp. For most people, just using an LLC with a name that doesn't connect to them will accomplish sufficient privacy. But there are ways of making it truly anonymous. If your attorney can't help you accomplish this, find a new one.

Nope not possible for a US N number. FAA always requires at least one US citizen or US corporation held by 75% US citizens.

 

[deonb]

No, you don't, hundreds of different vendors do. For Denver's proposal to work, you'd need a central authority distributing keys. And you need a secure way to do it.

There are hundreds of vendors shipping ADSB devices? Either way, it doesn't need to be central - can be multiple trusted vendors with chained certs.

But at the very least, you can mitigate spoofed locations (but not ghosts) by having each device just self-generate a new public/private key pair and send the public key as part of the broadcast, and sign the rest of the broadcast with it - then have ATC use the public key as part of the ID. That way no 2 devices will be able to broadcast for the same identifier, unless they've shared their private keys beforehand - which would imply that the entire signal is a deliberate ghost anyway.

But that doesn't give you any privacy, which is what this thread and the example of PSAs are about...

The authenticity issue is orthogonal to the privacy discussion and got kind'a mixed up in here. Privacy isn't achievable by encryption if your data is sent to untrusted targets.

However, it would have been better if the signal specification didn't call for broadcasting a fixed identifier of the aircraft. There's no reason for it, and it doesn't do a anything to make ADSB more functional. Each ADSB transmitter could have simply create a new random identifier each time you started it up. Inevitably though ATC will want to tie something like a squawk code to that identifier, which would cause there to be a record...

Oh well. If you want to cheat on you spouse, rent another plane.

 

[denverpilot]

But I don't think Denver was referring to encryption, but rather signing. You don't need to encrypt something to authenticate it.

There's both pieces really.

No, you don't, hundreds of different vendors do. For Denver's proposal to work, you'd need a central authority distributing keys. And you need a secure way to do it.
But that doesn't give you any privacy, which is what this thread and the example of PSAs are about...

We do it every day. Any central authority sending out SSL keys? Nope. There have been a small number that have been careless but they simply expired the keys and sent out new ones. Coming up with a worldwide key signature system and keeping the private key private, is not that difficult.

SSL has had some notable problems over the years, but none that couldn't be fixed.

The reason I was saying to use encryption and not just simple signing of data was that it kills one vector of the privacy issue. The broadcast medium receivable by all.

If someone is going to infiltrate the FAA and tap the data, unencrypted, at their downlink or centralized facilities (depending on where the decryption actually occurs in the network), that's a lot harder than the current "get people to slap up a bunch of antennas near airports of interest any nearly zero cost and upload the data to a central location" systems like @deonb built.

You secure stuff one vector at a time. I'd say encrypting the over the air interface is only the first step of a really obvious security process.

The trick isn't always 100% security. It's making it more difficult that getting the information a different and more obvious way. Or a way that requires someone to break the law and possibly be held accountable.

Someone selling the unencrypted data stream from inside the FAA if the OTA interface were encrypted, would raise eyebrows at the very least, likely get someone fired, and perhaps jail time with appropriate laws against it. If nothing else they have to give themselves away transporting it out in near real-time.

The very idea that aircraft targets are appropriate to send out in a public data stream from FAA to software companies is busted right from the start.

That stream should be, as should airman records, airman medical status, and all the other stuff, opt-in, not opt-out. That's been a basic tenet of best practices in information systems for three decades at least, now.

Operators who needed a live feed from FAA of their aircraft locations would sign UP to release that data ONLY to them or their designee. Everyone else's data should have been held without proper approval to release it.

 

[deonb]

that's a lot harder than the current "get people to slap up a bunch of antennas near airports of interest any nearly zero cost and upload the data to a central location" systems like @deonb built.

I didn't build that!

Wait, that phrase sounds familiar for another reason... Uhmm...

Still, uhh... No. Wasn't me!

 

[Lindberg]

There's both pieces really.



We do it every day. Any central authority sending out SSL keys? Nope. There have been a small number that have been careless but they simply expired the keys and sent out new ones. Coming up with a worldwide key signature system and keeping the private key private, is not that difficult.

SSL has had some notable problems over the years, but none that couldn't be fixed.

The reason I was saying to use encryption and not just simple signing of data was that it kills one vector of the privacy issue. The broadcast medium receivable by all.

If someone is going to infiltrate the FAA and tap the data, unencrypted, at their downlink or centralized facilities (depending on where the decryption actually occurs in the network), that's a lot harder than the current "get people to slap up a bunch of antennas near airports of interest any nearly zero cost and upload the data to a central location" systems like @deonb built.

You secure stuff one vector at a time. I'd say encrypting the over the air interface is only the first step of a really obvious security process.

The trick isn't always 100% security. It's making it more difficult that getting the information a different and more obvious way. Or a way that requires someone to break the law and possibly be held accountable.

Someone selling the unencrypted data stream from inside the FAA if the OTA interface were encrypted, would raise eyebrows at the very least, likely get someone fired, and perhaps jail time with appropriate laws against it. If nothing else they have to give themselves away transporting it out in near real-time.

The very idea that aircraft targets are appropriate to send out in a public data stream from FAA to software companies is busted right from the start.

That stream should be, as should airman records, airman medical status, and all the other stuff, opt-in, not opt-out. That's been a basic tenet of best practices in information systems for three decades at least, now.

Operators who needed a live feed from FAA of their aircraft locations would sign UP to release that data ONLY to them or their designee. Everyone else's data should have been held without proper approval to release it.

Actually, yes, there are central certificate authorities who sign certificates used for SSL. But even if you could SSL like features here, what problem would it solve? You're retransmitting the location and identity of everyone around to everyone around. And you'll talk to anyone. So now the tracking websites will have to use equipment that participates in that system, but you still haven't increased privacy, because anyone in the world can have one of those systems. Plus, you've broken a fundamental safety feature of the system that allows all equipped aircraft to see other transmitting aircraft even if they're not talking to a tower and are out of range for two-way communication.

 

[paflyer]

Your Members can be anonymous as well. Or just make the sole member an offshore corp. For most people, just using an LLC with a name that doesn't connect to them will accomplish sufficient privacy. But there are ways of making it truly anonymous. If your attorney can't help you accomplish this, find a new one.

Yep, and that is my strategy for registering the next airplane. I don't want to be harassed by every crank with an internet connection to Dan's site when I fly over their house, and I don't want the "airport tail number watchers" to know I'm not home (and how much my home is worth, and where I work, and how much I make, and my phone number, and who I know, and etc.).

 

[Lindberg]

Nope not possible for a US N number. FAA always requires at least one US citizen or US corporation held by 75% US citizens.

Not strictly accurate. But again, if this is an issue for you, talk to your lawyer.

 

[denverpilot]

Actually, yes, there are central certificate authorities who sign certificates used for SSL. But even if you could SSL like features here, what problem would it solve? You're retransmitting the location and identity of everyone around to everyone around. And you'll talk to anyone. So now the tracking websites will have to use equipment that participates in that system, but you still haven't increased privacy, because anyone in the world can have one of those systems. Plus, you've broken a fundamental safety feature of the system that allows all equipped aircraft to see other transmitting aircraft even if they're not talking to a tower and are out of range for two-way communication.

That "safety system" obviously wasn't a priority or a requirement or the "hockey puck" filters wouldn't exist on the 978 side of the system. As long as that is in place, the system is not intrinsically "safe" at all. Because it never was about safety.

 

[MooneyDriver78]

I went up with my 2020 ADSB FAA approved avionics and I did not show up, there were other planes around me, but I was incognito! Standard VFR flight, no flight plan, no FF.