By Toby McIntosh
The US government has taken a first step toward preserving the ability of US aircraft owners to fly without their identities being disclosed.
“The FAA intends to develop a process for operators who wish to mask their aircraft movements and identity for a period of time while flying within the sovereign airspace of the United States,” according to an Aug. 22 announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the Federal Register.
The move will almost close a window open for several years that has provided researchers, entrepreneurs and journalists with a better look at travel by corporate executives and others using private planes.
The FAA plans to issue temporary identification codes to aircraft owners requesting them. The temporary codes will not be linked to the public ownership registry which connects the tail numbers, visible on all aircraft, with their owners.
The US has facilitated anonymous flight for almost two decades, but the protections have been undercut by a new tracking technology that uses GPS satellites, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS–B). The frequent ADS-B transmissions include permanent assigned codes identifying individual planes, plus their current position, altitude and velocity. The use of ADS-B signals through an onboard transmitter will be mandatory in the US by the end of 2019 and adoption internationally is underway.
Even with the planned change, experts said there will still be ways to identify planes and track their movements, but said it will be much more difficult. On-the-ground observers could spot planes, identify them by codes on their fuselages and figure out the temporary codes, they said.
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Plan Being Rolled Out
The FAA has signaled for more than a year its intention to maintain the confidentiality status quo, but the particulars have still not emerged.
The FAA’s solution would allow US aircraft owners to apply for temporary codes, referred to as “rolling ICAO codes,” a reference to the code system established by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a multi-lateral body based in Canada. The codes transmitted from each aircraft would be read by ADS-B receivers on other planes and on the ground.
The rolling codes would essentially continue the existing system of permitting anonymous flight. The agency has been encouraged to do so by aircraft owners and their associations, who have met periodically and privately with FAA officials on ADS-B readiness issues at meetings of an advisory group called Equip 2020.
The alternative idea of using encryption to solve the problem is being explored, but has yet to be considered feasible.
Background of Existing Protections
Currently, US aircraft owners can ask the FAA that their aircraft identification data not to be disclosed publicly. The program, known as the Aircraft Situation Display to Industry (ASDI), applies to radar-based flight tracking and is the successor to the Block Aircraft Registration Request (BARR) program begun in 2000.
Under ASDI, vendors who receive air traffic data from the FAA can see the blocked information, but as a condition of getting the data they must promise not distribute the aircraft identification information to the public. Major commercial tracking vendors, such as Flight Aware and FlightRadar24, honor the blocking requests made through the FAA system.
When the Obama administration in 2011 sought to pull back the blocking option to those with a “valid security concern.” Plane owners and their associations went to court and to Capitol Hill. They got what they wanted. Congress prohibited FAA from moving ahead with its restrictions.
Aircraft owners argue that they have a right to privacy when they travel, often noting that automobile license information is kept private. Business executives in particular also cite safety and security concerns.
There appears to be little organized opposition to continuing the option for flight anonymity in the ADS-B environment, although some businesses started in recent years to take advantage of the transparency created by ADS-B are expected to suffer. During the 2011 debate, the few supporters of the proposed restrictions who wrote comments tended to object to “corporate secrecy.”
In a transportation analogy, critics of aviation anonymity point out that no secrecy exists for maritime travel. Ships, including yachts, are tracked through the Automatic Identification System (AIS). AIS signals from some 180,000 vessels are monitored daily via land-based stations and satellites.
For both planes and ships, legal tricks are sometimes used to obscure the actual owners.
Disruptive Technology Brought New Transparency
As the use of ADS-B signals was mandated and their use became more widespread, trackers increasingly collected them.
The ADS-B transmissions, which include permanent assigned codes identifying individual planes, can be detected by anyone with about $100 worth of equipment. Thousands of persons now operate such receivers, many amateur aviation enthusiasts, sending the signals to commercial vendors and others who provide flight tracking information. Aggregating ADS-B data allows creation of detailed maps of aircraft movements.
An aviation tracking company, ADS-B Exchange, based in Arizona, relies on ADS-B signals, not FAA tracking data, so it is not obligated to honor plane owners’ requests for anonymity. ADS-B Exchange, and a few other services, identify planes regardless of whether they are enrolled in the FAA blocking program.
ADS-B signals became a major source of information for researchers and journalists who track aircraft movements, including firms specializing in gathering corporate intelligence.
Procedural Step, Few Details
The Aug. 22 FAA Federal Register notice deals with a necessary procedural step to implement the FAA’s plan. The announcement drops a few hints about specifics of the plan, but also raises a variety of questions, such as when it will start.
The notice serves a limited purpose, fulfilling a legal mandate to seek public comment on “paperwork collections.” In this case, anyone requesting a temporary code will be asked to supply their aircraft registration number and information including their telephone number and address. The notice says the codes will be available only to US aircraft.
The FAA estimated that “15,000 respondents” would be affected by the requirement and that the application should take 20-25 minutes to complete.
Further, “An operator can change privacy ICAO aircraft addresses, but no more often than once every 30 days.”
It does not say how long each temporary code will last.
The potential for one owner to have 12 different temporary a year makes it hard to estimate how much use the FAA program will get. The time and expense of installing the alternative codes are incentives to keep the rolling code as long as possible, several experts said.
Brian Kester of the National Business Aviation Association said that they expect to see more guidance on the program and that a private vendor will likely administer it.
An FAA spokesman paraphrased the announcement, but did not respond to questions about the next steps.
In a related matter, the FAA in July issued a rule that would allow local state and federal agencies to terminate ADS-B transmission signals “when conducting sensitive national defense, homeland security, intelligence and law enforcement missions that could be compromised by transmitting real time identification and positional flight information over ADS-B.”
Tracking Will Be Harder
For US plane-spotters who use ADS-B signals to identify planes and their owners, research will be complicated by the ADS-B privacy program.
“No doubt it will make it more difficult and that is what it is intended to do,” commented Dan Steufert, the founder of ADS-B Exchange.
However, there are a few potential work-arounds — small Achilles’ heels for those seeking anonymity.
Because aircraft will still carry visible identification (letters and numbers) on their sides, they can be identified by cameras and/or plane-spotters as they land and take off.
These sightings could be correlated with flight activity, exposing the use of a temporary code.
“The rolling ICAO hides the identity but it doesn’t hide the plane itself,” said one person.
No formal infrastructure exists to make airport observations, but amateur planespotters abound. Several experts thought that organizing a watch system would be feasible, at least to cover major general aviation airports.
Another possibility is that identity clues could be picked up by listening to air traffic radio, but this would be a cumbersome process, the experts said.
Both methods could permit a correlation to be made between the identified aircraft and the “rolling ICAO code” being broadcast, potentially undermining the intended privacy.
