Attorneys for Taylor Swift are threatening legal action against the Florida college student who tracks the private jets of celebrities and public figures, including Swift.
Traffic cameras are usually publicly accessible. You are also, generally, allowed to take pictures of people when they are in public spaces where there is not an expectation of privacy.
So at what point of this is the line crossed?
Seb in space’s car was spotted driving down Main Street at 4:13 pm on Tuesday
Seb in space was next seen on 1st street at 4:15 pm
…
Seb in space was next seen turning off into the Hairy Palms apartment complex at 9:12 pm on Tuesday
Seb in space was seen leaving the Hairy Palms apartment complex at 06:00 on Wednesday
That is where this gets pretty murky. Because we all more or less acknowledge that parparazzi taking pictures of everyone leaving an airport are assholes (unless it is about figuring out if The Rock is going to come do PR to distract people from the WWE sexual slavery scandal…). But we have no issue with knowing that without even needing to send someone over to see who got off the 1235 LAX->DFW flight.
And while my initial stance is “fuck the super-rich”: I am allegedly part of a private chat for “people in tech” to give each other a heads up if we see a CEO getting off a flight. Because if your boss is pretty regularly visiting Facebook HQ and not telling anyone? That is the sign that you need to refresh your CV because you might get layed off after an acquisition/merger. There are definitely business reasons for not making it trivial to track individuals.
So yeah. I am going to side on the stance of “if you need to travel secretly, wear sunglasses like the rest of us”. Or, if you are too famous to even risk that, at least use one of the private jet companies rather than owning your own. But I also think this is something that we need to actually consider from a legal and privacy standpoint and it is a lot more complex than that.
How do you get that identifier for Taylor Swift’s plane? That part I don’t know and maybe that part is where her case lies, but I have a feeling she has no case or Musk would have tried the same thing.
Anyone can write a trivially simple program to analyze license plates (or even car profiles) and feed it traffic cam footage. I’ve done that for poops and giggles (never pushed since it was sketchy). Have broadband and a few medium sized computers and you can process the entirety of a state’s traffic cameras. At which point, it is trivial to track 455M4N’s '92 buick.
Where can I find live traffic cameras with high enough resolution to read license plates? I’ve only seen traffic cameras with something like 320x240 max.
You know how back in the day, Mythbusters would joke about “adding blah”? Or how a lot of chemistry and engineering youtubers won’t provide the exact specifics once they start working with a gun or something meth adjacent?
Its one of those things where if you have the basic understanding of how these systems work, you can find it pretty trivially (or work around things). And if you don’t? Then you really don’t need to know.
Its a bit more complicated than that.
Traffic cameras are usually publicly accessible. You are also, generally, allowed to take pictures of people when they are in public spaces where there is not an expectation of privacy.
So at what point of this is the line crossed?
That is where this gets pretty murky. Because we all more or less acknowledge that parparazzi taking pictures of everyone leaving an airport are assholes (unless it is about figuring out if The Rock is going to come do PR to distract people from the WWE sexual slavery scandal…). But we have no issue with knowing that without even needing to send someone over to see who got off the 1235 LAX->DFW flight.
And while my initial stance is “fuck the super-rich”: I am allegedly part of a private chat for “people in tech” to give each other a heads up if we see a CEO getting off a flight. Because if your boss is pretty regularly visiting Facebook HQ and not telling anyone? That is the sign that you need to refresh your CV because you might get layed off after an acquisition/merger. There are definitely business reasons for not making it trivial to track individuals.
So yeah. I am going to side on the stance of “if you need to travel secretly, wear sunglasses like the rest of us”. Or, if you are too famous to even risk that, at least use one of the private jet companies rather than owning your own. But I also think this is something that we need to actually consider from a legal and privacy standpoint and it is a lot more complex than that.
I don’t think your analogy works, because, as long as you know the plane’s identifier, you can just type it into a website and see where it is.
https://planefinder.net/
That’s all you have to do.
How do you get that identifier for Taylor Swift’s plane? That part I don’t know and maybe that part is where her case lies, but I have a feeling she has no case or Musk would have tried the same thing.
Anyone can write a trivially simple program to analyze license plates (or even car profiles) and feed it traffic cam footage. I’ve done that for poops and giggles (never pushed since it was sketchy). Have broadband and a few medium sized computers and you can process the entirety of a state’s traffic cameras. At which point, it is trivial to track 455M4N’s '92 buick.
Where can I find live traffic cameras with high enough resolution to read license plates? I’ve only seen traffic cameras with something like 320x240 max.
You know how back in the day, Mythbusters would joke about “adding blah”? Or how a lot of chemistry and engineering youtubers won’t provide the exact specifics once they start working with a gun or something meth adjacent?
Its one of those things where if you have the basic understanding of how these systems work, you can find it pretty trivially (or work around things). And if you don’t? Then you really don’t need to know.
That’s a lot of words to avoid saying you’re talking out your ass.
“Yeah, I could totally tell you. Honest. Promise. No I can’t because… uh… I’d have to kill you.”
I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of that info being presented in that way