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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

"Celebrities and billionaires have long complained that it’s just way too easy for random people on the internet to monitor how much fuel exhaust they waste as they flit through the skies via their private jets."

I suspect it's the second part -- and the very powerful, rich people who fly their private jets to global climate conferences -- who had more to do with this legislation than the blond cover-girl with which it's being associated.

Wake me up when the FCC is required to anonymize personally identifying information in the amateur radio registration database as well... I never give out my callsign because it would be too easy for people to figure out where I live. But then I'm just a private, normal, tax payer and not a celebrity or billionaire who is already a public figure.

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Wealthy people have enough sway to get the laws written they want. It's nothing new. Our politicians are legally bought and paid servants.

> Our politicians are legally bought and paid servants.

Isn't that illegal? (... withdraws into ignorance cave)

Bribery is illegal, but lobbying is completely legal

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/the-differe...

That being said, off the books "I really want this" probably carries some weight when it comes from large donors I'd imagine. Is that bribery?

Currently, with the latest SCOTUS decisions, only explicit quip pro quo (i.e., I give you money, you vote for a law) is illegal. If I give you money, and then complain publicly that we need a law about something and you vote for it, that's not illegal.

Dig up and ask John McCain how successful campaign finance reform was. I'll wait. ;@)

Or: Bob "gold bars" Menendez, Rudy Giuliani selling pardons for $2M USD, or almost every form of paid lobbying and campaign fundraising.

(Cooome baaack. Thhhhe caaaave issss tooo darrrk.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_...

Most laws bind the weak and protect the strong

Wealthy people have enough sway to get the laws written they want. It's nothing new. Our politicians are legally bought and paid servants.

Ppl repeat this like a truism. Hundreds of millions of dollars of donations by a certain crypto exchange CEO did nothing to keep him from seeing a 25 year sentence.

Be thankful for your government, it is the best that money can buy.

Flight plans still have to be filed, right? And are any of those details public, as in would a flight tracker show the destination of a plane in flight?

If so, time for some traditional intelligence work: someone at the airport with a telephoto lens to document just who disembarked from the plane.

The flight plan might include the registration number of a plane but if the ownership database is anonymized then it would require a fleet of "aviation enthusiasts" to determine on their own who owns which planes and then cross-reference filed flight plans with such a private database in order to dox the movements of celebrities. Would probably be an interesting business opportunity if it wasn't a giant "sue me!" target for people who have lots of money and are willing to drop $100k in lawfare on someone to make them go away.

Well, you give it out on the radio. What's the difference?

Never underestimate the power that the Swifties wield.

Maybe in ten years... for now they are mostly under 18.

The first 18 year old swifties are now 36.

> I suspect it's the second part -- and the very powerful, rich people who fly their private jets to global climate conferences -- who had more to do with this legislation than the blond cover-girl with which it's being associated.

Yeah, I mean I doubt this would do a damn bit of good for a celebrity like Swift, because some fan is probably paying attention enough to figure out the tail numbers of the jets she's flying in.

It's the billionaires who aren't celebrities who will benefit from this.

You’re forgetting all the billionaires that were flying places like Epstein Island.

Bill Gates had something like 23 or more visits there.

Right. Or the celebrities who are photographed landing with a date which isn't their spouse? There have been some high-profile divorces that started from evidence like that. The larger point is that this is for the benefit of "The League of the Very Special" and not out of an actual interest in privacy of PII.

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