Senator Pat Roberts writes:
With the advent of social-networking sites, our society has become accustomed to real-time disclosure of almost every aspect of a person’s life. Though it’s certainly citizens’ choice to disclose their whereabouts to the public, the issue of whether the government has the right to disclose this information is a whole different story.
Unfortunately, public disclosure of private citizens’ whereabouts will become a reality in August should the Federal Aviation Administration have its way of ending the Block Aircraft Registration Request program.
The BARR program allows citizens and companies to “opt out” of having their aircraft movements tracked by anyone, anywhere in the world, who has an Internet connection, other than the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies. Easy enough, right?It is just like citizens traveling in their car have every right to believe that their whereabouts won’t be disclosed to anyone who has tracking technology. This program sounds like it’s a no-brainer to me.
But this past March, the federal government issued a notice in the Federal Register that it would severely cut back the BARR program to only apply to those individuals with a known and specific security threat. That means if the proposed changes by the FAA are put in place, anyone with a computer and easily accessible tracking technology can stalk general aviation aircraft users.
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