Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FAA Admits Names & Addresses In Drone Registry Will Be Publicly Available (forbes.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the open-book dept.

Lauren Weinstein sends word about this admission by the FAA that has led many to have concerns about privacy. Forbes reports: "The FAA finally confirmed this afternoon that model aircraft registrants’ names and home addresses will be public. In an email message, the FAA stated: 'Until the drone registry system is modified, the FAA will not release names and address. When the drone registry system is modified to permit public searches of registration numbers, names and addresses will be revealed through those searches.'"

3 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. please stop posting this crap from Forbes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The whole site is just a cesspool of clickbait...

  2. Re:Time for ownership proxies as with private plan by EmagGeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At the same time, though, if you want to know if someone is a pilot, all you have to do is punch their name into the FAA's pilot certificate search tool, and it will tell you.

    Pilots do not have privacy with the FAA, and planes are not registered with holding companies for privacy purposes. It's all about taxes.

  3. Re:I "was" all for this by mlts · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You can always play the game the way the big boys do, and register stuff like that under the name of a business or corporation, with a PO box. Perfectly legal, and someone looking through the list of people with planes won't get an address to go burgle from.

    This does bring up two good points:

    The first is keeping data. In general, any work done with the FAA doesn't require a seven year retention... it requires fifty years. Do RC pilots have to keep info about their planes and other stuff for half a century now?

    The second is how long it will be before some bad guys start pulling public registry data, finding people who have a lot of toys, don't live in a gated community, then figure out their schedule and go rob their place. The info is out there, and all it will take is the economy tanking for the bad guys behind keyboards offshore to start buying/selling/trading with the bad guys with the ski masks and the sawed off 12 gauges who own that area's turf. Selling to gangbangers lists of houses that don't have anyone at home and have a lot of stuff in them may be quite lucrative.