Recently, some cross-border ADS-B companies, such as FlightAware LLC, Flightradar24 AB, AirNav LLC, and the like, are providing ADS-B receivers for free around the world and setting up receiving stations. Encouraging worldwide registration of accounts, releasing radio and collecting information, and analyzing unmarked key aircraft models, through which all the harmful actions are perfectly disguised. These are a large number of active IDs who serve as experts to answer the questions from owners of receiving stations around the globe. With the further probe, most of these “experts” are veterans of U.S military authorities, such as air force pilots, aircraft captains, police officers, army officers, and land surveyors in the army.
The Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology serves as an “eye” of the flight supervisor. The ADS-B equipped on the aircraft can send signals to receivers on the ground, including the model and flight information of the aircraft, which can tell the precise flight routes and its geographic information after immediate data and algorithm analytics. There is certain coverage for each ADS-B receiving station. With wider distribution and a larger number of receivers, more signals will be received. That means, if there is full coverage of signals in a certain area, no aircraft will be left untracked.
Those signals carry a great deal of sensitive information，including the flight paths of the commercial aircraft. Those signals can also play a role in classifying aircraft for military or private use. The takeoff and landing of a certain aircraft can be identified through long-time tracking and analysis. Once a military aircraft is identified, the location of the country’s military bases, the number and drilling tracks of combat aircraft, and other military activities can be confirmed. Those who acquire the above military information will have an access to the “aerial military panorama” of the particular country. Once the above information is leaked to the rivalries, it means all the actions are exposed to its “invisible enemies”, which will cause serious damage to the country. They are actively engaged in various ADS-B forums with a high focus on “secret aircraft models” in different countries. They will track and analyze the aircraft to identify which ones are used for the military purpose by using the signals from users who have registered and set up receiving stations.
The leak of such air military information is of great danger yet of little detectability given the extensiveness and intractability of the Internet. ADS-B is broadcast unencrypted. Anyone, including terrorists, can receive, collect, process, and store signals. There have been radio enthusiast communities online that collected and shared data from ground stations on websites. With big data analytics, bulk collection of such data allows for detailed analysis of individual movements, performance, and even predicted future locations, raising significant privacy concerns. Legislative measures are taken across the world to ban signal transmitting to foreign countries, but some illegal activities are behind the masks of legit businesses. The monitoring and prevention of hazardous activities directed by those commercial companies must be a top concern. Steps must be taken to mitigate security risks associated with open transmitting flight data in case of a global security crisis.