Privacy ICAO Address Program

On May 28, 2010, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) final rule mandating that aircraft flying in certain controlled airspace be equipped with ADS-B Out capability not later than January 1, 2020.  ADS-B Out, broadcasts information about an aircraft’s flight identification and 24-bit ICAO aircraft address to any ADS-B 1090 MHz receiver within line-of-sight. Some General Aviation (GA) and business aircraft operators have expressed concerns about potential privacy risks resulting from equipping their aircraft with this technology. To address these concerns the FAA created the Privacy International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Address Program, which allows operators to use alternate, temporary ICAO aircraft addresses not attributable to an owner/operator in the publicly available Civil Aviation Registry. This Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) was developed pursuant to Section 208 of the E-Government Act of 2002 because the FAA will collect, use and maintain Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from aircraft owner/operators to facilitate this voluntary means of addressing the privacy concerns of aircraft operators.