Anonymizing aircraft registration was, for the most part, already possible. I first figured this out when I started playing with ADSB reception many years ago before it became the trivial effort it is today. The first plane that I happened to receive just happened to be a learjet registered to "Bank of Utah" or something similarly obtuse.
It took all of about 30 seconds to figure out this was Steve Jobs' plane; it had already been removed from all public tracking databases. (aircraft owners can request their aircraft be removed from datasets like flightaware, etc.)
I don't think this new legislation has any practical effect on the ability to track a specific aircraft. Once you figure out which one you want to track and have sufficient ADSB coverage, you will be able to track it. It's not as if the tail numbers are changing between flights.
This isn't to do with aircraft registration: it's to do with the fixed airframe identifier in the Mode-S data. By default, a single airframe (plane) will also squawk the same identifier on Mode-S, which can be picked up by passive receivers owned by the general public.
Yes; I know. But similar to tracking a wireless client by MAC address, it could be possible to enhance the system to assign single-use identifiers to flight plans such that it would be radically more difficult to casually associate tracking data to specific aircraft in realtime. I'm not advocating for any change necessarily; just pointing out that RF emissions of a modern aircraft do nothing to belie its identity. The registration information itself is irrelevant to tracking the aircraft movements.
It took all of about 30 seconds to figure out this was Steve Jobs' plane; it had already been removed from all public tracking databases. (aircraft owners can request their aircraft be removed from datasets like flightaware, etc.)
I don't think this new legislation has any practical effect on the ability to track a specific aircraft. Once you figure out which one you want to track and have sufficient ADSB coverage, you will be able to track it. It's not as if the tail numbers are changing between flights.