The Great Oklahoma Registry Massacre

opinion

by Alasdair Whyte

July 18, 2025

The new US proposed privacy law offers “opportunities for fraudsters and criminals”.

The famous Great Hanoi Rat Massacre is hyperbolic. In 1902 rats were multiplying in the city’s new sewers. During a meeting to discuss this, one senior executive came up with the idea of offering a bounty of one cent for every dead rat. To claim the money, you just had to deposit a rat’s tail.

It was very popular with entrepreneurs. Rat catchers caught a lot of rodents. But after cutting off the tail, they released them to multiply. Others bred rats in cages, then let them out when they no longer had tails. Rat numbers rocketed.

As well as being a great name for a heavy metal band, the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre is a great example of the law of unintended consequences. There is another example in Oklahoma – home to the US FAA aircraft registry – now.

You will remember Jack Sweeney, a student who tracked jets owned by Elon Musk, Taylor Swift and other celebrities on what was then Twitter. Celebrities did not appreciate this. Owners and industry associations lobbied the FAA to make it possible for owners to keep information confidential.

During a meeting some senior official no doubt came up with the idea of owners submitting an electronic request that the FAA withhold their aircraft registration information from public view. Soon this could become the default option, with all ownership private unless the owner requests otherwise.

An angry Hanoi rat

People looking for privacy were delighted. But then the unintended consequences of this reared up like an angry Hanoi rat. (You would be annoyed if someone cut off your tail).

“Making sure that people cannot track flights is not a bad goal. There are security reasons, there are safety, maybe even confidentiality reasons for businesses,” says Bruce Marshall, general counsel, AIC Title. “But the problem is that people did not really understand what they were asking for.

“The FAA was co-mingling operational information, ADSB information and ownership information. The registry originated so that you could follow the legal documents and have some way of determining ownership and interests in aircraft. But the people that were behind all this never took the time to consult the transaction end of the industry.”

Knowing the owner’s identity is key for banks financing aircraft and insurers underwriting them. It is also key when aircraft are sold.

“It would be like going and buying a house and not checking the title or knowing who owned it. You just walk up to somebody, hand them a cheque, they say ‘you now own the house’ but you don’t know that you do,” says Clay Healey, owner, AIC Title.

Healey says that without the information it is impossible for people working on transactions to conduct know-your-customer (KYC) checks. He says it creates opportunities for fraudsters and criminals.

This is not the first time the FAA has suddenly changed the rules. In October 2024, it started restricting access to some filings – known as Work in Progress. The industry managed to negotiate a solution to this.

Strongly worded comments

Having made the privacy change, the FAA then asked for comments to be submitted. The deadline for this closed in early June. The FAA received more than 600 comments. One of these was from 16 Oklahoma firms joining together in an Aircraft Title Lawyer and Title Company Coalition. AIC was part of this but also submitted its own strongly worded comments.

“Bruce and I discussed whether we should play nice like we always have or do we take the gloves off and say do you really know what you’re doing?” says Healey. “We decided that this is so important we need to highlight it. We’re passionate about it. It’s what we do. It’s our jobs, it’s our business and we’re trying to help people. When walls get put up, we can’t do our jobs for people. The people dictating these rules have never been involved in an aircraft transaction in their life and don’t understand it and they’re imposing rules on something they don’t even begin to understand.”

The FAA has not yet responded to comments. Healey says they need to understand how serious this issue is. “They don’t realise they are crushing the business, that if they keep doing it, it will no longer exist. It’s done. It is over. We have the largest number of planes in the world here in the US,” says Healey. “We will have the least planes if they run down this road. There is no way we can exist if they take all that information away from the people that are buying and selling planes. It’s unbelievable that this is happening.”

They changed the policy when it was clear that there were thousands of tailless rats running around Hanoi. Healy and Marshall are hoping that the FAA will do the same thing.