Air Traffic Control Conversations Collection – A legal introduction by ELDA

Air Traffic Control (ATC) Conversations  Collection – A Grey Area

ELRA plays a leading role in distributing and sharing Language Resources (LRs) within the Human Language Science and Technology Community. During the Atco2 project, ELDA draws on its experience and knowledge of the legal framework surrounding data collection in the context of Air Traffic Control Conversations. Regarding the field of Air Traffic Control, the legal framework is not as clear as one would expect. Indeed, Air Traffic enthusiasts do often listen to ATC conversations during personal time and for private uses. However it is not so simple to derive the feasibility of those private practices into a large scale collection of conversations.Whereas listening is not prohibited, as long as they do not interfere with the traffic and the signals, the status of recording has not been uniformally settled by legal texts and courts around the globe. From our first findings we can describe 3 kinds of situations :

• Countries textually preventing recordings of ATC conversations: The United Kingdom, for instance, prevents the use of radio apparatus without licenses¹. New Zealand prohibits the reproduction and distribution of contents of communications²

• On the other hand, in the United States allows recording of Air Traffic Conversations since the Criminal Code explicitly states that interception of conversations transmitted by stations relating to aircrafts does not constitute an offence³.

• For other countries, so far the situation has not been clarified. During the course of the project we will share a table with the community stating the legal status of recording in the countries where recordings are made, whenever sufficient information can be gathered.

ATC as public domain information

One of the hypotheses that could allow reproduction of ATC is to consider through general intellectual property principles that they are Public Domain, and therefore freely available to the general public.

We came to this hypothesis thanks to two characteristics of air traffic conversations:

• ATC are broadcast over the radio in the public domain and with no explicit prohibition they could be listened or recorded by everyone.

• Under the definition given under the major legal copyright systems they could not be considered as worthy of copyright protection since they serve a purely functional purpose and are limited by phraseology.

• At the moment our findings cannot support this hypothesis especially in light with other pieces of restrictive legislation surrounding secrecy of correspondence.

ATC as Public Service Information

The second hypothesis that we could formulate would be more limited in its scope but could provide a useful base for collection and reuse of air traffic conversation. There is a trend that has been made mandatory by law, especially in the European Union, to make available data produced by pubic services and public administration in the course of their work. We could say that since ATC are recorded by Air Traffic Control Service Providers who are usually operated as a public service for airlines, we could also consider that the conversations recorded by those providers fall under the Public Sector Information Directive⁴ reworked and enacted in 2019, which allows users to claim from Public Administration a copy of the documents produced by the administration during its operation of a public service.