Japan PM's Official Plane Tracked Online

Japan's government has admitted that the flight paths of official
aircraft used by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were posted online.
The location of the planes and other flight data were published on the
website Flightradar24, which shows live air traffic around the world,
local reports said.

The defence ministry said it had asked the website to remove the information.

Officials said they had confirmed the data was removed on August 27.

"We don't consider it would have seriously affected the safety of
official flights, but it was not preferable that undisclosed
information was made openly available to the public," a defence
ministry official told AFP news agency.

The two Boeing 747-400 planes, dubbed Japan's Air Force One and Air
Force Two, always travel together, according to AFP. They also
transport the imperial family.

Kyodo news agency said that the Japanese government discloses only the
destination for overseas flights as a counterterrorism measure.

Flightradar24 says it tracks flights primarily through signals which
are broadcast by aircraft, called ADS-B. It also uses data provided by
the US Federal Aviation Administration and a navigation technique
called multilateration.

The site relies on a network of 4,000 data receivers, hosted by
volunteers around the world, which send the information to its
servers.

Japan announced earlier this month that it would replace the two
aircraft with Boeing 777-300ERs, which will be operational from April
2019.

The new planes have the ability to fly nonstop to the US east coast
and are large enough for VIPs, their entourages and communication
equipment to handle sensitive information, reported Mainichi.