wrote:
I was recently notified by the FAA that the Aviation Investment and
Reform Act for the 21st Century requires them to make my name, address,
and ratings available to the public unless I notify them in writing to
the contrary.

Anyone know what this is about?

Johan Larson

A few years back, someone brought it to the official attention of the
government that the dissemination of the pilot database violated the
privacy act. After much disingenous bleating by commercial interests
(I lost all respect for John King after his stated opinion on the
matter), congress through the AIR-21 bill gave the FAA an excemption
that allowed them to restore public access as long as you could opt
out.

Unfortunately it took another 5 years or so of beating on Congress
and the FAA before they finally implemented that correctly. The
idiots in the FAA insisted (despite clear wording of the law) that
the only thing you could opt out of was your address being listed.
They still continued to post personally identifiable and sensitive
information such as your medical restrictions and status. However
a few months ago people noticed that the "Do Not Disseminate" flag
had finally been fixed to remove ALL INFO for those entries.