Martin wrote:
Where I come from
May one inquire where that is?
LeSving wrote:
…within normal laws…
What are “normal laws”? Right now, there exist 194 states on this planet. Each of them with different laws. In the state under which I live, the air band may well be technically “open” (i.e. not encrypted and accessible with rather simple technical means), but still the transmissions going on are confidential. When you get your aviation radiotelephony license, you are required sign it. In the smallprint it says " The holder of this certificate is required to preserve the secrecy of telecommunications. " (a picture from Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprechfunkzeugnis_(Luftfahrt)#/media/File:BZF_Wiki.JPG). So this is part of the “normal laws” around here.
preserve the secrecy of telecommunications
However, there is no secrecy to be preserved in this case.
Nor can there be any reasonable expectation of secrecy.
Peter wrote:
However, there is no secrecy to be preserved in this case.
Under German law there is indeed. Pilots and ATC staff are only permitted to use their radiotelephony equipment while actively taking part in aviation duties. Outside his duty, a pilot can not legally monitor aviation communications. And for anybody else it is illegal in the first place to listen in on the air band. Quick googling finds some cases of plane spotters who were fined for listening using air band scanners only a few years ago.
Back to my earlier Q: have there been any prosecutions in the UK?
If so, does anyone know any details?
On a practical (not legal) angle, I can see one’s chances of getting done would be greater if the sound track contained someone looking ridiculous, and the person publishing it was a well known pilot who has perhaps upset a few people in the past 
However, a prosecution under the UK Act would be a criminal one, not a civil action. Could a civil case be mounted, using the UK criminal law? I do know it is (pretty obviously) easier to get damages out of somebody who has been convicted criminally, and vice versa too.
How is LiveATC implemented in the USA? The audio must be streamed into some central server.
How exactly is privacy of communications maintained when one pilot can listen to any other pilot?
@Peter I think you’re correct about LiveATC, people at FBOs and flight schools tune the on air data and stream it to a central server. How they do that technically, I don’t know – I have little interest in IT, but regardless its fun to be able to listen to ATC at local airports while I’m in my office working.
Having a handleheld in the hangar tuned to Tower is of course a fixture of the US airport community scene, always has been, always will be.
Having a handleheld in the hangar tuned to Tower is of course a fixture of the US airport community scene.
It is a pretty common fixture on the UK airfield scene, too.
Silvaire wrote:
How exactly is privacy of communications maintained when one pilot can listen to any other pilot?
When you talk to a group of co-workers in your office, everybody can listen to the whole conversation. Yet whatever is talked about between those people has to be treated confidently (I guess in 99,9% of all companies all around the world, whatever the law might say).
In countries with laws like the UK radiotelephony act and it’s German counterpart, the same applies to conversations held over the radio. Only staff on duty, flying and ground-based, are allowed to communicate via air band. And, as I wrote above, by signing your radiotelephony license you agree to respect the confidentiality of the overheard conversation. Just like when you signed your work contract at the office.
I don’t have a radio telephony license, I haven’t ever had or wanted a contract with my employer, and my flying isn’t a duty
what_next wrote:
What are “normal laws”
I thinking in terms of editing the transmissions to redicule a person and other uses to willfully cause harm. As long as they are not encrypted, they are considered public. You could as well stay on the town square holding a speech, and then demand that nobody took pictures and nobody recorded anything or told anything about it. You simply cannot do that in a public space using open communication channels. It sounds completely insane to me to yell out in a public space, and at the same time demand privacy. Privacy requires that you do something so that other people understand it is something private (like closing the doors, putting up signs, encrypting the communication).
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