Elon Musk’s Plans to Sue Student Tracking His Private Jet are All Huff and Puff

If you like your morning cup of coffee with an ethical dilemma, here's one: Elon Musk, the self-titled champion of free speech, is taking action against a student who has been sharing private but publicly-available information about him on social media, also under the banner of free speech. Said action has resulted in Sweeney's ban from Twitter on every account he had set up and the threat of legal action.

The story goes back to late last year when Sweeney set up the @ElonJet account on Twitter. Using bots, he would scan and compile publicly-available data on Musk’s private plane, a 2015 Gulfstream G650, and then post its routes in real-time. The data included landing and takeoff locations and times, flight duration, fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions.

The account went viral for obvious reasons: Elon Musk is a notoriously private individual, and this automated feed offered an insight into his private life. Eventually, he reached out to Sweeney to ask him to take it down, offering him $5,000 to do it. Sweeney refused and asked for more money or a Tesla in return, but Musk replied by saying that it didn’t feel right to pay to have the page removed from the Internet.

Fast forward to 2022, and Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion. By this time, Sweeney’s original account spanned at least two dozen more, tracking private jets of celebrities, Russian oligarchs, politicians, and other public figures. Upon buying Twitter, Musk said that so steadfast was his commitment to free speech that he would even allow Sweeney to remain active on the platform, even though his activity posed a serious personal safety risk (to Musk, it goes without saying).

This week, Musk said that a car carrying X Æ A-12, his son with pop star Grimes, was targeted by a “crazy stalker,” who tried to block it with his own vehicle and then jumped on the hood. He hinted that said attack happened because Sweeney had been allowed to continue posting private information online, so Musk announced a widespread ban on all accounts that did that – starting with Sweeney’s.

He didn’t stop here, though. In addition to banning accounts that he claimed had been supporting Sweeney’s doxxing, he threatened legal action against the student. His ground for the looming lawsuit was, obviously, the violation of privacy.

Anyone else at the receiving end of Musk’s wrath – and billionaire legal threats – would be terrified, but not this 20-year-old. In his first interview since he’s been banned from Twitter, Sweeney tells Business Insider that he’s “not really concerned” about the lawsuit because he technically did nothing wrong. Elon Musk is all huff and puff but with no legal ground to stand on, Sweeney believes. He’s not yet retained an attorney, but he’s sought counsel.

“I'm not really concerned because a tweet is just a tweet, you know?” Sweeney says. “I track his plane, and it doesn't even really guarantee he's on it.”

Sweeney reiterates his old defense line: he's never encouraged anyone to go out and seek Musk based on the data he shares. He's only compiling publicly-available data, so he is not breaking any rules, and he only got into this private-jet-tracking stuff because he was a fan of Musk. Even Musk admitted to Sweeney in private messages that he (Sweeney) wasn't doing anything illegal but was toeing the line in terms of invading his (Musk's) privacy and putting him at risk.

At the same time, though, Sweeney hints at some kind of secret Musk agenda because he fails to see the connection between his jet tracking and the alleged attack on Musk’s car. He hadn’t tweeted for 24 hours prior to the attack. Even if he had, it would have been about the private jet and not a car in which Musk wasn’t even present. “It seems like he's just trying to scare me, and it's not going to work,” Sweeney says.

It’s true that Musk has little ground for a lawsuit, but that will probably not stop him from going ahead with it, Erik Gordon, a business law professor at the University of Michigan, says for the same publication. Even if Sweeney wins the lawsuit, which he probably will, it will cost him. Going up against a billionaire is never advisable if you’re no financial match, so maybe Sweeney should be scared. If only a little bit, Gordon says.