GROUNDED

Is @ElonJet Illegally Tracking Musk's Flights?

Twitter banned the account that tweeted about Elon's jet, then Twitter banned a bunch of journalists for reporting on it.

After some back and forth, @ElonJet, the account that tracks Elon Musk's private jet, was banned from Twitter, along with a bunch of journalists who often cover Musk and his companies. It appears that that they were dinged for tweeting material from the @ElonJet account that Twitter, as of this week, says violates its policy.

To celebrate the occasion, other journalists began a Twitter space (a live audio chat) and were joined by, surprise, the exiled journalists themselves. Not all, but some. Turns out that suspended Twitter accounts, which go into read-only modes, could still join and participate in Spaces.

Musk joined the space, spoke with recently suspended journalist, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell and said: "You dox, you get suspended. End of story, that’s it," and left. Soon after, the entire Twitter Spaces system stopped working.

Here is Elon’s full appearance in @katienotopoulos’ spaces with banned journalists tonight pic.twitter.com/1xPFtrVjf6

— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) December 16, 2022

Musk says that the @ElonJet account poses a security risk to his family, however Jack Sweeney, creator of the account, told Newsweek earlier this year that Musk shouldn't have anything to worry about because the data was delayed, and not accurate in real-time.

So, is tracking Elon Musk's private jet, aka what Sweeney is doing with @ElonJet legal or not? According to Aric Toler, the Director of Training and Research at Bellingcat, this whole situation might have not become such a big deal had Musk actually taken a few extra steps to safeguard his private jet travels, which he has the right to do.

This whole issue could have be avoided if Elon actually updated his PIA every time he flew. He doesn't and didn't, for some reason. So, it's very easy to find him with his static ICAO address.

— Aric Toler (@AricToler) December 16, 2022

Good write-up on PIA here: https://t.co/5OG0xAKKnQ

— Aric Toler (@AricToler) December 16, 2022

(I'm breathing a sigh of relief that aviation geeks, who have long forgotten more stuff about this field than I'll ever learn, haven't corrected or ridiculed me for this yet)

— Aric Toler (@AricToler) December 16, 2022

Hear Sweeney explain what he does: