In November, Musk asked 19-year-old Jack Sweeney to delete his secondary account @ElonJet due to it being “a security risk.” @ElonJet provides updates of where and when the billionaire flies, and the account has amassed more than 382,100 followers.
Sweeney, a freshman at the University of Central Florida, uses publicly available aerospace telemetry on the ADS-B website, and a sophisticated programme he’s made to match transponder frequencies and separately available anonymous flight plans, to track the private flights of the mega-rich.
Asked whether tracking the Tesla CEO’s jet posed much of a security risk to him, Sweeney told Newsweek: “Maybe a little bit but I don’t think it’s that big. Flying on a private jet is pretty secure and you’re in an enclosed area at the airport.”
“Plus, the data is a little bit delayed, so it’s not going to be there right away,” Sweeney added.
Sweeney said he planned to keep track of Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, real estate investor Grant Cardone and other private jets of the super-rich and publish their movements via Twitter.
Asked what would motivate him to stop doing it, he said: “Probably if I got something that I liked. I enjoy this as a hobby and it’s really fun to program this stuff. And I’m not really going to take it down unless there’s something like a life-changing amount of money for me, that I could get a car with, because I don’t have a car or anything. So I’m not going to just give it up for nothing.”
Musk had previously offered him $5,000 to close down the account. Sweeney rejected his offer and said he would need $50,000 or an internship at Tesla to make him stop tracking the private jet.
On February 4, Scott Painter, CEO of car-hire company Autonomy, even offered Sweeney a three-month lease of a Tesla Model 3 to stop tracking Musk, but the student turned it down. Sweeney said he wasn’t tempted because he wanted to own his own car, rather than lease one.
Musk later blocked Sweeney on Twitter, and the teenager says he hasn’t heard from the businessman since.
Sweeney said that he received some abuse from some of Musk’s fans on Twitter about keeping the account open.
He told Newsweek that it was only Musk he had heard from, despite tracking 18 other billionaires’ private jets.
Even if he didn’t get his $50,000, Sweeney was quickly offered a job for his creativity in tracking down the world’s richest man. The New York Post reported that Stratos Jet Charters, an Orlando-based private charter flight firm, offered Sweeney a role on the company’s tech development team. He plans to take the job part-time.
Newsweek has contacted Musk for comment.
