You may recall from the pre-Elon days of Twitter all of the jokes that were going around about Jack Sweeney. He’s the Florida college freshman who used public flight-tracking data to monitor the movements of Elon Musk’s private jet and broadcast the information on the social media platform. He kept at it even after Musk bought the company, but that came to an end last night, at least for now. Musk announced on his own Twitter account that Sweeney’s account was suspended. Then it was briefly restored before being suspended again. Further, Musk said he was taking “legal action” against Sweeney, but not just for publicizing the jet’s flights. He claims that Sweeney put his family in physical danger. (NY Post)

Elon Musk revealed Wednesday night that he is taking “legal action” against the teenager who runs a since-suspended Twitter account tracking the billionaire’s jet flights.

The Twitter CEO made the announcement after implying the jet-tracking account operated by Jack Sweeney, a University of Central Florida freshman, was to blame for a Tuesday stalking incident where somebody followed Musk’s family.

“Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood,” Musk tweeted, referring to his 2-year-old son X Æ A-12. “Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family.”

Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood.

Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022

On the one hand, you can see why Musk would find this incident highly alarming and worthy of some sort of response. When some maniac wearing a mask and a hood blocks the car carrying your toddler and jumps onto the hood of the vehicle, that’s obviously a frightening and potentially dangerous situation. The police shouldn’t have a hard time finding him, however. Musk tweeted a video showing the person from only a few feet away, as well as his car.

Anyone recognize this person or car? pic.twitter.com/2U0Eyx7iwl

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022

The guy’s license plate is clearly visible in the video, so unless the car was stolen the cops should already have him in custody. But it’s unclear what he would be charged with aside from some sort of misdemeanor involving minor scuffing of the car’s paint or obstructing traffic.

While we may feel some sympathy for Musk because the safety of his child was threatened, I still can’t help but feel as if he’s acting a bit churlish and engaging in a double standard here. As the linked report points out, there are (or at least were) dozens of Twitter accounts that tracked and published the flights of various private jets owned by the rich and famous. Most of those have now been taken down as well, but Elon took no action against any of them until his own family was personally threatened.

And what are those account holders doing that’s really so “wrong” to begin with? There are many public flight-tracking apps out there for the public to use. (I have one on my laptop myself.) All you really need is the tail number of the plane and you can track it’s movements all you like. Putting the information on a social media platform is really just saving people the trouble of tracking it themselves, assuming they are interested. The real “criminal” in this case is the young man who blocked off Musk’s car and jumped on it. We’re not even sure if he got the information from Sweeney’s account. He may have tracked the plane himself or simply heard that Musk’s family was in town.

Flight-tracking data is of legitimate interest to the public. A similar app was used to track down Pete Buttigieg’s travel on FAA personal jets and publish that information in the media. If an account holder uses that information to go and physically attack someone, by all means, cancel their account. But if they’re just publishing it for the community to see, that doesn’t sound like a violation of the rules. If Musk honestly places such a high value on free speech as he says he does, that should apply to anyone and everyone. If he starts carving out exceptions for his own personal benefit, then he will be behaving just as badly as his critics accuse him of doing.