Elon Musk Sues 20-year-old Student Who Tracks His Private Jet

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner and chief executive officer of Twitter, says he is pursuing a legal action against Jack Sweeney, the owner of an account on the microblogging platform dedicated to tracking his private jet.

Twitter already suspended the account on Wednesday.

Musk, in a tweet on Thursday, said he is also suing organisations that supported harm against his family.

“Last night, car carrying lil X (Musk’s son) in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving and climbed onto hood,” he tweeted.

“Legal action is being taken against Sweeney and organisations who supported harm to my family.

The account, @ElonJet, was run by Sweeney who is a 20-year-old student at the University of Central Florida, and had amassed over 500,000 followers.

The Twitter account tracked Musk’s jet using publicly available flight data.

Sweeney also operates accounts tracking Musk’s jet on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

The suspension by Twitter comes a month after Musk had vowed not to ban the account as a sign of his commitment to free speech.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk had tweeted on November 7.

Meanwhile, Sweeney’s personal Twitter account has also been suspended.

Musk said real-time posting of another person’s location violates Twitter’s doxxing policy.

Doxxing is the act of revealing identifying information about someone online, such as their real name, home address, workplace, phone, financial, and other personal information.

He said accounts that engage in such acts would be suspended.

“Any account doxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location information,” Musk said in a tweet.

“Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.”