Flight tracking of celebrities breaks the rules. Free Speech may be protected but not everything you say or post is legitimately covered. Even though the information is publicly available, making it convenient for psychopaths to find and stalk someone crosses the red line.
Tracking Musk around the world
One activist, @ElonJet creator Jack Sweeney, uses his Twitter account for tracking the movements of “Elon Musk’s private jet around the globe.” Anyone with the plane’s tail number can access the same information. Even so, the “account was suspended, restored and taken down again Wednesday.”
Soon, Twitter’s new owner posted an explanation. “Any account doxxing 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 info.”
It’s the “real-time” part which is so concerning. “Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok,” Elon Musk added. By “slightly delayed,” the idea is for it to be long enough not to put anyone in actual danger. He has a good reason for that.
Anyone recognize this person or car? pic.twitter.com/2U0Eyx7iwl
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022
His toddler son was attacked by someone who possibly used info from the jet tracking account. The attacker apparently presumed Musk himself was in the car simply because it was his jet. Musk isn’t the only one at risk for similar stalking, practically anyone who owns a private plane is in the same danger. Stalking shouldn’t be facilitated by third parties and doing so isn’t “free speech.”
“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.” Like everything else in his personal life, the name of Musk’s child with Grimes is controversial. “X Æ A-Xii” Don’t try to pronounce it.
Sweeney denied the alleged tracking incident “had anything to do with his account” but Musk declared that “legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family.”
All of Sweeney’s accounts
“Elon gave me no warning,” he wrote on another social media platform. “Plus he suspended all of my accounts, half of which track aircraft (NASA aircraft, experimental aircraft, weather, Air Force etc), not people, including my personal.”
The “20-year-old college student and flight tracking enthusiast” had “amassed more than 500,000 followers by using public flight information and data to post the whereabouts of Mr. Musk’s private plane.”
Liberals looking for anything they can use to attack Musk with went digging and found out that “Musk and his team appeared to have created new rules about live locations that were published in the last 24 hours.”
Any account doxxing 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 info.
Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022
The latest language reads, “if the information is not shared during a crisis situation to assist with humanitarian efforts, we will remove any tweets or accounts that share someone’s live location.” Apple is having a serious problem over their air tags because stalkers have made them the tracking technology of choice.
The controversial move to ban real-time tracking has supporters, too. Jason Calacanis, for instance. He’s “a tech investor and an adviser to Mr. Musk for the Twitter takeover.” On December 14, he tweeted, “sustained sharing of public location information is de facto doxxing.” The term usually applies to “the sharing of private information on the internet.”
Private information used in doxxing is usually mined from public data. It sits there harmlessly until someone puts it in the face of someone predisposed to use it for nefarious purposes. Just because the info is in the public domain doesn’t get Mr. Sweeney off the hook.
