Earlier this month, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk admitted flight trackers using publicly available data, that share the location of his private jet, are becoming a security risk.
Now, Protocol reports on the Twitter direct message conversation Musk had with @ElonJet, the most popular flight tracker with over 83,000 followers.
The owner of the @ElonJet is a 19-year old college student named Jack Sweeney. Last fall, Musk messaged him on Twitter asking if he could take down the account.
“Can you take this down? It is a security risk,” said Musk. Sweeney replied, “Yes I can but it’ll cost you a Model 3 only joking unless?”.
Musk told the college student, “I don’t love the idea of being shot by a nutcase.”
The conversation went back and forth with Musk asking him how much money he’s made off the account. Sweeney said it was about $20 per month. Musk then offered up $5,000 to Sweeney, so “crazy people” would stop stalking him.
Sweeney then replied, “Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3.” Musk replied he’d consider it, but didn’t end up getting back or paying Sweeney any money.
Most aircraft have Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS–B) transponders, so air traffic control and even other airplanes can locate each other for awareness. Information from these transponders are publicly available, even on private aircraft.
When Sweeney later told Musk how he was parsing his private jet location data, Musk replied, “Air traffic control is so primitive.”
Protocol reports the most recent message exchange between the two men was last Wednesday. Sweeney asked for an internship instead of payment, in exchange for deleting the @ElonJet account. So far, Musk hasn’t replied and according to Sweeney, that might have been because Musk was in Hawaii at the time, according to his flight tracker.
Seemingly attaching conditions to the kind request of a Twitter account removal, doesn’t seem to be something Musk is fond of, especially when his safety and his family’s is at stake. Sometimes, one just needs to do the right thing.
