A Reddit group is tracking Elon Musk’s private jet: ‘He’s a politician, no privacy now’ | Trending
A Reddit group tracking Elon Musk’s private jet has amassed more than 2 lakh followers. The group was created in 2022, but it gained wider attention after the tech billionaire found a place in the Donald Trump adminration. The group uses publicly-available data, much like Jack Sweeney did with his famous @ElonJet account, to keep tabs on where the Tesla billionaire is flying. A Reddit group is tracking Elon Musk’s private jet According to the Reddit group, Musk has taken 10 flights in the last three days alone. His private jet has been criss-crossing the United States, shuttling between Texas, Florida, and New York in the days following Donald Trump’s election victory. Privacy concerns over jet trackingLess than three years ago, Elon Musk had threatened to sue Jack Sweeney, the University of Central Florida student who created Twitter bots to track his private jet. Sweeney used data publicly available through the US Federal Aviation Adminration to see where Musk’s private jet was going. Earlier, Musk had even offered Sweeney $5,000 to stop tracking his jet. Sweeney countered requesting $50,000 or an internship in one of Musk’s companies, but received no response from the world’s richest man. In 2022, Musk announced that a “crazy stalker” had followed a car carrying his 2-year-old son and threatened to ban Sweeney’s @ElonJet account. At that time, many people had sided with the tech billionaire, saying that a private citizen should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. With Musk now a part of the US government, do these expectations still apply? Elon Musk: A politicianElon Musk was recently appointed to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. Some Reddit users said that as a politician, he should not object to his movements being tracked. “He is now a politician. He has no right to privacy because he is not a private citizen anymore,” read one comment on Reddit. “He banned the account on Twitter that was tracking his jet after explicitly saying that he wouldn’t. He kind of asked for this,” another person added. Musk’s appointment as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has not been without controversies. “There’s direct conflicts between his businesses and government’s interest,” Ann Skeet, director of leadership ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center, was quoted as saying the Associated Press. “He’s now in a position to try and curry favour for those enterprises.” Musk’s SpaceX holds billions of dollars in NASA contracts. He’s CEO of Tesla, an electric car business that benefits from government tax incentives and is subject to auto safety rules. His social media platform X, artificial intelligence startup xAI, brain implant maker Neuralink and tunnel-building Boring company all intersect with the federal government in various ways.
