Elon Musk Asks College Kid To Remove Twitter-Bot Tracking Private Jet

[TruckElectric]

Twitter account, "Elon Musk's Jet," is one of the most popular out of 15 flight-tracking accounts 19-year-old Jack Sweeney developed last fall. The Twitter bot monitors Musk's private jet movements around the world.

According to tech website Protocol, Sweeney recently received a direct message on Twitter from Musk requesting him to take down the account due to security risks.

Sweeney replied: "Yes, I can, but it'll cost you a Model 3 only joking unless?"

Elon Musk's Jet has 88k followers and uses bots programmed to track every time Musk departs and arrives at airports worldwide.

The account is becoming so popular that Musk is getting nervous. He told Sweeney, "I don't love the idea of being shot by a nutcase."

Musk, the world's richest man (according to Bloomberg data), offered Sweeney a measly $5k to remove the account to "keep crazy people from tracking his location."

Sweeney responded: "Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be a great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car, maybe even a Model 3."

Musk has since gone radio silent since the last exchange on Jan. 19.

For some color on the complexity of the bots tracking Musk's private jet. The protocol provides more color:

But Twitter bots don't get starstruck. They've just gone on parsing the data Sweeney's told them to. The 15 bots use FAA information when available — the administration keeps track of when and where planes depart and land, as well as their intended path. However, Musk's plane and many others are on the LADD block list, which removes identifying information from the data.
Even blocked planes aren't truly private, though. In these cases, Sweeney uses data from the ADS-B transponders present on most aircraft which show a plane's location in the air in real-time as charted on the ADS-B Exchange. Parsing this information is like a logic puzzle: Sweeney's bots can use a plane's altitude, combined with how long ago the data was received, to determine when it is taking off or landing. They can then cross-reference latitude and longitude with a database of airports to determine where the plane is leaving or headed. And though Sweeney's bots can't pull from blocked FAA data to figure out where a plane plans to go, they can cross-reference the real-time ADS-B data with another website that posts anonymized versions of the FAA flight plans. This allows the bot to match the plane it is tracking in real-time to the anonymized FAA flight plans and determine each plane's intended destination. This information is all entirely public, and can be used to track most private aircraft.

Tracking private jets of CEOs is nothing new in the hedge fund industry. There are services that some traders pay upwards of $100k to retrieve flight data of the movements of deal-makers.

Quandl, a flight tracking company that sells data to hedge funds, noticed a private jet several years ago that flew to Omaha, Nebraska, home of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Traders who had access to this data saw that representatives of Occidental Petroleum might be in talks with Buffett.

Days later, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway infused Occidental with $10 billion cash to proceed with its $38 billion cash and stock offer for Anadarko.

Rounding back to Sweeney, the proprietary bots he's created shouldn't be nuked but instead taken private and sold to a hedge fund or Quandl.

According to Elon Musk's Jet's latest tweet, Musk just landed in Austin, Texas.


https://www.zerohedge.com/technolog...e-kid-remove-twitter-bot-tracking-private-jet

 

[CyberGus]

 

[lslick23]

There are ways to block your tail number and the company name from being flight tracked. If he’s smart he will start using the main plane as a decoy and use other aircraft to mask his movements.

 

[Crissa]

There are ways to block your tail number and the company name from being flight tracked. If he’s smart he will start using the main plane as a decoy and use other aircraft to mask his movements.

The article points out that he already does this and the bots sift the data to figure it out anyhow.

-Crissa

 

[lslick23]

The article points out that he already does this and the bots sift the data to figure it out anyhow.

-Crissa

Once gain there are ways to masks your movements. Different airplanes and using other airports where nobody would have a clue unless people have loose lips which we all know sinks ships.

 

[CyberGus]

 

[Ogre]

What cracks me up is this kid figured out how to do something tricky. Gets a DM from Musk himself, and when offered a cash payout he gets greedy.

He should have asked for an internship. It would have been worth a lot more than the $50k he asked for.

 

[Richard V.]

See here along the same lines of thinking by Elon about freedom: Billionaire Elon Musk tweets support of Canadian truckers | Toronto Sun "Canadian truckers rule" Elon Canadian truckers create convoy to protest vaccine mandate | Fox News Video

Vaccines are important, but we need logical and scientifical policies. I have the two vaccines + the booster. Nurses in Canada are not mandated to be vaccinated, but truckers are because it has to do with Federal control of borders not Canadian labor laws, which the unions for nurses are protecting.

 

[Ogre]

I think talking about freedom to defend someone‘s right to track another person‘s location is pushing it.

Musk asked the kid to stop doing it. He offered him some cash. The kid got greedy and Musk stopped talking to him.

No lawyers showed up. No C&D. No LEOs. He just got ghosted.

And people are talking about “Freedom” ?

 

[Richard V.]

I think talking about freedom to defend someone‘s right to track another person‘s location is pushing it.

Musk asked the kid to stop doing it. He offered him some cash. The kid got greedy and Musk stopped talking to him.

No lawyers showed up. No C&D. No LEOs. He just got ghosted.

And people are talking about “Freedom” ?

I think Elon is somewhat cautious about Government policies creping into citizen's lives. I would not want to live in certain countries right now. It could be a slippery slope we are getting into. What about XYZ people doing xyz, and other medical issues that cost the population as a whole are we going to mandate more about xyz.

 

[Ogre]

I think Elon is somewhat cautious about Government policies creping into citizen's lives. I would not want to live in certain countries right now. It could be a slippery slope we are getting into. What about XYZ people doing xyz, and other medical issues that cost the population as a whole are we going to mandate more about xyz.

I agree.

FWIW, if there wasn’t a government database dedicated to publishing this information it wouldn’t be an issue.

As someone suggested though. Musk is rich enough where he can solve this problem.

 

[CyberGus]

I’m dismayed by the cognitive dissonance of claiming the right to spread a deadly disease as “freedom” while balking at the freedom of speech.

Society protects our freedoms, but demands our cooperation in return. Are traffic lights impinging on our freedoms, or codifying a mutual agreement for us to value each other’s lives?

 

[Crissa]

There's a public database of flights because airports need to communicate between each other and because planes crashing into one another or falling out of the sky needs to be tracked. A small jet has the potential to destroy an entire neighborhood in a couple minutes or smash into another aircraft.

-Crissa

 

[Richard V.]

I’m dismayed by the cognitive dissonance of claiming the right to spread a deadly disease as “freedom” while balking at the freedom of speech.

Society protects our freedoms, but demands our cooperation in return. Are traffic lights impinging on our freedoms, or codifying a mutual agreement for us to value each other’s lives?

As I indicated earlier " Vaccines are important, but we need logical and scientifical policies. I have the two vaccines + the buster. Nurses in Canada are not mandated to be vaccinated, but truckers are because it has to do with Federal control of borders not Canadian labor laws, which the unions for nurses are protecting."

Is that a fair policy about the truckers as a group?

I think it is a political policy using power (border control) as an opportunity to "take action" against a group of vulnerable workers. To be fair, all school teachers and nurses should also be mandated to be vaccinated, if we follow the same logic. I think there is a much deeper debate going on right now. I think Elon is right again.

 

[Bill906]

No lawyers showed up. No C&D. No LEOs. He just got ghosted.

My guess, Elon will pay the kid the money but before he does he'll make him sign an NDA. My guess is Elon doesn't want everyone to know he'll pay lots of money to get you to quit something he doesn't like. We'll all try to find our way of annoying him and then tell him "I'll stop for a Model 3".

Also, the kid needs to learn to negotiate. Elon lowballed with the $5k offer. Kid should have started with at least Model S Plaid.