Jack Sweeney: College student who tracks Elon Musk's jet says he's not worried about legal actions

The college student who tracks Elon Musk's private jet, Jack Sweeney, said he is unfazed by the business magnate's legal warning.

"I'm not really concerned because a tweet is just a tweet, you know?" Sweeney told Insider on Thursday. "From what I see, there isn't much ground for him to stand on and that's the opinion of a lot of people [that I've talked to]." 

Twitter suspended more than 30 of Sweeney's accounts on Wednesday, including his personal profile and the @ElonJet account he maintains to track Musk's private jet.

"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," Musk tweeted on Wednesday night after suspending @ElonJet, bringing it back temporarily, and suspending it again. "Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family."

Additionally, the billionaire modified Twitter's rules to forbid accounts from sharing "an individual's live location." Sweeney claimed that on Wednesday night, his @ElonJet account was briefly reinstated. He claimed to have received an email advising him to "please refer to our updated policy regarding location sharing to prevent further account restrictions," but the account was quickly disabled once more.

Musk also shared a video on Wednesday night that he claimed showed a man who had pursued the vehicle carrying his two-year-old son.

Sweeney admitted to Insider that he's unsure of how the video relates to him. He posts publicly accessible flight data that people could otherwise find on their own via ADS-B Exchange using bots to scrape it. The college student also divulges the monitoring information for Mastodon, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.

"The last time I tweeted [from @ElonJet] was 24 hours before that event and that was a car [in the video] anyway," he said. "I track his plane and it doesn't even really guarantee he's on it."

A request for comment made prior to publication was ignored by Musk and a Twitter representative.

The 20-year-old claimed to have learned of Musk's legal threat while returning home from college.

"I was really surprised, maybe for a couple of seconds, but then I thought rationally," he said, adding that his family was equally stunned by the billionaire's tweet. "It seems like he's just trying to scare me and it's not going to work."

Professor of corporate law Erik Gordon at the University of Michigan told Insider that Musk lacks a strong legal argument because the billionaire cannot assert that information that is already public was disclosed in violation of his right to privacy.

Although a legal battle with one of the richest individuals in the world will be expensive, Gordon added, Musk is still free to sue.

"In the US judicial system, you can lose a lot of money winning a lawsuit," Gordon said. "Wealthy people often make it a practice to sue over these kinds of issues. It's an act of intimidation against someone who can't afford it."

Sweeney told Insider that he has been instructed to contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other digital rights organizations for assistance and that he has already spoken to several people about the lawsuit, but he hasn't yet hired a lawyer formally.

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