He blocked @ElonJet but left the account tracking Jeff Bezos' aircraft, run by the same person, up. *GASP*

I muted his muskness on Twitter. My feed has never looked so good, but I understand that is temporary. He'll undoubtedly unmute his account because what he has to say is important.

I think I'll give MySpace another go.

Elon went full retard. Stalker followed car so he suspended plane-tracking account...

Well, if you give a kid such a name you have lost your mind. You should be forced to live under such a name as a ten year old in a regular school.

His daddy is the second richest person in the world. People that know the kid probably don't care...

Right now I'd say daddy would be a bigger liability than an unusual name.

I don't know why, but I thought it was a girl's name. Meh. Don't care.

I've been wondering when Elon would give us another shot at Musk-bashing. Musk doesn't disappoint.

it's perfectly reasonable for Elon to be pissed off. Crazies jumping around on the hood of your car is a bit much. Not quite in the same class as breaking into the US capital and trying to lynch to vice-president. But way beyond reasonable expression of divergent viewpoints and something he shouldn't have to put up with.

But Musk's response ... Wildly inappropriate.

What an ordinary person or even an unstable genius would likely do is to get the stalker's license plate number and file a complaint with the local police. Then, if the jerk continued to harass, get one of the legal staff to request a restraining order requiring the dude to stay about three kilometers distant from Musk's location as tracked on Twitter. No, nothing that conventional. Instead we'll just make a random attack on the wrong guy.

This guy REALLY needs adult supervision.

...fucking hypocrite, completely untrustworthy, and in way over your head.

Have fun!

But when some nutter doxxes election workers with baseless fraud claims, forcing them and their family to flee their house because people are protesting outside and calling at all hours with death threats, that's "free speech".

Because people who did exactly that were among those reinstated by Musk because the "right wing was being silenced".

What's this? Mr Free Speech Absolutist is attempting to use the state legal system to get revenge on someone who published freely available public information on his free speech platform? Didn't take long for the absolutist to become a relativist. @elonjet wasn't publishing the location of the car that "Lil X" was being ferried about in because World's Greatest Dad was too busy at work, so angrily calling the lawyers because he's mad due to something that happened due to a "crazy stalker" (as opposed to one of the sane ones, presumably) looks a bit like "rich guy gets angry, demands someone somewhere gets punished somehow". The only organisation that supported this alleged "harm to his family" was Twitter, where the plane tweets were published, so presumably he'll have to take legal action against himself.

No doubt this is intended as a threat to anyone who dares challenge him in any way. The (former) richest man in the world can afford to bury you or I in legal bills from baseless lawsuits.

I used to just dislike the guy, now I'm getting close to rooting for him to die in a Tesla battery fire or something. The planet would be better off without him.

That's been my default viewpoint from the first time I installed a 'tesla wall connector'... nasty cheaply made non compliant piece of garbage it is.

Ultimately, the best way to deal with this bell end is to…

A) Ignore him

B) Stop buying the shit he peddles. Luckily, there are usually better alternatives. Twitter? Mastodon. Tesla? Take your pick - we aren’t short of better alternatives anymore. SpaceX? Could be a problem - that does seem to be the best of his companies right now - but others are catching up. On the other hand, I’m not likely to purchase anything SpaceX has to offer.

"I’m not likely to purchase anything SpaceX has to offer."

Not directly, anyway. That said, I know there's a lot of fun stuff purchased with my taxes that I'd love to get to use that I didn't choose to buy.

It's amazing how easily swayed morons can still support this idiot, as evidenced by the number of downvotes on the above comments (and sure to be on this one, too).

Those who still want to track Elon's jet

out of curiosity: WHY would anyone want to do that ? Seriously, what honest motive can be behind following, live, the track of a private person (and/or his personal vehicle) ? If someone would do that to me, I'd certainly be pissed-off and he certainly would have to count on any legal action I could take to prevent this. If I'm not mistaken, this is called stalking and is a crime, look at the Apple tracking devices and their legal troubles.

Elon's not a private person any more than any other celebretard is.

Why would anyone want to do that? Same reason the National Enquirer or People Magazine exist ... page hits. It makes money, and it's not illegal. Note he's not tracking the induhvidual, he's tracking an airplane. And he's getting the info from already public sources. You or I could do exactly the same thing. In fact, I'm tempted to release a bit of code that ANYONE could paste into their Web page to do the exact same thing. I personally think hundreds of thousands of "Elon's plane is X here! And was -------X-----X----------X there!" pages would be a hoot at this stage of the game. :-)

The Apple tracking devices have been multiple lawsuits in the making since they were released. Nobody with a clue is surprised by the outcome. But that's a whole nuther kettle o'worms, unrelated to what's going on in Elon's camp.

"I personally think hundreds of thousands of ... pages"

I would also be amused to see the Streisand Effect in full swing, but not a hoot to actually see people waste their time setting all this up. Shirley Elon isn't worth our attention.

Oh, wait, the time to write and edit this article; all of us posting and reading comments... We -- me included -- are giving his behavior attention anyway. IT'S A TRAP!

> out of curiosity: WHY would anyone want to do that ?

I was going to post exactly the same.

Imagine the target was you or your children. Would you be happy with that? I know I wouldn't.

I honestly don't understand that guy's motivation.

You honestly don't understand anything...

Guy's tracking PLANE, more precisely he tweets publicly available data... On the other hand, media, fans, followers (every cult leader has those), etc. are stalkers, they've been tracking famous people for over a century and nobody gave a shit

Becuase its an extremely dirty form of transport.

And the data show it is used disproprtiojally for short journeys.

"If someone would do that to me, I'd certainly be pissed-off..."

That's because you are a private person. When someone has a history of actively seeking publicity and attention, he can hardly complain when he gets it. Bonus points to @Elonjet for doing so using only publicly available information.

out of curiosity: WHY would anyone want to do that ?

Apart from what Jake and others have said, there are many people out there who's lives revolve around "following" their current celebutard and having a live feed of where they are and what they're doing is exactly the sort of thing many of them are doing every day.

After all, isn't this one of the premier USPs of Twitter in the first place? Fans "follow" their "heroes" so they can vicariously "live a better life" and bask in the reflected glory by re-tweeting the missives of their "heroes" and increase their own follower count.

Time to register

iselonairbourne.com

eloninthesky.com

elonaway.com

tintube-elcon.com... et al...

and see how long the game lasts...

> As the information is freely and publicly available, anyone with the know-how could build a similar bot.

It being "freely & publicly available" is purely by accident. ADS-B is a safety system, basically an evolution on mode C transponder, sending a lot more information than mode C, for the benefit of air traffic controllers and fellow airspace users.

It is not encrypted in any way because that wasn't deemed necessary, so anyone with the correct receiver and decoder can listen in (which is however not always legal). It's a simple step from there to feeding that data to a server on the internet, polling it with that of other users, and the result is a site like radar24 or a bunch of others. They have convenient and helpful uses.

But, the data itself is *not* public data, such as court or business records might be. This means that you do not have an intrinsic right to use it, much less to abuse it.

He has every right to use it, it's not illegal, Elon just made it against Twitter's rules...

> He has every right to use it

I wish you had read the post you're replying to. It says: "no intrinsic right" (as would be the case if this was public information, which, I repeat for the specially retarded, is not the same as publicly available information)

> it's not illegal

That is a different matter, and one that apparently will be decided in court.

Yeah, he's really lucky in courts :D

As for taking the data and further disseminating it in a way that affects the privacy of specific, named individuals, I think that we can all agree that the ethics of doing that are questionable to say the least, even if on occasion there might be valid reasons for doing so.

From a European perspective, we have laws that protect individual privacy and reputation. Those protections are relaxed somewhat when the individual concerned is what we call a "public figure". This essentially means elected officials, heads of state and so on. That is why for instance one can in some cases insult a head of state, even if the same the same act would be punishable if directed at a private individual. The goal is to strike a balance between someone's right to reputation and privacy, etc., and freedom of expression.

Always from a European perspective, Musk would remain a private individual and the higher standard of protection applies.

As for the US, I have no idea, but I thought I'd share the European point of view on these matters.

But this is not about Musk, it's about his plane...

SpaceXs plane you mean.

But sadly not surprised, at two things:

One is the amount of bile being spewed here against one individual. It's worrying to see this mob mentality in developed countries in the 21st century. We're all comparatively well off (if you disagree, I invite you to apply to the ICRC or to MSF and spend a couple of years in the field to see how others live) so it's not like we need to revert to primitive survival mechanisms.

The other is ElReg (amongst many others) milking the drama for a handful of ad dollars. I know every excuse they will make to justify it, and they're all equally specious. I should probably ignore it, but my sense of fair play prevents me from doing so. What I don't do is disable my ad blocker, read the every increasing number of "sponsored" articles or share any links to this site, and sadly I haven't been doing so for years. I say sadly because there are some good authors who write here; however the editorial staff leave to be desired.

In case it's not clear from the above: no, this is not about being pro someone or against someone. This is about fundamental ethics and a sense of moral responsibility. I would write the same whether we'd be talking of mother Theresa, Stalin, or the guy who stole my bike. Criticism, yes. Hate, no (and that goes for those who foment it as well).

"In case it's not clear from the above: no, this is not about being pro someone or against someone. This is about fundamental ethics and a sense of moral responsibility. I would write the same whether we'd be talking of mother Theresa, Stalin, or the guy who stole my bike. Criticism, yes. Hate, no (and that goes for those who foment it as well)."

On the other hand, Twitter et al are already doing exactly the same with all of their users data, profiling them, probably selling on the results etc etc. Because that data has "value", they don't make it public, but is it really any different morally? There are people prepared to pay to get far more sensitive data about Twitter users than the location of a flight they may be taking. What Twitter et al actually sell may be aggregated, but the people collecting the data have it right down to the last detail.

The data on Musks planes flights is publicly accessible, just as Twitter users data is accessible to Twitter. We get told if we don't what to be tracked by Twitter, don't use Twitter. If Musk doesn't want his plane tracked, then go by train or car. He has the same choice we do.

"If Musk doesn't want his plane tracked, then go by train or car." Or buy a second plane. And a third. Send them wherever when you want to fly.

It's not rocket science.

> On the other hand, Twitter et al are already doing exactly the same with all of their users data, profiling them, probably selling on the results etc etc.

I confess that I have no idea what twitter's business model is or was until now.

But that's a criticism that can legitimately be directed at Twitter the company.

> Because that data has "value", they don't make it public, but is it really any different morally?

That is a good question and this could be an opportunity to open a debate on that. 2 wrongs ≠ 1 right, though.

> If Musk doesn't want his plane tracked, then go by train or car. He has the same choice we do.

If I put a tracker in your car / bike, you can always walk, right?

If you want to make a serious point, don't post as AC.

It seems well past time to review whether His Muskiness should be continued to hold a US Security Clearance and if SpaceX should be allowed to bid on future contracts so long as His Muskiness is in any kind of executive control. Just a few potential disqualifying reasons.

1: Increasingly erratic behavior, suggestive of untreated mental illness and/or drug abuse

2: Owes large sums of money to foreign governments

3: Is deeply in debt generally

4: Has considerable business dealings with the Chinese, who are known for corporate espionage

5: Has violated multiple US state and federal laws/regulations surrounding employment, environmental, and securities

6: Is currently under investigation by at least two different US regulators

7: Has shown, on multiple occasions, that he will fail to honor contract terms

8: He was crowdsourcing potential solutions for problems with SpaceX designs on Twitter

9: Has been spreading QAnon conspiracy theories

10: Has been inciting violence against people who he has personal disagreements with

This is all on top of his losing the clearance the first time around when he decided it would be a good idea to be filmed smoking weed, so there is a history of past drug abuse. Everyone's entitled to their personal opinion about whether weed should be legal, but according to US Federal law it is currently still a Schedule 1 drug meaning that possession and consumption are strictly forbidden. I know some people might think #9 and #10 are sub-categories of #1, and I don't necessarily disagree, but also think they're important enough they deserve explicit mention.

Personally, I think #1-4 are a valid reason to yank his clearance and add him to a permanent "nope" list individually. The first one is kind of self-evident, you don't want someone who's out of their gourd having access to sensitive material. If he were to seek treatment for his mental illness, we could talk about striking that one from the list. The second and third ones are classic methods of turning someone into an asset for spies. Look at Paul Manafort during the Trump 2016 campaign. He owed far less money to the Russians than Twitler does the Saudis and was handing over confidential polling data to the Kremlin. Then the fourth one... there's nothing wrong with having business interests in China, but given how Twitler doesn't really do boundaries, they could easily use the Tesla plants in China as a way to tunnel into SpaceX's systems. Either covertly or overtly by flat out threatening to just nationalize everything Twitler built up in China if he doesn't hand over info on some rocket design.