Elon Musk on Sunday revealed why he is not banning the account which has been following his private plane, despite it being a risk to his safety.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk tweeted.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO was referring to a college student, Jack Sweeney, who has been running an account that follows the private jets of prominent individuals including Elon Musk and Russian oligarchs.

Also Read | Elon Musk reveals why he is not banning account that follows his jet

The account has garnered more than 500,000 followers.

“Elon Musk, for example, has a Gulfstream and there’s only so many people that fly that particular plane out of Brownsville, Texas and fly to the same airports,” Jack Sweeney told Business Insider recently.

Who is Jack Sweeney?

Sweeney had developed Twitter bot to track and share the locations of the private jets of several individuals including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Drake.

The program works with the help of data sources including the Federal Aviation Administration, OpenSky Network, and Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast.

In June 2020, he created the “Elon Musk’s Jet” Twitter account, dedicated to tracking Musk’s private jet by using bots that scrape publicly available air traffic data.

In November 2021, Musk requested him to stop tracking his private Gulfstream jet for $5,000, citing security concerns. In response, Sweeney said that he might stop tracking his private jet in exchange for an internship, $50,000, or a Tesla Model 3.

Sweeney was a freshman at the University of Central Florida, and was studying information technology. He intends to work in software engineering.

Also Read | Elon Musk on Kathy Griffin’s Twitter account suspension: ‘She can have it’

In an interview with Bloomberg Wealth in February 2022, he stated that he was establishing a company called “Ground Control” that monitors flight activity of prominent billionaires.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweeney began tweeting the location of approximately 30 private jets belonging to Russian oligarchs. 

Some oligarchs being tracked include Vladimir Putin, Len Blavatnik, Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Arkady Rotenberg, Eugene Shvidler, Vladimir Potanin, Vagit Alekperov, Oleg Deripaska, Mikhail Prokhorov, Alisher Usmanov, Viktor Vekselberg, Leonid Mikhelson, Viktor Medvedchuk, Vladimir Lisin, Suleyman Kerimov, Oleg Tinkov, Yuri Linnik, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Dmitry Mazepin, and Alexei Mordashov.