The student who tracks Elon Musk's private jet is now doing the same for Ron DeSantis' plane.
Jack Sweeney created a Twitter account to track the governor's state-owned jet.
The @DeSantisJet account plans to tweet with a 24-hour delay to comply with Twitter's privacy rules.
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The college student who tracks Elon Musk's private jet on Twitter has decided to give Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida the same treatment.
Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, has set up a new Twitter account, @DeSantisJet, to track the government-owned jet the politician uses.
He told Insider he set up the account because of the rising interest in DeSantis, who is expected next week to declare his intention to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
On May 11, the governor signed a bill into law to redact details about his trips on both state planes and private, chartered flights, including the names of staff and family members traveling with him.
However, it will still be possible to monitor the movements of the state-owned jet using publicly available data from ADS-B Exchange, a flight-tracking platform. ADS-B technology allows satellites to track aircraft and helps prevent collisions.
Sweeney's new Twitter account says it tracks a 10-seat Textron jet with the tail number N943FL, which the Florida Department of Law Enforcement owns. The profile issued its first tweet Friday night.
Sweeney made headlines when Musk offered him $5,000 to take down the Twitter account that tracked his private jet. The student refused, and after Musk took control of Twitter, he suspended the @ElonJet account.
Musk said in a BBC News interview earlier this year that Sweeney had been "using nonpublic information combined with public information to track his movements," which "arguably constituted doxing." Musk did not say what nonpublic information he said Sweeney had used.
The student got around the ban by creating an account called @ElonJetNextDay, which posts flight-tracking data with a 24-hour delay to comply with Twitter's updated privacy policy restricting users from sharing others' live locations.
The DeSantis account plans to also use a 24-hour delay when tweeting the plane's movements.
DeSantis has been a prominent figure in the news over the past few months, largely because of his feud with Disney. The Florida governor has targeted the company's special self-governing powers in the state, while Disney has accused him of trying to "weaponize government power."
On Thursday, Disney made a U-turn on its decision to build a nearly $1 billion corporate campus in Florida, The Wall Street Journal reported.
DeSantis' office did not respond to a request for comment.
Mission-Yoghurt-2078 on May 22nd, 2023 at 15:13 UTC »
I heard Ron DeSantis wanted his private jet flight logs and passenger manifests private because he's jaunting about with Hunter Biden.
Lots of people are saying it. All the best people. It's biggly known that Meatball Ron is hiding the fact that Hunter Biden is paying for his private jet flights.
Why else would he want his manifests hidden from the good people of Florida? You know it. I know it. Meatball Ron knows it.
lionheart4life on May 22nd, 2023 at 14:06 UTC »
If the jet is paid for with public money, the public should know what it's being used for at all times.
cultfourtyfive on May 22nd, 2023 at 13:01 UTC »
I expected this and welcome it, but doubt it will make a difference. There is absolutely no reason for DeSantis to pull this bullshit. Everyone in the state knows what he's up to and has already made up their mind on whether they support him running his presidential campaign with state resources while he's ignoring real issues here in Florida.