Using public data to broadcast the movements of oligarchs
Jack Sweeney is a 19-year-old college freshman at the University of Central Florida. In January it came to light that he had managed to create a system for tracking the movements of America’s billionaires by using public data that records the movements of their private jets.
Most famously, he set up the ElonJet account on Twitter that broadcasted the whereabouts of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
More recently, since the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Sweeney appears to have turned his focus towards using his skills to hinder the privacy of Russian oligarchs as they flee sanctions being applied by the U.S. and other western nations.
Tracking Russia’s super-rich
It was reported on March 6 that Sweeney has now created the Twitter account Russia Yachts – it will track the movements of the palatial yachts belonging to various Russian billionaires! The account has already amassed over 16,000 followers who are presumably keen to keep up to date on where these super-rich individuals are at any point in time.
Sweeney has also set up another Twitter account – Russian Oligarch Jets – which tracks the movements of the private jets belonging to the super-wealthy Russians. That account has amassed over 400,000 followers as of now.
Will there be any backlash?
When Elon Musk learned of Sweeney’s project, he approached Jack direct and offered him $5k to take the page down. Jack was calm and cool in his response and counter-offered $50k – stating that he’d use the money towards his college fees and possibly to buy a Tesla Model S too. Musk declined.
According to this handy calculator, it would take around 15 seconds for Musk to earn the $5k he offered Sweeney to take down the tracker from Twitter, which is perhaps why Jack was so reluctant to accept and why he kept the ElonJet account live.
In terms of any similar offers from the Russian oligarchs who he’s now tracking, it seems similarly unlikely that he’ll negotiate a deal. But he has certainly attracted the attention of a lot of high-profile technology companies, many of which will likely be keen to offer him a job!
Toby Hazlewood | Contributed
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