Despite Gov. Ron DeSantis enacting legislation to block his flight information from the public, one University of Central Florida student is determined to uncover it.
Jack Sweeney, who has made headlines before for tracking Elon Musk’s jet on Twitter, is now doing the same with the Florida governor.
The account ‘DeSantisJet’ has exploded, their first tweet showing a trip from Tallahassee to Tampa on May 19. DeSantis has not publically commented on Sweeney or the account as of yet.
Here is what we know about Sweeney and his history tracking flights, as well as what to know about his new account with DeSantis:
Who is Jack Sweeney?
Sweeney is a computer science student at the University of Central Florida who gained worldwide attention for his Twitter account that tracked Elon Musk’s jet called @ElonJet.
How did he get the idea for the account?
In an interview with Florida’s Fourth Estate, Sweeney told hosts that his interest in airplanes started when he was a child. Since his dad worked in the airline industry, he would track planes to make sure his dad would be home on time.
“And then I had an interest in Elon Musk, and where he was, what he was doing. And then I figured that he had a private jet. And that I could track it myself. But nobody was really doing it. So I started doing it during my free time during COVID,” he said.
How did Elon Musk react to his plane being tracked?
Musk publically offered the student $5,000 to take down the Twitter account, adding saying it was a security risk.
Earlier this year, Musk said in a BBC News interview that Sweeney had been “using nonpublic information combined with public information to track his movements,” which “arguably constituted doxing.”
After joking that he wanted a Telsa thrown in, he refused the offer. When Musk took control of Twitter late last year, he suspended the @ElonJet account.
Following the suspension of the account, Sweeny made another called @ElonJetNextDay. The new account displays results delayed by at least 24 hours, according to the account’s profile.
So why is he moving on to tracking DeSantis plane now?
Sweeney has now created the @DeSantisJet to track the governor’s own plane.
In an interview with Insider, he said he set up the account because of the rising interest in DeSantis as he is expected next week to declare his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Is it legal to monitor DeSantis’s flights?
DeSantis signed a bill into law to conceal details about his trips on both state planes and private, chartered flights, including the names of staff and family members traveling with him. The bill will apply to both current and past trips taken by the governor, as well as other top Florida officials.
However, Sweeney will still monitor the movements of the state-owned jet using publicly available data from ADS-B Exchange, a flight-tracking platform.
What plan does Jack Sweeney’s Twitter account track?
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 account noted that flights of the aircraft do not guarantee that DeSantis is onboard. They are also aware that DeSantis also gets rides on political donors’ planes for personal matters, adding they will share those flights as they become aware.
How many Twitter followers does DeSantisJet have?
Jack Sweeney’s @DeSantisJet Twitter account had nearly 13,000 followers.
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