Last night while I was working on a pet project of mine I took a quick look at my Twitter feed and a Spaces link popped up hosted I think by Tom Fitton, so I decided to click on it and listen in. For those that might not be aware Tom Fitton is the president of Judicial Watch. There were Liberal and Conservative journalists participating in an at times heated discussion about Elon Musk’s decision to suspend several journalists that have been characterized as doxxing.
Merriam-Webster defines doxxing as, “to publicly identify or publishing private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge.”
This all started when some creep dressed in black and covered his face with a baklava to hide his identity and used the flight tracking data from a website some young individual set up to track the private jets of notable rich people, including Elon Musk’s private jet to stalk him. Musk was with one of his children at the time, so understandably he was quite upset about this.
I can’t say that I blame him for getting upset, haters are going to hate but what this inconsiderate creep did was not okay. It does not matter that he wasn’t violent, Musk was with one of his children and that was not okay. People can spin it any way they want to but it’s never going to be okay to subject children to harassment.
After the incident, Elon Musk posted a video of the creeps license plate, suspended the Twitter account of the kid that owns the website, and tweeted the location of Elon Musk’s private jet and the journalist that retweeted the same information. He has since reinstated the journalists and reportedly is seeking legal action against the website owner.
It should be pointed out that flight tracking data is publicly available so in the strictest sense of the definition it is not doxxing; however, publicly available information can be used for nefarious purposes. It appears that is what happened, some creep has decided he doesn’t like Elon Musk and took it upon himself to use the tracking data to stalk him, and apparently does not care that he had his child with him.
Did Elon Musk overreact by suspending the journalist’s accounts? Probably, but a father’s love is a father’s love, and one can not always be rational where their children are concerned. I knew that my parents were in my corner, we should all be so lucky.
To the point, while I was listening to the conversation one of the journalists made the point that doxxing is not illegal. That is true, it is not illegal to doxx anyone. But how does that make it okay? There was a time when stalking was not illegal, but that did not make it okay.
The very act of doxxing is a vial and despicable practice it is not okay. Nobody, I don’t care who they are, should ever be doxxed. If I knew the identity of the person that was stalking Elon Musk at the time and I doxxed him, that would not be okay either.