Celebrities don’t like Jack Sweeney. For the previous few years, the College of Central Florida junior has run a number of social media accounts that monitor planes and helicopters owned by billionaires, oligarchs, and different members of the ruling class utilizing publicly obtainable flight data from the Federal Aviation Administration. It bothered Elon Musk so much that he particularly modified X/Twitter’s insurance policies to ban Sweeney’s account. Now, Taylor Swift is taking the baton from Musk. The pop star is threatening to sue Sweeney if he doesn’t cease posting about the place she goes in her private planes.
Swift’s authorized group despatched Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter, warning that the singer will “don’t have any selection however to pursue any and all authorized treatments” if he doesn’t stop his “stalking and harassing habits,” in accordance with the Washington Post. His social media accounts—which, once more, submit data that’s already obtainable to the general public—prompted Swift and her household “direct and irreparable hurt, in addition to emotional and bodily misery,” and left her in a “fixed state of concern for her private security.”
Swift’s group confirmed to Gizmodo that the menace is actual however declined to remark.
Sweeney instructed Gizmodo he has no intention of harming the singer. “I truly suppose Swift has some good songs,” he stated, however “I imagine in transparency and public data.”
The faculty scholar factors out that for all Swift’s obvious concern about privateness, she’s unusually public about her planes. “She inherently might fly business or even fly a constitution jet. However as a substitute, she chooses to fly personal jets that are registered in her birthday, and initials,” Sweeney stated.
For instance, a Falcon 900 reportedly owned by Swift is registered as N898TS, apparently referencing her first and final identify and her well-known 1989 beginning yr. Although the registration for that aircraft modified in current days, analysis by Swift’s rabid followers suggests the jet remains to be hers.
Security isn’t the one motive Swift would possibly wish to maintain her joyrides personal. For years, Taylor’s been referred to as out for her astronomical carbon footprint as one of many world’s main customers of personal planes. Her jetsetting relationship with Kansas Metropolis Chiefs participant Travis Kelce, for instance, has the pop star flying backwards and forwards between New York, the Midwest, and her worldwide tour dates. Jalopnik studies that Swift took 12 journeys to see her football-playing beau within the final three months of 2023 alone. An impartial analysis discovered that Swift was the “greatest movie star CO2e polluter of the yr” in 2022, and her impact on the setting is among the most damning criticisms of the pop star’s profession.
However Taylor “Carbon Queen” Swift maintains that flight monitoring is a “a life-or-death matter” and that there’s “no respectable curiosity in or public want for this data, apart from to stalk, harass, and exert dominion and management.” In her protection, she does deal with stalkers as one of many world’s most well-known individuals. An alleged stalker was arrested three times in a single week in January, beneath accusations of disorderly conduct close to Swift’s Manhattan townhouse.
Then once more, turning off Sweeney’s social media accounts wouldn’t do a lot to throw off a decided stalker when the flight data are a matter of public document.
“Swift’s group additionally means that I’ve no respectable curiosity in sharing the jet data,” Sweeney stated, however the followers who’ve grown the recognition of the TaylorSwiftJets accounts and corresponding subreddit present that isn’t true. “I feel the individuals are , and that you need to have an honest expectation that your jet will likely be tracked, whether or not or not I do it, as in spite of everything, it’s public data.”
Swift isn’t the one thorn in Sweeney’s flight-tracking facet. Shortly after shopping for Twitter, Elon Musk modified the platform’s doxing insurance policies after which went on a tirade about @ElonJet, an account Sweeney ran that tracked the billionaire’s flights. Although Musk beforehand used his tolerance of @ElonJet for example of his chivalrous dedication to free speech, the CEO later banned @ElonJet from Twitter, after which proceeded to ban a number of journalists merely for discussing the account. Musk later welcomed the journalists and @ElonJet back to the platform without explanation, and subsequently banned @ElonJet as soon as once more. The flight-tracking data remains to be obtainable by means of accounts on Threads and BlueSky.
