Student Who Tracks Taylor Swift’s Jet Travels Receives Legal Warning from Singer
A college student in Florida who runs social media accounts that monitor the private jet travels of celebrities and public figures, including Taylor Swift, is facing legal action from the pop star’s attorneys. According to CNN and The Washington Post, the student, Jack Sweeney, has received a cease-and-desist letter from Swift’s lawyers, demanding that he stop publishing information about Swift’s flights on his accounts.
Sweeney is no stranger to controversy, as he also tracked the jet movements of billionaire Elon Musk, resulting in Musk shutting down Sweeney’s account “@ElonJet” in December 2022. Sweeney also has accounts that follow the private jets of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and other famous people. He uses publicly-available data from the Federal Aviation Administration and flight signals from aviation enthusiasts to track the flights, and he also estimates the carbon emissions of each flight in his posts.
Swift’s attorneys, led by Katie Morrone of Venable LLP, sent Sweeney a letter in December, accusing him of “stalking and harassing behavior, including consistently publishing real-time and precise information about our client’s location and future whereabouts to the public on social media.”
‘Imminent threat to the safety’ of Taylor Swift
The letter said that this posed an “imminent threat to the safety and well-being” of Swift, who has been dealing with stalkers and people who want to harm her since she was a teenager. The letter mentioned Musk offering Sweeney $5,000 to delete the Twitter account that tracked his jet, and Sweeney rejecting this offer and asking for $50,000, saying he could use the money for college or maybe to buy a Tesla.
The letter stated that if Sweeney continued to publish information about Swift’s jet travels, “She will have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies available to her.” Sweeney said he received the letter from Swift’s attorneys after some non-profit organizations and media outlets criticized the singer’s carbon footprint. Sweeney also said that he did not mean any harm by his actions, and that he was using “public information.”
“I actually think Swift has some good songs,” Sweeney said, adding that he believes in transparency and public information. He also said that Swift’s fans were very interested in his accounts, and that she should have “a decent expectation” that her jet would be tracked “whether or not I do it.”