Lawyers acting for pop star Taylor Swift have threatened a student who tracks private jets taken by celebrities and posts details of the flights online with legal action.
The lawyers have issued Jack Sweeney, a 21-year-old student, with a cease-and-desist letter, demanding he stop posting details of where Swift’s private jet is.
Sweeney accesses publicly available flight data from the Federal Aviation Administration of planes belonging to celebrities and then posts the information online a day later. However, this amounts to stalking, according to Swift’s legal team in a letter issued in December 2023, and reported by various US media. They add that it poses “an imminent threat to the safety and wellbeing” of the star. “While this may be a game for you or an avenue that you hope will earn you wealth or fame, it is a life-or-death matter” the letter continued, according to NBC.
Swift has had to deal with stalkers before in her career – indeed, a man, David Crowe, was arrested last month on stalking charges outside of the star’s home.
This is not the first time Sweeney, who attends the University of Central Florida, has hit the headlines for posting flight details. In 2002, he was banned from what was then known as Twitter (now X) for posting about flights Elon Musk was taking. The owner of X said they were “assassination coordinates”.
Sweeney told the BBC in a statement that he means no harm by his actions, saying that he believes in “transparency and public information.”
His posts don’t specify who is on the planes, or where they intend to go after landing. Other famous people he has tracked include Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Sweeney also tracked the planes of Russian oligarchs just after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
