In late December, Swift’s camp hit Jack Sweeney, a junior studying information technology at the University of Central Florida, with a cease-and-desist letter that blamed his automated tracking of her private jet for tipping off stalkers as to her location. In the letter, attorneys from the law firm Venable accused Sweeney of effectively providing “individuals intent on harming her, or with nefarious or violent intentions, a roadmap to carry out their plans.”
Sweeney provided the link to that letter in an email to the Associated Press. In that message, he emphasized that while he has never intended to cause harm, he also believes strongly in the importance of transparency and public information.
“One should reasonably expect that their jet will be tracked, whether or not I’m the one doing it, as it is public information after all,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for Swift echoed the legal complaint, saying that “the timing of stalkers” suggests a connection to Sweeney’s flight-tracking sites. The spokesperson did not respond to questions seeking elaboration of that charge, such as whether stalkers have been seen waiting for Swift at the airport when her plane arrived or, alternatively, if there is evidence that stalkers have somehow inferred Swift’s subsequent location from the arrival time of her flight.
The legal letter likewise accuses Sweeney of “disregarding the personal safety of others”; “willful and repeated harassment of our client”; and “intentional, offensive, and outrageous conduct and consistent violations of our client’s privacy.”
Such statements are difficult to square with the fact that Sweeney’s automated tracking accounts merely repackage public data provided by the Federal Aviation Administration, a government agency. That fact did not dissuade the Venable attorneys, who demanded that Sweeney “immediately stop providing information about our client’s location to the public.”
Way to kill all the goodwill you’ve been gaining Taylor
Not for all her fans… They’re obsessive like the maga cult
Yeah, but the two cults started bumping heads after the conservatives got alarmed that she was encouraging her cult to vote. I personally went from neutral to thinking she was a good one, but now she’s firmly in the “just another billionaire throwing her money into a legal attack because she is upset flying a private jet involves public information and someone is making it more accessible”.
This guy needs to be more worried about one of hers fans showing up to his house more than she needs to worry about stalkers getting to her.
Just buy three more jets and send them around all the time you dummie
I don’t think she is being a dick, as privacy is definitely important. But the tracking info is public knowledge, so you can’t really stop people from tracking you. Your private jet flies in public airspace, and that’s that.
“Waaahhhh people are tracking me in my private jet” she is 100% being a dick. Fly in a regular ass plane like normal people do and problem solved
That, uh, makes no sense. Regular ass planes are public. The point here is to remain private, not be even more public.
Yes, “public”
With a mouth mask on in business class, nobody would recognise her.
Lol problem definitely not solved, that’s making her even more public.
People would swarm her. She would probably cause a bunch of delays. She’s literally too famous to justify flying commercial.
Edit: she’s definitely complaining about someone simply relaying public information, but she can’t sit down at a football game without people parking themselves outside the door to the suite she’s in. There’s no way she could just chill in the back of C group with the rest of us.
Exactly. Her flight data should be public, definitely, but goddamn do I not want to be on a commercial flight with her. Flying is painful enough without all the craziness that would cause. I don’t even want to be in the same airport at the same time.
She’s not like us at all! She’s better because she’s a celebrity! They deserve special treatment…because!
When did I say she’s better than us or deserves special treatment?
She’s an insanely famous public figure. It’s the people who go crazy over her that are the problem. If given the choice between getting trampled by 100 people or taking a private plane, literally all of us would pick the same choice.
When did I say she’s better than us or deserves special treatment?
The part where you implied she is allowed privacy while the rest of us don’t.
We’re all entitled to privacy. Idk about you, but I can go about my life in relative anonymity, so even if I’m in public, no one pays attention. She can’t do that.
Privacy is important, and transparency is important. It’s public knowledge for a reason, and to try to take legal action against the people who use it is worse than just “being a dick.”
In public, there is no expectation of privacy, least of all if you are a celebrity.
I think a nice compromise would be to have a time delay on the data, so that live data is not readily available, for example 4 hours delay maybe
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If the FAA doesn’t delay the data, why should anyone else?
Want us to compromise on anything else while we’re at it? Burning down the rainforest? Poisoning small children? Clearly you’re comfortable letting billionaires who shouldn’t exist have everything they want. What else can we do for you to facilitate the apocalypse?
Clearly those are all fair comparisons.
I thought that data was already delayed by 15-20 minutes.
Nah. She is choosing to fly in a private jet. That data needs to be tracked and publicly available. She is free to take a tour bus. One of her flights is my CO2 emissions for the year. Certainly not as bad as Musk who regularly takes 15-20 mile flights but definitely something that needs to be cut down on.
That’s it. Time for a new content filter.
Is this Jack Sweeney’s tracker?
Which one is Taylor Swift’s plane? Is it “Cosmic Girl?”
He has a much better site right here. It’s awesome!!! https://globe.theairtraffic.com/
I’m literally here watching the planes on the map and listening to the noises as they pass by. What’s wrong with this at all? It’s like just tracking cars and the guy is doing nothing more than just relaying data.
Hah! Look at this silly little guy getting all loopy off the coast of LA
This is way more fun than it should be.
My house is under the approach path to Boston Logan. Even though I’m over 30 miles from Logan, we can still hear planes if we’re outside and the winds are right for them to come in this way.
I have an app that shows me the exact position of any plane, where it came from, and where it’s going…though the destination isn’t always available for private and charter flights, a reasonable person could make a pretty good guess, well before landing, just going from changes in altitude and speed.
This is a free app. There’s a paid version that’s probably slightly less annoying and gives more tracking features. But even the free version…I click on a plane overhead, and I can see every flight it took in the past 7 days. The paid version bumps that up to upto a year.
What is the app, may I ask?
The one I use is FlightRadar24. Didn’t want to give the name unless asked.
I’m under the approach paths of Seattle international and another couple of local airports so that was a fun plane picking adventure yesterday.
A quick googling…Taylor Swift owns two multi-million dollar private jets: A Dassault Falcon 7x, registered N621MM under Island Jet Inc. And a Dassault Falcon 900, registered N898TS under SATA LLFC.
Fantastic! The trump Jet! https://truthsocial.com/@TrumpJets
Jfc his drones go out and bitch about Tay-Tays 16-passenger F7X while this motherfucker is bussing around in a B757?
How many people is he flying with, as an individual (not even the leader of the free world ffs), that justifies a fucking 757?
How many people is he flying with
Well Epstein, that’s at least 1
Ghislaine Maxwell is at least 2
Oh that’s a 747 for stratolaunch from Virgin Galactic. Would have been a cool TeTe plane name.
What a bitch.
I like all the money, attention and being treated like god, but please don’t invade my privacy.
Well you can’t have one without the other, I’m not going to hold my breath for you giving up your fame tho.
She can have privacy … if she used public planes instead of a private jet.
It’s not even an invasion of privacy. The flight info is public.
IT’S AN INVASION OF PUBLICY!
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I believe the opposite, you need to have dickhead qualities to become a billionaire
This 10000000 percent. You can’t become that without being a horrible person. It entails having copious amounts of money than others could have instead.
I live under Iraq and this comment made me look up whether she’s a billionaire. Guess that’s why she’s been in the news so much lately. Jesus. I wish the billionaire count was going down, not up.
You mean under a rock? /c/boneappletea
He could be Kuwaiti?
That’s a hilarious geopolitical joke and I’m so happy you exist to make it
I sea that my engagement hack had the desired affect
GGWP
In the short-term more billionaires might be better. The more there are the more there are to claw at eachother’s throats. Hopefully they all kill eachother in the process.
Competition is sa capitalist myth. They’ll just end up working together to fuck us over more
As soon as us plebs start bending together. Billionaires will close ranks fast.
Nah they were always dickheads… it becomes ok to show it when they hit that billion dollars mark though.
This doesn’t seem like a dickheaded move to me. First, it was a C&D letter, which has no legal status, and second, the stalker thing is a legitimate concern, especially since the MAGA camp is all riled up about her.
But like, shouldn’t she be taking it up with the FAA then? I’m sure you can apply for delay or exemption in extraordinary situations like this one undoubtedly is?
That is the source of the data after all. If you don’t actually stop the data source from publishing your data, others will continue to use it.
It’s a dumb approach that makes it look like a hurt ego thing rather than a legitimate concern.
It’s a lot cheaper to have your lawyers lean on a college student than it is to have them negotiate with the federal government.
Who’s easier to convince to change, the FAA or a college student?
The FAA. Have you met college students?
The FAA obviously. It’s publically available data, so it’s totally useless to keep one person from publishing the data when anyone can take over and continue.
FAA LADD and PIA programs are just there. Swift has no excuse outside of her getting called out for CO2.
This was a non issue when Musk did it. It continues to be a non issue whilst Swift does it. Aircraft enrolled in both programs do not prevent lookup databases from third parties from getting the data eventually, but prevents in most cases real-time tracking unless there’s literal people standing at the airport watching and reporting.
No, she’s just being petulant about this issue because she’s embarrassed that she’s being told her flying around in a private jet is destroying this planet we’re all living on.
The data comes from the FAA. It’s public data. All this guy has done is put an interface on it. Unless Swift’s legal team can prove that each individual stalker used an interface hosted by this guy I don’t see how he can be thought of as responsible for anything. And even if they did use an interface hosted by him, he’s still not doing anything other than showing public data. Data that the FAA clearly believe is in a legitimate public interest to make public. If she’s got an issue with that, they’re the people to go after.
Did you make the same noise when musk did it?
But a stalker could just check the same publicly available information right?
All they’ve done is saved a little bit of effort for the stalker.
She could just not own a private jet and use a company instead.
A stalker could also check her concert schedule.
Too late you are already getting a C&D from tay tays legal team
They make that highly sensitive info public?!?!
“highly sensitive”, LOL
Yeap, this is a lot more to do with people utilizing his data to point out exactly how bad her private jet use is for the environment than it is about personal privacy.
It’s not like his data is giving any more information than her social media accounts or tour schedule. What exactly is a stalker supposed to do with the information? Are they going to break into the airport and then elude her security detail? Wouldn’t that be a lot harder than just following her after a show?
There’s a huge difference between the info being public and it being broadcasted in an easily-readable format with her plane number labelled.
info being public and it being broadcasted in an easily-readable format
What is the bar for difficult or easy to read data? Is a CSV difficult enough? How do you even quantify difficulty of readability to meet that standard? If I build a tool to parse that new data, does that mean every agency would have to change formats and make the data harder to read?
Wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t have a jet 🤷
Not for someone to be a stalker. You’re saying the only thing keeping some people from being a stalker is how easy the info is to find, or parse, even.
They’re not saying it is the only factor, only that it is a relevant factor. Which it obviously is.
Well, I had no opinion of her since I don’t follow her entertainment. And I did not care about her. I thought sheust be not so bad to have such a following but now she publicly displayed she is as deranged and out of touch as the other billionaires out there. Thus I now have an opinion on her and it’s not good.
I don’t think she has ever really been in touch with the average person. Her dad is a stock broker who could afford to fund her enough for her to get a big break. Nothing against her personally since she seems decent enough. But she also has a case of afluenza that we can help cure her of. She has alternatives: use a tour bus or charter a private plane.
but now she publicly displayed she is as deranged and out of touch as the other billionaires out there
Well you said you didn’t follow her at all so that might come as a minor surprise to you, but she’s always been incredibly entitled and out of touch with normal people. Even before, but especially since she became a billionaire. She was one of the artists pulling her music from Spotify at one point, which is fine but she argued that her music has a certain value that she expects people to pay for, implying her music is too good for streaming or you know… poor people.
Her music is not for me, but I’ve never had anything against her. I have grown to support her a little in the past year or so for taking shots at Ticketmaster. This jet thing offsets the Ticketmaster things plus some. My opinion of her is now at a net negative.
Hopefully she’s not close to this personally, and she can call it off, but that sure doesn’t seem likely.
Well here’s a wild idea, why not ride on a normal god damn plane like 90% of every other person who flies. Boom, can’t be traced by some kid then AND its better by a wide range for the environment. Nothing to see here but rich people problems lol
Sorry, but this isn’t a reasonable take. Someone like Taylor Swift cannot go into the public without it being a huge security risk. This isn’t a TS thing, this is a “being the most famous person ever right this moment” thing.
She could just rent a different jet each time. Would still pollute, wouldn’t stress out a college kid, would be more difficult for stalkers to track, wouldn’t have drawn as much attention.
And thousands of MAGA maniacs now thinking she is some villain. I bet she’s getting tons of death threats now. First AI porn, then conspiracy nutjobs on FOX news, then everybody is projecting the worlds failure to act on climate change on her (brilliant piece of fox news propaganda I must say now), and now this. It’s really not her week lol.
This is it exactly.
Okay but she’s actively choosing to be that famous. She spent 6 years with Joe living a quiet low key life, but she decided to do another breakout into more fame and this is the cost. Plus she could charter jets like other celebrities, or idk just not fly home every weekend from halfway across the world?
90%? More like 99.99% right?
You ever heard of the curse of being famous? Imagine everyone took a love potion and everyone knows your face. Everyone around you is staring at you and attempts to speak to you, touch you, they might even actually worship the ground you walk on. Not only those that love them are around, but those that want to do harm. Cut her hair and sell it, harm her to boast about it. Who knows?
That’s a fucking hell I’d not want to live. That is why they don’t fly normal. There’s a reason that high profile celebrities don’t fly with the rest. It’s not necessarily a status thing, but a safety thing. There’s a reason the president has secret service and a private jet.
You don’t have to own a plane to charter a private flight. She could just take private planes and not have to deal with crowds of people. Then you wouldn’t be able to track her plane, because she would be taking different planes. This is how most famous people deal with the issue.
You right. Makes more sense that way imo
She could ride in an anonymous tour bus, harder to track, she could even have a security convoy, and still save money and emissions. Billionaires are murdering us all, I have no sympathy for her or anyone with her wealth if they take private jets on trips that would take two hours to drive.
She could even have a private railcar! Easier to track than a tour bus but has a significant cool factor right now.
I commented on another thread elsewhere that it would be cool if musicians did private railcars and private trains, because just imagine the collaborations and how it would affect both rail infrastructure and musical tours. Plus the opportunities for media and fan interactions become so much cooler than with a cramped tour bus
That. Is a fair argument.
She’s rich enough to hire a private jet if that’s the problem. I don’t feel sorry for her at all. Or any other billionaire having their jet tracked for that matter.
My work just sold it’s private jet in favor of hiring private jets to save money even, so it might even be more cost effective
The president of my very violent country flies economy on public flights. I think she could have a few bodyguards in first class with her and be fine.
The president of my very violent country flies on two 747s.
The tiny tetchy millionaire prime minister of my country uses a helicopter to get everywhere domestically.
I mean the average for my whole country is the same as the average for the most violent cities in the USA so I think I win.
Congratulations.
You ever heard of the curse of being famous?
🤢🤮
Maybe she should buy twitter and ban the guy, or is this the wrong billionaire I am thinking of?
The guy is on Mastodon, tough luck on that one.
Buy the federated instance!
She’s concerned for her personal safety, but shouldn’t I also be concerned for the risks she brings to me from her excessive co2 production?
I guess she is the biggest monster of them all
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Shhh you are saying the quiet part out loud.
It’s not fucking her. It’s her team. She probably isn’t even aware of it.
If someone works for you and does things in your name, you are responsible for those things and they can be fairly attributed to you.
Didn’t Elon try something similar and lost in court? In case anyone is interested silicon jets tracks billionaires jets.
Edit: I confused silicone and silicon.
silicone
It’s silicon. Silicon is a naturally occurring chemical element, whereas silicone is a synthetic substance.
Silicon is for computer chips, silicone is for boobies.
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now I’m thinking about jet shaped boobies
Silicone is also really nice for cooking utensils!
silicone jets
Minor spelling mistake, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find some in those jets.
Yeah… I mean at the end he got Twitter and I think he kick him out… that was an expensive way to handle it I guess…
I mean it probably is still tracked somewhere else and maybe there are other accounts doing it no idea.
I mean it probably is still tracked somewhere else and maybe there are other accounts doing it no idea
The comment you replied to provided exactly that link…
Oh ok I thought that was somebody else unrelated to that guy.
Still not sure why all the downvotes I just added info that he was kicked out of Twitter… Ugh .
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this shit is psychotic to me, why is this even a thing corpos/individuals are allowed to do?
Your options at that point are settle, immediately, do the nissan uzi strat, waste ten years of your life, and millions of dollars. Or just stop existing.
I guess there are some counters to this in court, but im guessing you’re gonna have a hard time countering good lawyers with DEEP pockets behind them. Good luck finding someone to do a percent cut on that one.
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at the very least you should required to cover all extraneous lawyer charges by default. Otherwise you just can’t sue an individual/small company.
Yes civil suits, if her pockets are deep enough she can sue and appeal and bury anyone and any lawyers that might defend him. She does run the risk for nonsense lawsuits that the defendant’s lawyers can collect all attorney fees at the end of it, so a rich pest suing people might lose millions in their own lawyers fees plus pay for defendants attorneys.
But a small person puts a lot at risk and there is no reward (just not owing anything). So you might settle just to cut losses and remove whatever from Internet. If you are rich, you might settle and pay someone falsely accusing you just to limit losses to lawyers and also get case sealed and an NDA as part of settlement.
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To be fair, Elon did buy Twitter to ban him from the service.
Which worked so well to stop him…
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