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.”
I find it chuckle worthy that half of this thread is just crying about people owning jets
Edit: also find it chuckleworthy that people brought over their downvote habits from reddit :D
The lack of nuance in any discussion on Lemmy is making me less and less interested in comment sections.
So you think it’s ok to personally own a jet? It’s beyond greedy
I spend zero part of my day worrying about what other people own, to be honest
But you worry about downvotes, interesting priorities you have there
I also don’t worry about imaginary internet points. I’m not sure why what made you think that.
Considering the pollution they produce and the extreme wealth diaparity, id say its a fair gripe
And if that were the topic, it would make sense to spend time griping about it here
What makes you think its NOT the topic?
Did you read the article?
It’s not about CO2 emissions
TBH, it made sense considering the media blast against TayTays flights to see Kelce, but youre right, its not about CO2.
Its about oligarchs and their jet setting habits. After reading several quotes from him, Sweeney has been very clear its about billionaires wealth and that they shouldnt have it.
He specfically tracks Russian oligarchs and a handful of American rich people.
I read the actual topic
I’ll probably join you at the bottom of the dog pile but I have to say:
If I was a multi-millionaire with enough money for a private jet, I would 100% own and travel with a private jet.
1st class?? Pfft what am I, a peasant? No, I’m flying in my private plane where I don’t have to fuck with TSA and customs meets me at the bottom of the steps when I arrive.
I’d fly anywhere longer than a 3 hour drive and I’d probably buy a helicopter for those pesky short trips. I don’t have time for traffic. Actually, if I had that much money I’d have enough time for whatever the fuck I wanted, but I wouldn’t want to sit in traffic–and what’s a $5k helicopter ride downtown?
Everyone on here acting all sanctimonious about their environmental impact would be on a private jet next week if they won the lottery today.
Speaking of which, I’m gonna go buy a lotto ticket.
Yeah I’m not sure what people are expecting rich people to do, fly coach on spirit airlines?
Would the average person, suddenly handed $1 billion, increase their environmental impact? Almost certainly.
Public criticism of excessive impact can act as a moderating factor on this aspect of human nature.
Let’s fight the probable evil of our hypothetical selves by being vocal on unnecessary excesses of the rich and famous.
I wish people understand that if you have any public/online presence, pretty much you can get tracked, especially in this age where ordinary people can track someone from their fingertips (and devices), for example Elon’s Jet which get tracked too using public data.
It feels like when someone use Facebook (or any big services), skipped EULA, and then complain that they’re being tracked…
just my 2cent from average joe.
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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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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.
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Shhh you are saying the quiet part out loud.
I’m telling you she’s a proper cunt.
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.
It sounds tough being a billionaire. She should give it all up.
We’ll take the clothes, cash, cars, and homes, just stop complainin
I guess she is the biggest monster of them all
I didn’t see it mentioned in the article so I’ll just say it here:
Careful about assuming TW even knows about them. People with broad teams, and especially lawyers on hand, also sometimes find themselves with those teams acting on their own to the letter of their contract. You see it at times with legal teams of larger organizations. Not saying that’s the case here, just wanted to remind everyone to not take things at face value nowadays as it’s very easy to do.
I have no issue seeing this, based on her past behavior. Sometimes you get Lars Ulrich, or maybe it’s her handlers, but she always seemed on board with that. Regardless of her other positions, whoever gives a fuck about those.
Well if you don’t want your lawyers to do shit that puts you in a bad light, then you have to control them better. They literally only do what you tell them to do. So if you tell them to just deal with shit and don’t bother you about it, then you shouldn’t be surprised if it comes back to bite you in the ass. That’s just PR 101!
then she should apologize and fire them lmao
Then she should put and end to this as soon as she becomes aware of it, or it’s the exact same thing as doing it herself.
This is like trying to stop paparazzi… No legal grounds.
She “disregards” everyone’s safety by flying in a private jet.
Flying commercial would be disregarding everyone’s safety.
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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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
In public, there is no expectation of privacy, least of all if you are a celebrity.
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.”
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
If the FAA doesn’t delay the data, why should anyone else?
I thought that data was already delayed by 15-20 minutes.
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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’m so tired about hearing about this fake ass bish. Y’all know she’s racist, right?
Seems like an excuse to stop people from drawing attention to her jet use. Easy solution would be to share the flight records only after she’s left each location
That would completely ruin the purpose of tracking airplanes.
You need up-to-date info to prevent mid air crashes.
Or, say, they should only share it once the information is already public. You know, the information that the FAA is already sharing?
You can pick up transponder signals yourself with a receiver.
Yeah like a time delay of let’s say 4 hours.
I’d say make it 4.2 hrs.
fuck all other planes in the way amirite?
The problem is more to do with ADSB I think. If I remember correctly, all aircraft in the US must have an ADSB transponder now. That info is broadcast for traffic awareness but also contains a ton of other info like speed, altitude, and most importantly the tail number. That signal can be picked up by anyone within range using very simple radio equipment, sites like ADSB Exhange do this and populate a map. So right now unless they want to rework the entire ADSB system, as long as you know the tail number, you can track anyone’s aircraft live. Delaying this data would make the traffic avoidance impossible.
ADS-B is not required to be carried by all aircraft, but the requirements read like the Mode C Transponder requirements; it’s legal to take your Cessna up for an hour’s flight around Somewhere Regional Airport without one but it will prove necessary for aircraft engaged in basically any commercial operation.
Delaying the ADS-B system itself would render it useless, but it may be possible to delay any public-facing web display. Wouldn’t stop any particularly interested party from buying an ADS-B In unit and receiving the signals directly though. Or building a radio receiver and decoder from scratch; ADS-B messages aren’t encrypted, nor do they carry any authentication so…honestly the FAA probably doesn’t want to encourage people to start fucking around with ADS-B hardware and would rather they just download aircraft position data from their web portal.
Well not just adsb but I think all filed flight plans are public also?
As are aircraft registrations and pilot’s licenses. You can just…look up pilots by name and get their certificate number(s), address, lots of stuff. Which is how AOPA just…mysteriously starts sending you magazines and catalogs shortly after you get your medical certificate. The FCC is similar with amateur radio licenses, which again is why you’ll invariably find ARRL spam in the same load of mail as your technician license. You can just look up an amateur radio operator’s name, phone number and address given their callsign, so posting your ham radio callsign on Lemmy is basically doxxing yourself.
Imma let you finish, but Tay-Tay has the most expensive legal team of all time!
