Taylor Swift Threatens to Sue the College Student Tracking Her Private Jet
Tay-Tay is definitely not shaking this one off.
Taylor Swift’s attorneys have threatened legal action against Florida college student Jack Sweeney, who runs social-media accounts tracking her, as well as other celebrities’, private-jet flights, The Washington Post reported. The Grammy-award winner’s lawyer issued a cease-and-desist letter in December to Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, stating that the singer “would have no choice but to purse any and all legal remedies” if Sweeney did not stop his “stalking and harassing behavior.”
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The college student uses publicly available data from the Federal Aviation Administration as well as the signals that private jets broadcast to gather the accounts’ details. “I’d like to clarify that my intentions are not to cause harm,” Sweeney tells Robb Report via email. “In fact, I actually like some of Swift’s songs. But I believe in the importance of transparency and public information.”
As for Swift, the profiles have caused the singer “direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress,” according to the letter, which Sweeney shared with The Washington Post. Reps for Swift did not respond to Robb Report’s request for comment.
Sweeney made headlines last summer for sharing real-time information about A-listers’ private jets, including Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk, and other billionaires. The activity got the college student banned from X, formerly known as Twitter, by Musk, who said his page was “a direct personal safety risk.” Sweeney then moved his flight-tracking account to Threads in July of last year and has since re-joined X, posting celebrity flight information on a 24-hour delay.
Swift’s private jet—which she may be using to fly to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas next Sunday—was in the news last year as well, when the pop star topped a 2022 report of celebrities with the biggest carbon footprint, The Post reported. According to a study by Yard, which tracked estimated fuel use per flight and greenhouse gas emissions, her flights emitted nearly 8,300 tons of CO2e, about 1,100 times more than the average person emits annually.
“Taylor’s jet is loaned out regularly to other individuals,” Swift’s publicist told The Post at the time. “To attribute most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect.” Sweeney tells Robb Report that her letter “surfaced days after headlines criticized her jet use and its carbon emissions.”
Celebrity private-jet tracking certainly isn’t a new topic in aviation circles by any means. But the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can’t eliminate the practice—at least, not yet.
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