Honestly, if I could go the rest of my life without seeing some story about Taylor Swift and the NFL, I would be very happy. I am not a fan of how she has become such a distraction in NFL games (now I probably have some readers mad at me now 🙂). But, when I saw this story, it involved someone I have written about before so wanted to do a post on this as well.
Taylor Swift Threatens Legal Action Against Jet Tracker
Jack Sweeney first came to the public eye when Elon Musk had offered him $5,000 to stop publishing the information on his jet routes. Jack Sweeney was in college and using publicly available tracking data with bots he created to take that data and put it on public forums for those interested in seeing where the rich and famous flew to in their private jets.
It was not just Musk but also President Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and hundreds of others that Jack Sweeney would provide the information on take off and landing airports for the jets registered to them. He was banned on X after Elon Musk took it over but now has accounts on their to post data with a 24 hour delay from the time the flight occurred.
He has been posting live information on Taylor Swift’s jet, a Dassault Falcon 900 (which her spokesperson says is now her only plane), on other platforms like Bluesky. Swift’s law firm had sent a cease-and-desist letter in December and then another letter in January saying they would take any and all legal action necessary to stop him from his “harassing” behavior.
Sweeney says that the timing of the letter was due to the article that was published showing celebrities as the “worst” for carbon emissions with their private jets and the types of use they had with them. Swift was named as one of the worst, based in part on the data that Jack had accumulated from the ADS-B tracking he had.
Funnily enough, Taylor’s team claimed that many of the times that the data showed her jet on the move, she wasn’t using it but it was being borrowed by others. If that is the case, then she shouldn’t be worried about the tracking of the jet itself since Sweeney doesn’t know if she is on the plane or not.
Also, there has been a ton of play about her “time traveling” to get from her concert in Japan to the Super Bowl – and she and her team have had no issue with that or the fact that this will undoubtedly be the most tracked flight she has ever had. Yet, they still claim that Sweeney is putting her life in danger by his publication of data that can be retrieved by anyone who wants to access the raw ADS-B data.
For Sweeney’s part, he doesn’t seem worried at all about the legal missives and actually appears to be quite dismissive of it. A lawyer representing him in this matter said that “This isn’t about putting a GPS tracker on someone and invading their privacy. It’s using public information to track the jet of a public figure. This is their means to try to quash a PR issue and bully my client to have the bad coverage die down.”
Source: Washington Post
A cease and desist letter is likely all that can done on Swift’s teams’ part. Any litigation could likely open them up to SLAPP claim which could be costly and rather embarrassing for her.
Sweeney is a pathetic little weasel. He’s paparazzi with computer skills. When he was only doing this to Musk and his ilk it was only dangerous and incredibly tasteless. The difference with Taylor Swift is that she HAS TO make public appearances in specific places at specific times. That puts her in extremely dangerous positions from cranks and nutbags, some of whom are heavily armed. Sweeney has now stepped way over the line. If I had the misfortune to know the guy I would have words with him on the subject. I say this as a person who couldn’t name three Taylor Swift songs to save my life.