(NewsNation) — Grammy award-winning singer Taylor Swift is threatening legal action against a Florida student whom she claims is tracking her private jet, according to The Washington Post.
Jack Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, has tracked the takeoffs and landings of planes and helicopters owned by public figures, including Elon Musk and Russian oligarchs.
The Washington Post reports Sweeney uses public data from the Federal Aviation Administration to track aircrafts via the signals they broadcast.
In December, Swift’s lawyer, Katie Wright Morrone, wrote Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter stating Swift would “have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies” if he didn’t stop his “stalking and harassing behavior.”
The attorney said Sweeney’s accounts have caused Swift and her family “direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress.”
Sweeney has faced potential legal action surrounding the jet-tracking technology. Last year, Sweeney was banned on X, formerly known as Twitter, by Musk after he created an account tracking Musk’s personal jet. At one point, the account had more than 500,000 followers before it was suspended, according to a December 2022 Washington Post report.
Sweeney told The Washington Post he believes the letters in Taylor Swift’s case were sent to him in an attempt to scare him away from sharing public data.
“This information is already out there,” he said. “Her team thinks they can control the world.”
Private jet flights have been criticized for their “disproportionately high” impact on climate change. Sweeney’s accounts often name and shame their famous passengers. In 2022, the accounts were cited in an analysis that estimated Swift was the “biggest celebrity (carbon dioxide) polluter” of the year.
Sweeny told The Washington Post around the time of the December letter, Facebook and Instagram disabled the accounts he created to track Swift’s air travel. They cited the accounts broke the platforms’ privacy rules. He began posting updates on Facebook and Instagram accounts that he uses to log the travel of planes used by a range of stars called Celeb Jets.
Last month, Morrone sent a second letter stating his posts about Swift’s aircraft constituted “harassing conduct,” according to the publication.
The FAA allows plane owners to request their flights be hidden in federal data that undergirds popular consumer flight-tracking websites, such as FlightAware. Swift’s jet appears to be blocked through such a request, The Washington Post reports.
Many aviation lobbyists feed their data into independent websites, like ADS-B Exchange, that FAA requests don’t cover. Criminal investigators and researchers have used those sites to look up historical flight paths or see who’s flying overhead, according to The Washington Post.
