Even if you don't count yourself as one of the multitude of Swifties worldwide, you’ve probably seen Taylor’s face on a poster recently. They’re everywhere, from Tokyo to Melbourne and Stockholm to Singapore. Following closely behind her far-reaching facsimiles is the pop princess herself. Breaking records (and Ticketmaster), TayTay did not disappoint her international fanbase as she embarked on a globetrotting whirlwind tour that would make Phileas Fogg blush.
But all that jet-setting comes with consequences, namely: a lot of pollution. Even in 2022, when she wasn’t even touring, Swift ranked at the top of Yard’s list of worst jet-setting polluters. Just when you thought America’s pop sweetheart, Taylor Swift, was scandal-free.
Her massive carbon footprint put her in the crosshairs of environmentally-minded programmer Jack Sweeney. As part of a longstanding social media schtick, Sweeney started tracking Taylor’s flights with public airline data and posting the information to social media.
The singer, who’s had no shortage of stalkers in her lifetime, is now threatening to sue Sweeney based on safety concerns. The problem? It’s not clear whether Sweeney is doing anything legally wrong.
Jack’s Annoying Little Hobby
This isn’t Jack Sweeney’s first rodeo. The now-22-year-old rose to national fame as a college student when he made a habit of tracking and sharing the locations of various celebrity private jets. Taylor Swift is hardly the most powerful person he’s tracked: she’s joined by Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and various Russian oligarchs including Putin.
In particular, Sweeney gained a lot of attention in the past few years for tracking Elon Musk’s private jet. He got banned from Twitter, but he was also threatened with legal action. Musk alleged that a car with his 2-year-old son inside was followed by a stalker in LA who climbed onto the hood.
LAPD later reported they had no evidence that the stalker used data from Sweeney – nor had Sweeney shared information about Musk’s cars or the whereabouts of his family members. The young programmer called Musk’s threat of legal action a bluff.
Public Information Fair Game?
In Sweeney’s defense, he’s not hacking into anything or getting leaks from inside sources about private information. He collects the data for tracking private jets like Swift’s and Musk’s using publicly available flight tracking services. These services aggregate data from various sources.
One potential source is Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasts (ADS-Bs). Most modern aircraft are equipped with ADS-B transponders, which automatically broadcast the plane's position, speed, and altitude derived from the onboard GPS. This data is picked up by ground stations and can be accessed by the public. Another source could be websites such as FlightAware or Flightradar24, which collect ADS-B data and FAA information to provide real-time flight tracking services. These websites often have interfaces that allow developers to retrieve data and use it in their own applications or services.
Sweeney likely uses a combination of these sources to collect flight data. What is known is that he’s used his programming skills to create scripts or bots that automatically post updates to Twitter when a specific jet takes off or lands. So essentially, he’s taking information that’s already out there and can technically be accessed by anyone, organizing and aggregating it, and posting it to social media.
Is It Illegal?
Are there laws about tracking someone’s movements? Sort of. It shouldn’t surprise you that it’s often illegal (although it varies by state) to put a GPS tracker on someone else’s car or put a chip in their purse that shows their location. But there are some key differences between that and what Sweeney is doing.
For one, there is a difference in consent. In the case of a GPS tracker, you’re placing a device that gathers someone’s personal information (their location) without their consent. But when someone flies in a plane (even a private jet), they are implicitly or explicitly giving consent to the governing bodies and systems that make their flight possible to collect their data.
Another key difference is that in the case of tracking someone with a covert tracking device, you’re creating new data that wasn’t there before. In Sweeney’s case, he’s not creating a program that makes the tracking of Swift’s location possible; that already exists and was legally created by aircrafts and the FAA. All Sweeney has done is write programs that take a specific plane (one of Taylor’s jets) and the corresponding information from it, and post them to social media.
A more obvious difference is simply that there are laws that say you can’t put a tracking device on someone’s person or car, whereas there aren’t laws that directly govern the behavior Sweeney has been engaging in for all these years. Such a law could be made, sure. Alternatively, Swift’s team of lawyers could craft an argument convincing a jury that the existing law should apply to Sweeney, because he’s essentially doing the same thing that the law prohibits, just in a less obvious way.
What Next?
Both Taylor and Jack seem to be holding their ground on the legal battle here. Sweeney might or might not have influenced Swift to sell one of her private jets last week, but the singer isn’t ready to give up her globetrotting agenda just yet. If you caught the Superbowl last weekend, you may have noticed that she managed to see her tight-end boyfriend, Travis Kelce, playing the day after her Tokyo concert. Whether or not her legal team has a case against the programmer, Taylor clearly has another Chief priority.
Related Resources
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