Democracy Dies in Darkness

Taylor Swift threatens legal action against student who tracks her jet

The superstar’s effort to keep the tracker accounts from posting her plane’s takeoffs and landings recalls Elon Musk’s banning of a similar account.

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Taylor Swift walks on the field after the AFC championship game last week in Baltimore. Attorneys for Swift have asked a college student who tracks her private plane to stop posting the information on social media. (Nick Wass/AP)
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Taylor Swift’s attorneys have threatened legal action against a Florida college student who runs social media accounts tracking the flights of her and other celebrities’ private jets.

Jack Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, has for years run accounts that log the takeoffs and landings of planes and helicopters owned by hundreds of billionaires, politicians, Russian oligarchs and other public figures, along with estimates of their planet-warming emissions. The accounts use publicly available data from the Federal Aviation Administration and volunteer hobbyists who can track the aircraft via the signals they broadcast.