In late December, Swift’s camp hit Jack Sweeney, a junior studying information technology at the University of Central Florida, with a cease-and-desist letter that blamed his automated tracking of her private jet for tipping off stalkers as to her location. In the letter, attorneys from the law firm Venable accused Sweeney of effectively providing “individuals intent on harming her, or with nefarious or violent intentions, a roadmap to carry out their plans.”
Sweeney provided the link to that letter in an email to the Associated Press. In that message, he emphasized that while he has never intended to cause harm, he also believes strongly in the importance of transparency and public information.
“One should reasonably expect that their jet will be tracked, whether or not I’m the one doing it, as it is public information after all,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for Swift echoed the legal complaint, saying that “the timing of stalkers” suggests a connection to Sweeney’s flight-tracking sites. The spokesperson did not respond to questions seeking elaboration of that charge, such as whether stalkers have been seen waiting for Swift at the airport when her plane arrived or, alternatively, if there is evidence that stalkers have somehow inferred Swift’s subsequent location from the arrival time of her flight.
The legal letter likewise accuses Sweeney of “disregarding the personal safety of others”; “willful and repeated harassment of our client”; and “intentional, offensive, and outrageous conduct and consistent violations of our client’s privacy.”
Such statements are difficult to square with the fact that Sweeney’s automated tracking accounts merely repackage public data provided by the Federal Aviation Administration, a government agency. That fact did not dissuade the Venable attorneys, who demanded that Sweeney “immediately stop providing information about our client’s location to the public.”
I thought we went over this already? Public data is public.
I am also a bit lost as to why Swift would bring this suit. Most of her (work) trips are already public information, since being a public person is part of her job description. It’s a bit like the president complaining that we are tracking Airforce 1 when all news networks already report where he is going.
I think it’s cause you look less relatable to the average poor who’s spending $500 they can’t really afford to go watch you sing.
She could be getting legitimate death threats from Republicans not happy about her politics, which if it’s being published as a form of stochastic terrorism, there has been a legal limit on that as free speech.
Yes we did, with elon. He ended up banning the accounts on xitter, after saying he would not do so.
You can still find it on Mastodon though
She also sold her jet which I’m guessing is related. She had a dessault falcon 900lx registered as N898TS but she very recently sold it to a company in Missouri.
I don’t suppose it’s to Swaylor Tift Aviation is it?
That would make it absolutely impossible to track and link to her.
But seriously though, can’t they just register the jet under some conspicuous shit and dodge all of this? I mean, she may be the money of the operation but there has to be several levels of separation between her and operations. Pay a “transport company” that pays a “jet company” and make all the companies in between ambiguous and under different shell companies. Obviously this isn’t possible or the billionaires would have done it. But it would seem there is a way to hide their jets just like they hide their money.
Another point goes to the Streisand Effect.
Considering the amount of MAGA creeps around, I’d reserve judgement on that. She must get 10 credible death threats a day.
Sucks to be her then. She could just not fly around in her private jet so much if she’s so worried.
Everyone has a job to do. Her’s forces her to travel a lot. Yours may not.
She’s got enough $$ she doesn’t HAVE to do anything the rest of her life and still live extremely comfortably.
Her “job” doesn’t force her to do shit.
You don’t walk in her shoes. You don’t know what is or should be important to her. She may be wealthy, but maybe her personal value is something other than what you think it should be.
I don’t walk in her shoes. Yeah duh, if I did I wouldn’t be, because if I ever made 5 million I’d retire, buy a house, and live off interest comfortably the rest of my life. I don’t need any more than that (and technically don’t even need that, considering I don’t have it now and I’m not dead).
That’s you, not her. Like most successful people I suspect she has higher aspirations. Although I find her music a bit jingleistic, I suspect making it is important to her, perhaps even more than her bank account.
I bet swift could fly first class and get through the airport without being identified. But the convenience of a private jet is just too sweet.
It’s because there’s no commercial flights that go from concert halls in Japan to football fields in the US.
Edit: whoops this got misinterpreted. I’m agreeing she should take commercial fights, she doesn’t because it’s inconvenient for her. I’m not saying I agree with that.
Username checks out
Actually surprised no one here is launching themselves to defend her like they didn’t defend Elon on this. Haha.
Twitter is probably a war zone I don’t think the 3 swifties on Lemmy care.
Probably not a big overlap with lemmy and taylor fan worshippers. Still not a mainstream site and she’s absolutely positively a mainstream music artist.
Excuse my ignorance, but if her legal team decided to sue him into the ground, there’s virtually nothing he could do about it, right? There’s no recourse to protect “the little guy” from being legally bullied? Would his best bet be to find someone willing to work pro bono with potential to countersue for damages?
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this shit is psychotic to me, why is this even a thing corpos/individuals are allowed to do?
Your options at that point are settle, immediately, do the nissan uzi strat, waste ten years of your life, and millions of dollars. Or just stop existing.
I guess there are some counters to this in court, but im guessing you’re gonna have a hard time countering good lawyers with DEEP pockets behind them. Good luck finding someone to do a percent cut on that one.
Yeah, I’d have to agree with you there. Almost seems like there should be legal “weight classes” (and no picking fights under your “weight”)
at the very least you should required to cover all extraneous lawyer charges by default. Otherwise you just can’t sue an individual/small company.
Interesting how as soon as someone becomes a billionaire they become a dickhead, at least publicly.
I live under Iraq and this comment made me look up whether she’s a billionaire. Guess that’s why she’s been in the news so much lately. Jesus. I wish the billionaire count was going down, not up.
In the short-term more billionaires might be better. The more there are the more there are to claw at eachother’s throats. Hopefully they all kill eachother in the process.
This doesn’t seem like a dickheaded move to me. First, it was a C&D letter, which has no legal status, and second, the stalker thing is a legitimate concern, especially since the MAGA camp is all riled up about her.
But a stalker could just check the same publicly available information right?
All they’ve done is saved a little bit of effort for the stalker.
She could just not own a private jet and use a company instead.
There’s a huge difference between the info being public and it being broadcasted in an easily-readable format with her plane number labelled.
Wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t have a jet 🤷
