Are flight details private? Why is Taylor Swift threatening legal action against a student?

Naturally, one of the biggest perks of flying privately is privacy. It’s only within the cabin, though, that you can avoid unwanted attention. Millions of people follow social media profiles that share the travel plans of billionaires and celebrities like Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, and Tom Cruise. In a recent move, singer Taylor Swift’s legal team is taking action against a Florida student who has been sharing the singer’s private flight details online for years. Jack Sweeney, the man in question, is known to record and publish information on the singer’s private plane records online, thus posing a security threat. But are flight details really private? Let’s take a closer look. Taylor Swift threatens Florida student Sweeney, a 21-year-old University of Central Florida student, has received a cease-and-desist letter from Swift’s attorneys demanding that he refrain from disclosing the whereabouts of her private jet, according to The Washington Post. Swift’s lead legal representative on this matter, Venable LLP’s Katie Morrone, accused Sweeney of “stalking and harassing behaviour, including consistently publishing real-time and precise information about our client’s location and future whereabouts to the public on social media” in a letter from December. This presents an “imminent threat to the safety and wellbeing” of Swift, according to the letter. Sweeney is additionally accused with disregarding other people’s safety “in exchange for public attention and/or requests for financial gain.” Even the CNN report that claimed billionaire Elon Musk offered Sweeney $5,000 to deactivate the Twitter account that was tracking his jet is mentioned in the letter. As per the latest CNN report, at the time, Sweeney declined this offer and requested $50,000, stating he might utilise the funds for education expenses or maybe a Tesla purchase. According to the letter, Swift, who has dealt with stalkers and other people who want her harm since she was a teenager, believes that this is a “life-or-death matter.” For those unversed, last month, a 33-year-old man was arrested on stalking charges outside Swift’s home. The letter further said there are “many public cases” of people who have visited Swift’s residences, some of them equipped with weapons and ammunition and “attempted to harm her.” It says revealing her whereabouts provides these bad actors with “a roadmap to carry out their plans.” Swift’s attorneys said that if Sweeney keeps releasing details about her plane travels, “she will have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies available to her.” ‘No intentions to harm’ Sweeney confirmed CNN that he received the letter after headlines from some non-profit organisations and media outlets scrutinised the singer’s carbon footprint. Additionally, the student told the news channel that he was gathering “public information” and that he never intended any harm with his actions. Sweeney continued, “I actually think Swift has some good songs, while adding, “I believe in transparency and public information.” He said there is high public interest from Swift’s fans in the accounts, saying she should have “a decent expectation” that her jet will be tracked “whether or not I do it.” Facebook and Instagram disabled Sweeney’s Swift-related accounts around the same time, he told the Post, and he received another letter accusing him of “harassing conduct” after he started updating Celeb Jets, the Facebook and Instagram accounts he uses to track several planes connected to celebrities. According to Business Insider, the last time Sweeney’s @SwiftJetNextDay account provided an update on Swift’s aircraft was on 31 January, when it took a 26-minute flight from Missouri to Illinois and an additional 13-minute flight back. The first flight alone resulted in two tonnes of CO2 emissions and used 151 gallons, or 1,010 pounds, of fuel, which cost $844, according to the student’s account. History of tracking private jet movements Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, even maintains accounts on X where she shares details about Swift’s and Elon Musk’s private planes. The promise made by @ElonJetNextDay and @SwiftJetNextDay is to share flight data 24 hours following each flight. Musk had already filed a lawsuit against Sweeney, claiming that his family was put in danger by the journey’s information that was posted on Twitter.  According to BBC News, Twitter suspended Sweeney’s initial account, @ElonJet, in 2022. Re-admitted to the X platform, the student also maintains profiles that monitor Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta. Using both publicly-available flight data from the Federal Aviation Administration and flight signals tracked by individual aviation enthusiasts, Sweeney runs multiple social media accounts and the website Ground Control. He frequently includes estimates of carbon emissions from each flight he tracks in his posts. How celeb’s flight details are tracked Everyone who travels in a private jet shares information via the black box of the aircraft. Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) technology provides air traffic controllers and nearby aircraft with GPS coordinates, altitude, ground speed, and other data for safety purposes. However, it also creates risks, which can range from violence to corporate espionage. “It’s akin to driving on the interstate and having anybody pick up your license plate to see who’s in the car and where you’re going. This isn’t just about lifestyles of the rich and famous. It’s about basic security and not being able to track people in real time — which, by the way, is illegal anywhere else,” said Doug Carr, senior vice president of safety, security, sustainability, and international affairs for the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) told Robb Report. The FAA is trying to assist. In order to help with passenger identity concealment, the agency developed several programmes that enable aircraft operators to choose not to share their tail numbers after ADS-B became mandatory in January 2020. Although a large number of private owners enrolled in the Limited Aircraft Display Data (LADD) programme, sources that do not rely on FAA data are exempt from these regulations and are free to share information transmitted by a jet’s transponder. According to the Robb Report, in an effort to close that gap, the FAA developed the Privacy International Civil Aviation Organisation Address Program (PIA), which allows a jet’s tail number to be temporarily hidden. With inputs from agencies