US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift arrives for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 4, 2024. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

Taylor Swift has threatened to take legal action against a Florida college student.

Jack Sweeney, the Florida college student known for using public information to track the flights of private planes owned by billionaires, celebrities, and politicians, is in big trouble as he stated Taylor Swift’s lawyers sent him letters threatening legal action in December over his accounts that tracked her plane’s flights.

 

As The Washington Post reports, the letter was sent to Jack Sweeney, the same programmer and University of Central Florida student briefly suspended from X in 2022 after his jet tracking account upset Elon Musk.

Swift’s lawyers are citing safety concerns in the letter they sent to Sweeney last December. They threatened to take legal action if Sweeney didn’t stop his “stalking and harassing behavior” and accused the jet tracker account of causing Swift and her family “direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress.”

The letter also argued that there was “no legitimate interest in or public need for this information, other than to stalk, harass, and exert dominion and control.”

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Sweeney has defended his work, arguing that the information he provides is identical to other publicly accessible data that, in general, lists the cities and countries that Swift may be in, such as her tour schedule or the NFL schedule of the Kansas City Chiefs.
“This information is already out there,” he said. “Her team thinks they can control the world.”
A lawyer acting on Sweeney’s behalf, James Slater, also issued a response to the cease-and-desist letter as he claimed Swift’s team hadn’t identified any actual legal claims against Sweeney.
In a statement, Slater added: “This isn’t about putting a GPS tracker on someone and invading their privacy. It’s using public information to track the jet of a public figure. This is their means to try to quash a PR issue and bully my client to have the bad coverage die down.”

Swift is set to be on that jet when she leaves her concert in Tokyo and heads to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl.