Update, Tuesday, February 20 at 11:50 p.m.: Jet-tracking college student Jack Sweeney is committed to shaking off the claims in Taylor Swift’s cease-and-desist letter. On Tuesday, he posted a letter from his legal counsel that denies that there is anything “unlawful” about his history of sharing publicly available information about her flights on Twitter. Sweeney’s lawyer, James Slater, argues that his jet-tracking poses no threat to Swift’s safety, criticizing the “tone of alarm” in her cease-and-desist and describing it as a “groundless effort to intimidate and censor” his client. “We doubt Ms. Swift will pursue meritless legal action, but if she does, we will defend our clients’ rights,” Slater writes. Naturally, Sweeney captioned his post, “Look What You Made Me Do.”
Look What You Made Me Do pic.twitter.com/kETxWamSP3
— Jack Sweeney (@Jxck_Sweeney) February 19, 2024
Original story published February 6, 2024 follows.
Frequent private jet flier Taylor Swift has a busy month ahead. Fresh off multiple Grammy wins in Los Angeles, she’s continuing her globetrotting Eras tour in Tokyo, bopping to Vegas for her boyfriend’s serious sports thing, and then heading to Australia that same week. Just before she takes off, though, she had to stand on business. Business that entails threatening legal action against a 21-year-old student who posts her private jet’s takeoffs and landings on his public Twitter account. An attorney for Swift sent Jack Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter in December saying the singer would “have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies” if he did not quit his “stalking and harassing behavior,” the Washington Post reported on February 6. That same day, news surfaced that Swift sold one of her private jets, per Business Insider, leaving Sweeney with only one plane to follow.
According to the letter Sweeney shared with the Post, Venable attorney Katie Wright Morrone wrote his jet-tracking activities have caused “direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress” to Swift and her family while heightening her “constant state of fear for her personal safety.” Calling the jet-tracking accounts a “life-or-death matter for our Client,” she said there is “no legitimate interest in or public need for this information, other than to stalk, harass, and exert dominion and control.” The data Sweeney obtains for his tweets is publicly available information. “This information is already out there,” he said in a statement to the Post. “Her team thinks they can control the world.” Vulture reached out to Swift’s attorney for comment.
Sweeney previously ran the now-defunct @CelebJets and @ElonJet until Twitter banned the profiles, which tracked everything from estimates of the dire environmental impact of celebrity jets and the takeoffs and landings of important people’s private flights. He even once got into a spat with the man who ran Twitter into the ground (Elon Musk) over his tracking posts about the flailing Tesla founder, who offered Sweeney $5,000 to quit it. If Sweeney agrees to stop tracking Swift, perhaps a new account will pick up the mantle. How else are we gonna make jokes about Swift’s eyeball-popping private-jet carbon footprint in the future?
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