Jack Sweeney Speaks Out Against Taylor Swift Lawsuit Threat

The student threatened with a lawsuit from Taylor Swift's legal team after tracking and publishing details of her private jet usage has told Newsweek that there is legitimate public interest in his posts.

Jack Sweeney has created a number of social media accounts that track and log the comings and goings of aircraft owned by politicians and celebrities, including Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner.

His accounts gained traction two years ago amid the February 2022 start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as he tracked the private jets of Russian oligarchs. Sweeney has also shared the estimated carbon footprints of flights, as public figures continue to face criticism of the environmental impact of their luxury travels.

At the time, it was revealed that Sweeney had been using publicly available aerospace telemetry on the ADS-B website, as well as a sophisticated program he made to match transponder frequencies and separately available anonymous flight plans, to track the private flights of the mega-rich. This week, Sweeney stated that he uses publicly available data from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

However, Swift's lawyers have suggested that Sweeney's social media accounts are aiding the singer's stalkers and threatening her safety. If Sweeney doesn't stop tracking her flights, they have threatened to take legal action, claiming that Swift and her family have suffered "direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress" as a result of his jet tracker account.

"While this may be a game to you, or an avenue that you hope will earn you wealth or fame, it is a life-or-death matter for our Client. Ms. Swift has dealt with stalkers and other individuals who wish her harm," part of the letter reads. Last month, a man was arrested outside Swift's New York City home for allegedly stalking the star.

However, in an email to Newsweek, University of Central Florida student Sweeney has hit back at the claims, insisting that there is legitimate information that he shares online.

'Legitimate Interest'

"Swift's team suggests that I have no legitimate interest in sharing jet information, which is fundamentally incorrect," he told Newsweek. "Her fans, who have grown the TaylorSwiftJets accounts and subreddit, are the ones truly interested. These tracking accounts consistently have more supporters and fans."

An example of fan and news interest in Swift's travels, Sweeney said, is coverage of the musician facing a journey that will see her traveling through time if she is to be on hand to support her Kelce as his team competes in the Super Bowl LVIII on February 11.

Swift will perform in Tokyo on February 7-10. Following the final show, she would need to jump on a U.S.-bound flight soon afterward to make the approximate 11.5-hour flight that would get her to Las Vegas with several hours to spare.

"When the Embassy of Japan in the USA expresses confidence that Swift can make a flight from Tokyo to the Super Bowl, it indicates public interest," Sweeney told Newsweek. "Therefore, 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."

The conversation about Swift's flight habits continued in 2023, as the singer-songwriter was busy flying back and forth to see her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Swift regularly flew between New York and Kansas City to spend time with her beau. She also made trips in between performances in South America for her ongoing Eras tour. She received backlash after it was revealed her private jet flights produced 138 tons of CO2 emissions in just three months.

Sweeney further stated that his "intentions are not to cause harm. In fact, I actually like some of Swift's songs. But I believe in the importance of transparency and public information, seemingly more so than Meta."

Social media giant Meta, said Sweeney, has "suspended my @taylorswiftjets account on Instagram, Threads and Facebook. The accounts got suspended only hours after I received the letter from [Swift's] team."

Sweeney claimed that the powers that be at Meta "provided an 'exception' to suspend only [Swift's] jet tracking account," allowing others to remain. "All the other jet tracking accounts on Meta platforms are still up," said Sweeney, "including CelebrityJets, Kim K jet, Kylie J jet, [Donald] Trump, [Jeff] Bezos, [Bill] Gates, and most importantly [Meta CEO Mark] Zuckerberg's."

A spokesperson for Swift told Newsweek in response to Sweeney's statement: "We cannot comment on any ongoing police investigation but can confirm the timing of stalkers suggests a connection. His posts tell you exactly when and where she would be."

Newsweek has contacted representatives of Meta via email for comment.

Carbon Emissions

For Sweeney, there is something to be said regarding the timing of his issues with Swift's legal team becoming public knowledge.

"This letter surfaced days after headlines criticized her jet use and its carbon emissions," Sweeney told Newsweek. "A year prior, her team informed the media that her jet is seldom used by her and is often loaned out.

"These statements contradict each other, much like her team's response to owning a single jet, which has only been true for the past two weeks. Her family has owned [the jets] for years, with ownership only changing recently.

"The claim of owning just one jet seems to be an attempt to downplay the family's jet use. While this may be true now, it's a recent development."

Sweeney has further accused Swift's representatives of "not responding to my correspondence or anything regarding the points on the emissions."

Pop superstar Swift's private jet usage has been a talking point for years. In 2022, she faced backlash after a report by environmentally oriented marketing firm Yard found at that time that her extensive use of a private jet made her the biggest celebrity polluter of the year so far.

The report used publicly available data to compile a list of the top greenhouse gas-emitting celebrities, based on their routine use of private jets. Swift came out on top, with a total of 170 flights on her private jet that added up to nearly 16 days in the air.

"Taylor's jet is loaned out regularly to other individuals," a spokesperson for Swift told Newsweek at the time. "To attribute most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect."

According to data provided by MyClimate Carbon Tracker, Swift does not crack the top 30 celebrities when it comes to private jet carbon emissions.

In his email to Newsweek, Sweeney gave some advice to Swift regarding her private jet use, should "her privacy and safety [be] of uttermost importance."

"Register [your] jet to a trust like TVPX or Bank of Utah Trustee," he advised. "Registering your jet to an LLC who is clearly linked to you is part of the problem. Especially when the LLC is the initials to the names in your family."

"Don't register the tail number as a resemblance to who you are," he continued, adding that Swift's current number "clearly is showing off that it's Taylor Swift, as the numbers are her birthday and letters [her] initials."

In late 2022, Sweeney made headlines when he got into a high-profile spat with Elon Musk for tracking the billionaire's private jet. The quarrel saw Musk subsequently ban Sweeney's ElonJet account on X, formerly Twitter.

Sweeney told Newsweek that the threat of legal action from Swift's lawyers "bears a striking resemblance to December 2022, when Musk threatened legal action against me following his claim that someone was targeting him. However, open-source intelligence (OSINT) has disproven these allegations."

While Sweeney has maintained certain flight information accounts on other social media platforms, he has worked around X's ban on live tracking celebrity jets by posting updates on Swift and Musk's travels on a 24-hour delay.