First Elon Musk went after Jack Sweeney. And now, Taylor Swift. Sweeney is the man behind online accounts that track the takeoffs and landings of planes and helicopters owned by billionaires, politicians and other public figures.

Swift’s lawyers have sent a cease-and-desist letter to him for using public flight data to track private jet usage. In other words, his social media accounts could be aiding Swift’s stalkers and threatening her safety.

Besides data on private jet landing and takeoff patterns, the University of Central Florida junior also posts estimates of the associated fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions of the flights.
In 2022, the UK-based sustainability marketing agency Yard reported celebrities with the biggest carbon footprints from flying placed Swift at the top of the list. Her publicist called the analysis flawed because her jet was often loaned out to other people.

Sweeney moved from Twitter to Threads after Elon Musk banned him from the platform and accused the student of posting “assassination coordinates”. But in late 2022, Sweeney returned to X with an account that shares data on Musk’s private jet but with a 24-hour delay. He is behind multiple accounts across Threads, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and other social media platforms dedicated to Musk and other public figures’ flight data.

James Slater, Sweeney’s lawyer, has issued a statement: “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.”