““Taylor Swift is right to be concerned.”“
This was Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla TSLA,
and executive chairman of X, commenting that Taylor Swift has taken legal action against a person who is helping others track her private jet.
In December, Swift’s representation sent a cease-and-desist letter to the tracker, 21-year-old Jack Sweeney, and accused him of potentially alerting stalkers to her location, according to the Associated Press.
The letter accuses Sweeney of “neglecting the personal safety of others” and of “intentional, abusive and outrageous conduct and consistent violations of the privacy of our customers.”
Musk has publicly fallen out with Sweeney over his private jet tracking, which also tracks the jets of high-profile individuals such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s META,
Mark Zuckerberg and former President Donald Trump, among others. Sweeney’s tracker, which is automated, uses public information from the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as data from a community of Aviation enthusiasts using ADS-B receiversand publishes it on his website.
“It should reasonably be expected that their jet will be tracked, regardless of whether I do it or not, since this is public information after all,” Sweeney said of Swift.
Tesla’s CEO once offered Sweeney $5,000 to stop tracking his jet, but Sweeney refused. Musk stated in 2022 that although he wanted to ban Sweeney’s Twitter account for posting about his jet, he would not do so due to his commitment to free speech. Musk later reversed course and first banned Sweeney’s account restoring it with a 24 hour delay.
Representatives for Swift and Sweeney did not immediately respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment.
Taylor Swift and airplanes have also been in the news lately because she’s performing in Japan this week, then flying to Las Vegas just in time to attend the Super Bowl, a game her boyfriend Travis Kelce, who is in the Chiefs, will be attending of Kansas City.
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