Taylor Swift launches legal broadside at a college student who tracks private jets via public data
In late December, Swift’s camp hit Jack Sweeney, a junior studying information technology at the University of Central Florida, with a cease-and-desist letter that blamed his automated tracking of her private jet for tipping off stalkers as to her location. In the letter, attorneys from the law firm Venable accused Sweeney of effectively providing “individuals intent on harming her, or with nefarious or violent intentions, a roadmap to carry out their plans.”
Sweeney provided the link to that letter in an email to the Associated Press. In that message, he emphasized that while he has never intended to cause harm, he also believes strongly in the importance of transparency and public information.
“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,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for Swift echoed the legal complaint, saying that “the timing of stalkers” suggests a connection to Sweeney’s flight-tracking sites. The spokesperson did not respond to questions seeking elaboration of that charge, such as whether stalkers have been seen waiting for Swift at the airport when her plane arrived or, alternatively, if there is evidence that stalkers have somehow inferred Swift’s subsequent location from the arrival time of her flight.
The legal letter likewise accuses Sweeney of “disregarding the personal safety of others”; “willful and repeated harassment of our client”; and “intentional, offensive, and outrageous conduct and consistent violations of our client’s privacy.”
Such statements are difficult to square with the fact that Sweeney’s automated tracking accounts merely repackage public data provided by the Federal Aviation Administration, a government agency. That fact did not dissuade the Venable attorneys, who demanded that Sweeney “immediately stop providing information about our client’s location to the public.”
I thought we went over this already? Public data is public.
Yes we did, with elon. He ended up banning the accounts on xitter, after saying he would not do so.
You can still find it on Mastodon though
https://mastodon.social/@elonjet
I am also a bit lost as to why Swift would bring this suit. Most of her (work) trips are already public information, since being a public person is part of her job description. It’s a bit like the president complaining that we are tracking Airforce 1 when all news networks already report where he is going.
I think it's cause you look less relatable to the average poor who's spending $500 they can't really afford to go watch you sing.
She could be getting legitimate death threats from Republicans not happy about her politics, which if it's being published as a form of stochastic terrorism, there has been a legal limit on that as free speech.
Until someone trains an AI on it, then everyone loses their minds.
------ the point ------>
Nobody should have a private jet anyway.
You can't have a private train car unless you're an oil baron with a name like Charles crassus Taft
Baboo?!
He remembers me!
It's like meowschwitz in here
cant tell if thats a real person or a hunger games character
What about billionaires?
Oh, I know what you’re going to say... “There shouldn’t be billionaires either”. Well guess what! You’re right. Fuck em both.
Didn't Elon try something similar and lost in court? In case anyone is interested silicon jets tracks billionaires jets.
Edit: I confused silicone and silicon.
It’s silicon. Silicon is a naturally occurring chemical element, whereas silicone is a synthetic substance.
Silicon is for computer chips, silicone is for boobies.
now I'm thinking about jet shaped boobies
Silicone is also really nice for cooking utensils!
Minor spelling mistake, but I wouldn't be surprised to find some in those jets.
Yeah.... I mean at the end he got Twitter and I think he kick him out... that was an expensive way to handle it I guess....
I mean it probably is still tracked somewhere else and maybe there are other accounts doing it no idea.
The comment you replied to provided exactly that link...
Oh ok I thought that was somebody else unrelated to that guy.
Still not sure why all the downvotes I just added info that he was kicked out of Twitter... Ugh .
Interesting how as soon as someone becomes a billionaire they become a dickhead, at least publicly.
I live under Iraq and this comment made me look up whether she's a billionaire. Guess that's why she's been in the news so much lately. Jesus. I wish the billionaire count was going down, not up.
You mean under a rock? /c/boneappletea
He could be Kuwaiti?
That's a hilarious geopolitical joke and I'm so happy you exist to make it
I sea that my engagement hack had the desired affect
GGWP
In the short-term more billionaires might be better. The more there are the more there are to claw at eachother's throats. Hopefully they all kill eachother in the process.
Competition is sa capitalist myth. They'll just end up working together to fuck us over more
As soon as us plebs start bending together. Billionaires will close ranks fast.
This doesn’t seem like a dickheaded move to me. First, it was a C&D letter, which has no legal status, and second, the stalker thing is a legitimate concern, especially since the MAGA camp is all riled up about her.
But a stalker could just check the same publicly available information right?
All they've done is saved a little bit of effort for the stalker.
She could just not own a private jet and use a company instead.
A stalker could also check her concert schedule.
They make that highly sensitive info public?!?!
Too late you are already getting a C&D from tay tays legal team
Yeap, this is a lot more to do with people utilizing his data to point out exactly how bad her private jet use is for the environment than it is about personal privacy.
It's not like his data is giving any more information than her social media accounts or tour schedule. What exactly is a stalker supposed to do with the information? Are they going to break into the airport and then elude her security detail? Wouldn't that be a lot harder than just following her after a show?
There's a huge difference between the info being public and it being broadcasted in an easily-readable format with her plane number labelled.
Not for someone to be a stalker. You're saying the only thing keeping some people from being a stalker is how easy the info is to find, or parse, even.
They're not saying it is the only factor, only that it is a relevant factor. Which it obviously is.
What is the bar for difficult or easy to read data? Is a CSV difficult enough? How do you even quantify difficulty of readability to meet that standard? If I build a tool to parse that new data, does that mean every agency would have to change formats and make the data harder to read?
But like, shouldn't she be taking it up with the FAA then? I'm sure you can apply for delay or exemption in extraordinary situations like this one undoubtedly is?
That is the source of the data after all. If you don't actually stop the data source from publishing your data, others will continue to use it.
It's a dumb approach that makes it look like a hurt ego thing rather than a legitimate concern.
It's a lot cheaper to have your lawyers lean on a college student than it is to have them negotiate with the federal government.
Who’s easier to convince to change, the FAA or a college student?
FAA LADD and PIA programs are just there. Swift has no excuse outside of her getting called out for CO2.
This was a non issue when Musk did it. It continues to be a non issue whilst Swift does it. Aircraft enrolled in both programs do not prevent lookup databases from third parties from getting the data eventually, but prevents in most cases real-time tracking unless there’s literal people standing at the airport watching and reporting.
No, she’s just being petulant about this issue because she’s embarrassed that she’s being told her flying around in a private jet is destroying this planet we’re all living on.
The FAA. Have you met college students?
The FAA obviously. It's publically available data, so it's totally useless to keep one person from publishing the data when anyone can take over and continue.
The data comes from the FAA. It's public data. All this guy has done is put an interface on it. Unless Swift's legal team can prove that each individual stalker used an interface hosted by this guy I don't see how he can be thought of as responsible for anything. And even if they did use an interface hosted by him, he's still not doing anything other than showing public data. Data that the FAA clearly believe is in a legitimate public interest to make public. If she's got an issue with that, they're the people to go after.
Did you make the same noise when musk did it?
Another point goes to the Streisand Effect.
Considering the amount of MAGA creeps around, I'd reserve judgement on that. She must get 10 credible death threats a day.
And now more MAGA creeps know about it, and more trackers will pop up. Streisand Effect.
All it takes is one. Everybody can track planes if they want to. This guy just makes it easy. Everybody knows about him since Musk.
OK is making it easy a threat worth doing something about, or simply making public info easier to find? You're trying to have it both ways. Is it "just easier" or a real threat?
Pick one.
I don't see your logic here.
"All it takes is one."
"Anyone can track planes."
pick one.
Again, I don't see your logic.
In fact, we don't see your logic.
Sucks to be her then. She could just not fly around in her private jet so much if she's so worried.
Everyone has a job to do. Her's forces her to travel a lot. Yours may not.
She's got enough $$ she doesn't HAVE to do anything the rest of her life and still live extremely comfortably.
Her "job" doesn't force her to do shit.
You don't walk in her shoes. You don't know what is or should be important to her. She may be wealthy, but maybe her personal value is something other than what you think it should be.
I don't walk in her shoes. Yeah duh, if I did I wouldn't be, because if I ever made 5 million I'd retire, buy a house, and live off interest comfortably the rest of my life. I don't need any more than that (and technically don't even need that, considering I don't have it now and I'm not dead).
That's you, not her. Like most successful people I suspect she has higher aspirations. Although I find her music a bit jingleistic, I suspect making it is important to her, perhaps even more than her bank account.
In no way am I saying she can't make music.
But making music doesn't require her to charge so much money to make more money, only to break even.
In my opinion Higher aspiration doesn't absolve someone of taking advantage of others, even if it is "fair price" according to capitalism.
Sure it could be important to her. In my opinion that changes her desires from "wanting to make music" to "wanting to make more money".
I have yet to understand how it is "moral" for someone in a society to gather such disparate worth, and then call them "successful". Is society success defined by how much you take advantage of others?
Wealth is a funny thing. Especially these days with so much money at the top. I don't begrudge someone being wealthy. I begrudge those that make money on their money and call it work.
I can begrudge the wealthy. Look at where Taylor Swift came from. She's the child of two wealthy investment bankers who moved to Nashville to support their daughters music career when she was still a tween. Taylor Swift has always been a marketing project, it's all she literally knows how to be since she was a literal child.
Billionaires also don't just have "I can live on this comfortably for the rest of my life" money they have "I can impact the world if I want to" money. If she never played another concert ever again she could travel the world and eat out at the world's most expensive restaurants and clothe herself in the most over expensive folies for the rest of her days and still leave a massive fortune to her children. Cupidity has no upper limit though so she's still focused on accruing money by changing the playing field to her advantage.
And instead she makes money for everyone around her venues and gives money to food banks everywhere she goes. I mean, I am envious of her wealth too, but I'm not jealous about it. Some people catch breaks in life, some don't
I agree with you there completely.
My aspiration to have 5M and live off the interest would allow me to do what I really want without fear of starving.
I'd be fixing cars left and right for free. It's what I enjoy.
Good luck with that, I guess.
My life experiences tell me that's easier said than done.
So then make your music, schedule less tour dates, and drive a tour bus like everybody else.
Well apparently the planet isn't important to her.
Well here's a wild idea, why not ride on a normal god damn plane like 90% of every other person who flies. Boom, can't be traced by some kid then AND its better by a wide range for the environment. Nothing to see here but rich people problems lol
90%? More like 99.99% right?
You ever heard of the curse of being famous? Imagine everyone took a love potion and everyone knows your face. Everyone around you is staring at you and attempts to speak to you, touch you, they might even actually worship the ground you walk on. Not only those that love them are around, but those that want to do harm. Cut her hair and sell it, harm her to boast about it. Who knows?
That's a fucking hell I'd not want to live. That is why they don't fly normal. There's a reason that high profile celebrities don't fly with the rest. It's not necessarily a status thing, but a safety thing. There's a reason the president has secret service and a private jet.
She's rich enough to hire a private jet if that's the problem. I don't feel sorry for her at all. Or any other billionaire having their jet tracked for that matter.
My work just sold it's private jet in favor of hiring private jets to save money even, so it might even be more cost effective
She could ride in an anonymous tour bus, harder to track, she could even have a security convoy, and still save money and emissions. Billionaires are murdering us all, I have no sympathy for her or anyone with her wealth if they take private jets on trips that would take two hours to drive.
That. Is a fair argument.
She could even have a private railcar! Easier to track than a tour bus but has a significant cool factor right now.
I commented on another thread elsewhere that it would be cool if musicians did private railcars and private trains, because just imagine the collaborations and how it would affect both rail infrastructure and musical tours. Plus the opportunities for media and fan interactions become so much cooler than with a cramped tour bus
The president of my very violent country flies economy on public flights. I think she could have a few bodyguards in first class with her and be fine.
The president of my very violent country flies on two 747s.
I mean the average for my whole country is the same as the average for the most violent cities in the USA so I think I win.
Congratulations.
The tiny tetchy millionaire prime minister of my country uses a helicopter to get everywhere domestically.
🤢🤮
You don't have to own a plane to charter a private flight. She could just take private planes and not have to deal with crowds of people. Then you wouldn't be able to track her plane, because she would be taking different planes. This is how most famous people deal with the issue.
You right. Makes more sense that way imo
Sorry, but this isn't a reasonable take. Someone like Taylor Swift cannot go into the public without it being a huge security risk. This isn't a TS thing, this is a "being the most famous person ever right this moment" thing.
Okay but she's actively choosing to be that famous. She spent 6 years with Joe living a quiet low key life, but she decided to do another breakout into more fame and this is the cost. Plus she could charter jets like other celebrities, or idk just not fly home every weekend from halfway across the world?
She could just rent a different jet each time. Would still pollute, wouldn't stress out a college kid, would be more difficult for stalkers to track, wouldn't have drawn as much attention.
And thousands of MAGA maniacs now thinking she is some villain. I bet she's getting tons of death threats now. First AI porn, then conspiracy nutjobs on FOX news, then everybody is projecting the worlds failure to act on climate change on her (brilliant piece of fox news propaganda I must say now), and now this. It's really not her week lol.
This is it exactly.
Maybe she should buy twitter and ban the guy, or is this the wrong billionaire I am thinking of?
The guy is on Mastodon, tough luck on that one.
Buy the federated instance!
I's she also going to sue Ticketmaster and her own PR team for publicly releasing every city she's going to in her tours?
No but she will sue anyone who repeats it
I hereby sure myself for publishing information about my location in my Instagram posts. Continued posting clearly shows a blatant disregard of my safety and feelings.
Yeeeeah... I understand her not wanting it to be easier for stalkers to track her, but also private jets are a luxury that's very bad for the environment, and the information is public anyway. Swift shouldn't win this one.
Stalkers already can access this information. Also I'm expected to believe they get this information and somehow arrive at her destination before her?
If she has scheduled a concert in a particular city, they could already be there and just watch the planes.
But you'd think she has body guards for that.
So 1) she has already announced where she's going to be and
2) flight records are publicly available already.
Lol, I love that article. The author clearly also thinks that Taylor and her goons are full of shit on this one. Like, it's public information provided by the FAA. Will they sue the FAA then?
Maybe the FAA is unconstitutional.
Probably all of the letter agencies cross that line.
No, they don't. They were created by acts of Congress to be run by the Executive branch.
Publicly available information from the FAA. Simple as.
Both of her planes are blocked at the vendor level, which means they don't show up on the ASDI feed from the FAA. Her flights are tracked by volunteers at places like flightaware who have their own ADS-B transceivers in their homes
I’m team Florida student.
It sounds tough being a billionaire. She should give it all up.
We'll take the clothes, cash, cars, and homes, just stop complainin
She "disregards" everyone's safety by flying in a private jet.
Flying commercial would be disregarding everyone's safety.
The stalker argument is absolute bullshit. A stalker would most likely not use the flight path of Swift's private jet as a means of stalking her; it would be too cumbersome. Additionally, this is not "willful and repeated harassment" of Swift since Mr. Sweeny, as stated in the title and the article, obtained the information from public data provided by FAA. The intent of Mr. Sweeny's tracking project was not to expose Swift to nefarious individuals but to expose the environmental impact of her private jet. The rich and famous are public figures and, as such, are open to criticism from the public. This is merely a flex (and a futile one at that) by someone with the resources to silence critics.
Yeah and how many different ways would a stalker have to find a famous person. She goes to concerts and events all the time, the stalkers know where those places are.
Exactly!
Hey, Ms Swift...? I love some of your music and political opinions. But can you please go fuck yourself? Public = public. You have more privileges than most working people will ever earn in a lifetime, combined. And the climate emergency WE are all experiencing is irreversible...
Oh it's reversible all right... Earth will right the ship in its own time, after we're gone
That fully depends on your definition of what the "reversed" state is. Will ecosystems adapt to the changed climate? Yes. Can temperatures even drop again? Sure. But species lost are gone forever. Ecosystems destroyed will never be the same again. Different ones can develop with enough time and stopping the human interference... But that is hardly "reversible". That is... natural systems covering up the damage. Going on. Not reversing it.
Carlin said it best. We're not worried about saving the planet. We're worried about saving ourselves. When the time comes, "she's gonna shake us off like a bad case o' fleas."
Venus did not for example. Absolutely no reason why earth couldn't spiral out of control in the same way.
This is like trying to stop paparazzi... No legal grounds.
I bet swift could fly first class and get through the airport without being identified. But the convenience of a private jet is just too sweet.
Or even rent a private jet on demand.
It's because there's no commercial flights that go from concert halls in Japan to football fields in the US.
Edit: whoops this got misinterpreted. I'm agreeing she should take commercial fights, she doesn't because it's inconvenient for her. I'm not saying I agree with that.
She doesn't need to do highly polluting transcontinental flights on a whim.
Are you implying billionaire planes don't need airports?!
Maintenance costs on a V-22 may even put her in the poor house.
Assuming not in a grave first.
Username checks out
She's concerned for her personal safety, but shouldn't I also be concerned for the risks she brings to me from her excessive co2 production?
Well, I had no opinion of her since I don't follow her entertainment. And I did not care about her. I thought sheust be not so bad to have such a following but now she publicly displayed she is as deranged and out of touch as the other billionaires out there. Thus I now have an opinion on her and it's not good.
Her music is not for me, but I've never had anything against her. I have grown to support her a little in the past year or so for taking shots at Ticketmaster. This jet thing offsets the Ticketmaster things plus some. My opinion of her is now at a net negative.
Hopefully she's not close to this personally, and she can call it off, but that sure doesn't seem likely.
Well you said you didn't follow her at all so that might come as a minor surprise to you, but she's always been incredibly entitled and out of touch with normal people. Even before, but especially since she became a billionaire. She was one of the artists pulling her music from Spotify at one point, which is fine but she argued that her music has a certain value that she expects people to pay for, implying her music is too good for streaming or you know... poor people.
I don't think she has ever really been in touch with the average person. Her dad is a stock broker who could afford to fund her enough for her to get a big break. Nothing against her personally since she seems decent enough. But she also has a case of afluenza that we can help cure her of. She has alternatives: use a tour bus or charter a private plane.
Just buy three more jets and send them around all the time you dummie
Is this Jack Sweeney's tracker?
https://jackstech.net/planes
Which one is Taylor Swift's plane? Is it "Cosmic Girl?"
He has a much better site right here. It's awesome!!! https://globe.theairtraffic.com/
I'm literally here watching the planes on the map and listening to the noises as they pass by. What's wrong with this at all? It's like just tracking cars and the guy is doing nothing more than just relaying data.
A quick googling....Taylor Swift owns two multi-million dollar private jets: A Dassault Falcon 7x, registered N621MM under Island Jet Inc. And a Dassault Falcon 900, registered N898TS under SATA LLFC.
Oh cool. Here’s a pic of the F900 and the F7X
I love the sharp increase in views on these pictures today. Basically the Streisand effect in action.
Jack has a mastodon account!
https://mastodon.social/@JxckS
Ofcourse he does. Who wouldn't!
Hah! Look at this silly little guy getting all loopy off the coast of LA
This is way more fun than it should be.
My house is under the approach path to Boston Logan. Even though I’m over 30 miles from Logan, we can still hear planes if we’re outside and the winds are right for them to come in this way.
I have an app that shows me the exact position of any plane, where it came from, and where it’s going…though the destination isn’t always available for private and charter flights, a reasonable person could make a pretty good guess, well before landing, just going from changes in altitude and speed.
This is a free app. There’s a paid version that’s probably slightly less annoying and gives more tracking features. But even the free version…I click on a plane overhead, and I can see every flight it took in the past 7 days. The paid version bumps that up to upto a year.
I'm under the approach paths of Seattle international and another couple of local airports so that was a fun plane picking adventure yesterday.
What is the app, may I ask?
The one I use is FlightRadar24. Didn’t want to give the name unless asked.
Fantastic! The trump Jet! https://truthsocial.com/@TrumpJets
Jfc his drones go out and bitch about Tay-Tays 16-passenger F7X while this motherfucker is bussing around in a B757?
How many people is he flying with, as an individual (not even the leader of the free world ffs), that justifies a fucking 757?
Well Epstein, that's at least 1
Ghislaine Maxwell is at least 2
Oh that's a 747 for stratolaunch from Virgin Galactic. Would have been a cool TeTe plane name.
Have we ever seen Musk and Swift in the same place at the same time?
I'd love for this to go to court, the judge to tell Swift to fuck off, pay the defendants legal fees and a massive fee for a frivolous lawsuit wasting the courts time 🤞
Elon himself went after this same kid a year or two ago and lost. Doubt Taylor's team will do any better.
Very stupid of her to bring attention to this, because I didn't even know she had a private jet, now more people are aware of Sweeney's website.
She uses her private jets (plural) a lot. Like, hundreds of lifetimes of carbon emissions a lot. There's more than one reason she doesn't want people looking.
It's not fucking her. It's her team. She probably isn't even aware of it.
Excuse my ignorance, but if her legal team decided to sue him into the ground, there's virtually nothing he could do about it, right? There's no recourse to protect "the little guy" from being legally bullied? Would his best bet be to find someone willing to work pro bono with potential to countersue for damages?
Yes civil suits, if her pockets are deep enough she can sue and appeal and bury anyone and any lawyers that might defend him. She does run the risk for nonsense lawsuits that the defendant's lawyers can collect all attorney fees at the end of it, so a rich pest suing people might lose millions in their own lawyers fees plus pay for defendants attorneys.
But a small person puts a lot at risk and there is no reward (just not owing anything). So you might settle just to cut losses and remove whatever from Internet. If you are rich, you might settle and pay someone falsely accusing you just to limit losses to lawyers and also get case sealed and an NDA as part of settlement.
this shit is psychotic to me, why is this even a thing corpos/individuals are allowed to do?
Your options at that point are settle, immediately, do the nissan uzi strat, waste ten years of your life, and millions of dollars. Or just stop existing.
I guess there are some counters to this in court, but im guessing you're gonna have a hard time countering good lawyers with DEEP pockets behind them. Good luck finding someone to do a percent cut on that one.
Yeah, I'd have to agree with you there. Almost seems like there should be legal "weight classes" (and no picking fights under your "weight")
at the very least you should required to cover all extraneous lawyer charges by default. Otherwise you just can't sue an individual/small company.
So the legal complaint has no merit (even more so) if he just delays the feed by a day or two.
Maybe TayTay should ask the FAA to delay the data.
What a bitch.
I like all the money, attention and being treated like god, but please don’t invade my privacy.
Well you can’t have one without the other, I’m not going to hold my breath for you giving up your fame tho.
It's not even an invasion of privacy. The flight info is public.
IT'S AN INVASION OF PUBLICY!
She can have privacy ... if she used public planes instead of a private jet.
She also sold her jet which I'm guessing is related. She had a dessault falcon 900lx registered as N898TS but she very recently sold it to a company in Missouri.
I don't suppose it's to Swaylor Tift Aviation is it?
That would make it absolutely impossible to track and link to her.
Nope she has no use for it anymore. She's gonna buy a whole fucking new one because Travis Kelce is too tall for the old one.
But seriously though, can't they just register the jet under some conspicuous shit and dodge all of this? I mean, she may be the money of the operation but there has to be several levels of separation between her and operations. Pay a "transport company" that pays a "jet company" and make all the companies in between ambiguous and under different shell companies. Obviously this isn't possible or the billionaires would have done it. But it would seem there is a way to hide their jets just like they hide their money.
Possible, yes, but costs money. And we all know billionaires hate giving away money.
If they see little PERSONAL benefit then it's a waste to them. And likely cheaper to have their lawyers send cease&desist letters, than to have them setup the shell companies for anonymity.
Billionaires are all selfish. No way does someone aquire that much if they weren't.
At this point I feel it's too late. Unless they purchase a large fleet of aircraft and rotate through randomly, it would be fairly trivial to find what jets happened to be flying to the airport closest to Taylor Swift and make a solid assumption on which one is hers after a few flights.
I don't think she is being a dick, as privacy is definitely important. But the tracking info is public knowledge, so you can't really stop people from tracking you. Your private jet flies in public airspace, and that's that.
"Waaahhhh people are tracking me in my private jet" she is 100% being a dick. Fly in a regular ass plane like normal people do and problem solved
That, uh, makes no sense. Regular ass planes are public. The point here is to remain private, not be even more public.
Yes, "public"
With a mouth mask on in business class, nobody would recognise her.
Lol problem definitely not solved, that's making her even more public.
People would swarm her. She would probably cause a bunch of delays. She's literally too famous to justify flying commercial.
Edit: she's definitely complaining about someone simply relaying public information, but she can't sit down at a football game without people parking themselves outside the door to the suite she's in. There's no way she could just chill in the back of C group with the rest of us.
When did I say she's better than us or deserves special treatment?
She's an insanely famous public figure. It's the people who go crazy over her that are the problem. If given the choice between getting trampled by 100 people or taking a private plane, literally all of us would pick the same choice.
The part where you implied she is allowed privacy while the rest of us don't.
We're all entitled to privacy. Idk about you, but I can go about my life in relative anonymity, so even if I'm in public, no one pays attention. She can't do that.
Exactly. Her flight data should be public, definitely, but goddamn do I not want to be on a commercial flight with her. Flying is painful enough without all the craziness that would cause. I don't even want to be in the same airport at the same time.
Nah. She is choosing to fly in a private jet. That data needs to be tracked and publicly available. She is free to take a tour bus. One of her flights is my CO2 emissions for the year. Certainly not as bad as Musk who regularly takes 15-20 mile flights but definitely something that needs to be cut down on.
Privacy is important, and transparency is important. It's public knowledge for a reason, and to try to take legal action against the people who use it is worse than just "being a dick."
I think a nice compromise would be to have a time delay on the data, so that live data is not readily available, for example 4 hours delay maybe
Want us to compromise on anything else while we’re at it? Burning down the rainforest? Poisoning small children? Clearly you’re comfortable letting billionaires who shouldn’t exist have everything they want. What else can we do for you to facilitate the apocalypse?
Clearly those are all fair comparisons.
I thought that data was already delayed by 15-20 minutes.
Seems like an excuse to stop people from drawing attention to her jet use. Easy solution would be to share the flight records only after she's left each location
Or, say, they should only share it once the information is already public. You know, the information that the FAA is already sharing?
You can pick up transponder signals yourself with a receiver.
That would completely ruin the purpose of tracking airplanes.
You need up-to-date info to prevent mid air crashes.
The problem is more to do with ADSB I think. If I remember correctly, all aircraft in the US must have an ADSB transponder now. That info is broadcast for traffic awareness but also contains a ton of other info like speed, altitude, and most importantly the tail number. That signal can be picked up by anyone within range using very simple radio equipment, sites like ADSB Exhange do this and populate a map. So right now unless they want to rework the entire ADSB system, as long as you know the tail number, you can track anyone's aircraft live. Delaying this data would make the traffic avoidance impossible.
Well not just adsb but I think all filed flight plans are public also?
As are aircraft registrations and pilot's licenses. You can just...look up pilots by name and get their certificate number(s), address, lots of stuff. Which is how AOPA just...mysteriously starts sending you magazines and catalogs shortly after you get your medical certificate. The FCC is similar with amateur radio licenses, which again is why you'll invariably find ARRL spam in the same load of mail as your technician license. You can just look up an amateur radio operator's name, phone number and address given their callsign, so posting your ham radio callsign on Lemmy is basically doxxing yourself.
ADS-B is not required to be carried by all aircraft, but the requirements read like the Mode C Transponder requirements; it's legal to take your Cessna up for an hour's flight around Somewhere Regional Airport without one but it will prove necessary for aircraft engaged in basically any commercial operation.
Delaying the ADS-B system itself would render it useless, but it may be possible to delay any public-facing web display. Wouldn't stop any particularly interested party from buying an ADS-B In unit and receiving the signals directly though. Or building a radio receiver and decoder from scratch; ADS-B messages aren't encrypted, nor do they carry any authentication so...honestly the FAA probably doesn't want to encourage people to start fucking around with ADS-B hardware and would rather they just download aircraft position data from their web portal.
Yeah like a time delay of let's say 4 hours.
fuck all other planes in the way amirite?
I'd say make it 4.2 hrs.
Way to kill all the goodwill you've been gaining Taylor
Not for all her fans... They're obsessive like the maga cult
This guy needs to be more worried about one of hers fans showing up to his house more than she needs to worry about stalkers getting to her.
Yeah, but the two cults started bumping heads after the conservatives got alarmed that she was encouraging her cult to vote. I personally went from neutral to thinking she was a good one, but now she's firmly in the "just another billionaire throwing her money into a legal attack because she is upset flying a private jet involves public information and someone is making it more accessible".
I wish people understand that if you have any public/online presence, pretty much you can get tracked, especially in this age where ordinary people can track someone from their fingertips (and devices), for example Elon's Jet which get tracked too using public data.
It feels like when someone use Facebook (or any big services), skipped EULA, and then complain that they're being tracked...
just my 2cent from average joe.
I'm telling you she's a proper cunt.
I didn't see it mentioned in the article so I'll just say it here:
Careful about assuming TW even knows about them. People with broad teams, and especially lawyers on hand, also sometimes find themselves with those teams acting on their own to the letter of their contract. You see it at times with legal teams of larger organizations. Not saying that's the case here, just wanted to remind everyone to not take things at face value nowadays as it's very easy to do.
then she should apologize and fire them lmao
Then she should put and end to this as soon as she becomes aware of it, or it's the exact same thing as doing it herself.
I have no issue seeing this, based on her past behavior. Sometimes you get Lars Ulrich, or maybe it's her handlers, but she always seemed on board with that. Regardless of her other positions, whoever gives a fuck about those.
Well if you don't want your lawyers to do shit that puts you in a bad light, then you have to control them better. They literally only do what you tell them to do. So if you tell them to just deal with shit and don't bother you about it, then you shouldn't be surprised if it comes back to bite you in the ass. That's just PR 101!
I have a legitimate question: why is this public information? Like.... I'm not taking sides either way, I just don't understand the reason that the current location of someone's private property (her jet) is considered public info. They location of someone's car or boat isn't publicly available.... So why a plane?
I understand that flight controllers need access to this info for logistics, but that's not really public. They also need access to air waves for communication and those are heavily regulated.
This system is called ADS-B. It's a peer to peer communication between airplanes where each plane will share its own data (flight level, speed, coordinates, flight number, etc.) and data from other planes by broadcasting it on same frequency as others. Result of this is that all the planes know where other nearby planes are located and their heading thus providing additional safety in avoiding collisions and other issues.
Data being broadcast in all directions means us on the ground can listen to them as well, which is what some sites are doing. Add internet to that mixture and we have a world coverage of every plane on the planet. You might wonder why data is not encrypted or something similar. There's nothing that can be abused about the data and all this tracking helps enormously with resolving incidents and other useful functionalities like precise arrival estimates and similar.
Now, since every airplane has a registration number, people figured out which plane was hers. Just like they know which plane Musk uses and many others. Data is recorded and known and completely legal, helpful even. If she has issues with this fact solution is rather simple. Get a charter flight or rent a plane and no one is the wiser. This is just rich people entitlement and the only way she can "win" this court case is to go a step further in stepping over the line which is to drown the poor man with legal expenses.
Edit: Oh, also location of boats is known. Not all boats, but commercial ones for sure. Their system is called AIS.
Thank you! This is exactly the kind of info I was wanting to see.
You are welcome. In order to receive this data one really doesn't need a lot. Some USB SDR dongle around ~30$ and software which is readily available. It's just like any other public service, free to listen to but license is needed to broadcast.
Part of the answer is "it's always been that way". All this is done in coordination with the FTC and there are certain frequencies assigned for aerial radio communication. It's not just done on 2.4GHz to be cheap like Wi-Fi / microwaves / etc.
Since the long-long-ago planes have been required to have their registered tail number visible. So if you do something not okay someone can find you and talk to you about it. After all cars are (mostly) limited to roads, boats are limited to waterways (and also have to have a name/number visible somewhere), planes can go anywhere and be annoying.
Radio communication to/from planes is just 'in the clear'. It's not encrypted because there isn't/wasn't a reason for it to be and for a long time it wasn't even possible. Encrypting it offers no benefit and many potential downsides. It's one more thing that can go wrong when you have a problem and need to talk to someone.
When tracking was upgraded to transponders ( a small radio dedicated to sending out info about who you are ) all that just stayed the same. They transmit a code you set and your altitude (and other info including tail number for newer ones/requirements after 2020 (just a coincidental year, the upgrade was planned years in advance)) so Air Traffic Control can say "Bugsmasher 123 turn left please". Radar is expensive, a device in the plane constantly broadcasting "plane here" is significantly simpler and cheaper to track. Most airports don't have Primary Radar.
ATC doesn't care about your tail number for tracking anything other that what to call you to get your attention on the radio. For your current flight, if you are using Flight Following (talking to ATC so they know where you are) or filing an Instrument Flight plan, they give you a semi-random transponder code for that flight. That is what they use for logistics. They don't care who you are, they care where you're going and when you're going to get there.
Tracking a tail number isn't much different from the <1900s version, which would be "weird the Mayflower is in port in Boston" or something.
There's tons of radio chatter one can listen to that's just blasted into the air with zero enceyption that you can pick up with an inexpensive radio scanner or SDR. Tons of first responders haven't updated to digital or encrypted radios (this will vary by state and municipality), railroad radio communication is often in the clear, as are boats and of course aircraft. There's a public database of crowd sources frequencies here:
https://www.radioreference.com/db/browse/
That's a cool reference, thanks for sharing!
Thank you for the detailed info! This is the kind of response I was hoping for
Safety against air collisions.
Actually surprised no one here is launching themselves to defend her like they didn't defend Elon on this. Haha.
She's been anti piracy and streaming to an astonishing degree and her concert ticket prices show what's wrong with everything entertainment right now. I reckon that alone doesn't sit well with the lemmy crowd who I believe are not the typical swift fans to begin with.
Twitter is probably a war zone I don’t think the 3 swifties on Lemmy care.
Can confirm. Love her but she shouldn't be flying a private jet. Nobody needs that
Probably not a big overlap with lemmy and taylor fan worshippers. Still not a mainstream site and she's absolutely positively a mainstream music artist.
That's a good thing though right?
Imma let you finish, but Tay-Tay has the most expensive legal team of all time!
That's it. Time for a new content filter.
I mean.. I kinda get her rational, she's got crazy stalkers... But all this really does is tell you what city she's in.
Great, she's in NYC... Which only has 9 million people in it.
Gotta love the phrasing, like Swift commands some man-of-war, in a big Victorian wig and dress - the elite fuck.
I'm so tired about hearing about this fake ass bish. Y'all know she's racist, right?
I guess she is the biggest monster of them all
I find it chuckle worthy that half of this thread is just crying about people owning jets
Edit: also find it chuckleworthy that people brought over their downvote habits from reddit :D
Considering the pollution they produce and the extreme wealth diaparity, id say its a fair gripe
And if that were the topic, it would make sense to spend time griping about it here
What makes you think its NOT the topic?
Did you read the article?
It's not about CO2 emissions
TBH, it made sense considering the media blast against TayTays flights to see Kelce, but youre right, its not about CO2.
Its about oligarchs and their jet setting habits. After reading several quotes from him, Sweeney has been very clear its about billionaires wealth and that they shouldnt have it.
He specfically tracks Russian oligarchs and a handful of American rich people.
I read the actual topic
I'll probably join you at the bottom of the dog pile but I have to say:
If I was a multi-millionaire with enough money for a private jet, I would 100% own and travel with a private jet.
1st class?? Pfft what am I, a peasant? No, I'm flying in my private plane where I don't have to fuck with TSA and customs meets me at the bottom of the steps when I arrive.
I'd fly anywhere longer than a 3 hour drive and I'd probably buy a helicopter for those pesky short trips. I don't have time for traffic. Actually, if I had that much money I'd have enough time for whatever the fuck I wanted, but I wouldn't want to sit in traffic--and what's a $5k helicopter ride downtown?
Everyone on here acting all sanctimonious about their environmental impact would be on a private jet next week if they won the lottery today.
Speaking of which, I'm gonna go buy a lotto ticket.
Would the average person, suddenly handed $1 billion, increase their environmental impact? Almost certainly.
Public criticism of excessive impact can act as a moderating factor on this aspect of human nature.
Let’s fight the probable evil of our hypothetical selves by being vocal on unnecessary excesses of the rich and famous.
Yeah I'm not sure what people are expecting rich people to do, fly coach on spirit airlines?
The lack of nuance in any discussion on Lemmy is making me less and less interested in comment sections.
Easier just to pay him off. Of course, that's what he wants.
Elon already offered him a (lowballed) payout.
Wow, 5k is low-ball