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.”
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.