Taylor Swift takes on jet tracker Jack Sweeney. Can you legally track a private plane?

Taylor Swift currently has some bad blood with a Florida college student.

Swift's lawyers have sent multiple letters to Jack Sweeney, a University of Central Florida junior, demanding he stop tracking and sharing her flight information.

The computer science major rose to fame in 2022 by creating bots to track and share the location of several prominent billionaires on social media, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. The information from his accounts has been used to shame celebrities for their "disproportionately high" impact on climate change.

Those being tracked by Sweeney have claimed he is "doxxing" their whereabouts and putting them at risk. But is Sweeney actually doing anything illegal?

Previous coverage: Taylor Swift asks UCF student Jack Sweeney to stop tracking her jet. Here's what he said

Can you legally track a private plane?

Despite heated online debates about Sweeney's accounts between pop culture fans, climate activists and aviation enthusiasts, jet tracking is not illegal.

How is jet tracking possible?

Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast, or ADS-B, is what makes it possible.

Per the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, ADS-B is an "advanced surveillance technology that combines an aircraft’s positioning source, aircraft avionics, and a ground infrastructure to create an accurate surveillance interface between aircraft and ATC."

The website says it works by broadcasting information about an aircraft's GPS location, altitude, ground speed and other data to ground stations and other aircraft, once per second.

NBC News detailed how this technology also allows airplanes to be easily tracked by anyone with a compatible receiver. For those who want to go the extra mile, they also can obtain enough additional information to find out who is on the plane.

Is private plane information public?

It is. In the United States, aircraft registration is considered public information.

The FAA does offer a program to allow jet operators to opt out of sharing tail numbers in an effort to conceal identities. However, sources who don’t use FAA data do not have to obey those restrictions and can still publish the information from a jet’s transponder.

Is there any legislation regarding tracking private aircrafts?

Currently, there aren't any U.S. laws regarding tracking private jets and aircrafts.

However, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law in May 2023 to conceal details about his trips on both state planes and private, chartered flights, including the names of staff and family members traveling with him.

The law also applies to both current and past trips taken by the governor, as well as other top Florida officials.

Why does Taylor Swift believe Jack Sweeney shouldn't track her private jet?

Swift's legal team argued Sweeney is putting her at risk by providing up-to-date location information for stalkers and would-be harassers.

In a cease-and-desist letter sent in December, Swift's team threatened "legal remedies" if Sweeney didn't stop "stalking and harassing" her and causing her and her family and heightened her "constant state of fear for her personal safety."

“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,” attorney Katie Wright Morrone wrote in a letter shared with the Washington Post.

He received a second letter last month, again threating legal action if he continued to post about Swift's movements according to the Washington Post.

What does Sweeney think about the popstar challenging him? He reiterated the information was public. No lawsuits have been filed as of Feb. 7.

“This information is already out there,” the 21-year-old student told the Washington Post. “Her team thinks they can control the world.”

What is 'doxxing'?

Swift's fanbase have accused Sweeney of doxxing the popstar but what does that mean?

Per Merriam-Webster, doxxing means to "to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge."

Sweeney has stated multiple times that his account publishes publicly available data, saying he believes his tracking accounts are important to 'transparency' and public interest.

Besides Swift, who else has Jack Sweeney tracked?

TCPalm shared back in May 2023 other celebrities have a jet tracker account programmed by Sweeney (some have been deactivated):

• Elon Musk: Sweeney first went viral with @elonjet on X. Musk publicly offered the student $5,000 to take down the Twitter account, adding saying it was a security risk. After joking he wanted a Telsa thrown in, he refused the offer. When Musk took control of Twitter late last year, he suspended the account. Sweeny made another called @ElonJetNextDay.

• Gov. Ron DeSantis: Sweeney created the @DeSantisJet to track the governor's plane. Despite DeSantis's bill to block his flight records, Sweeney continued to monitor the movements of the state-owned jet using publicly available data from ADS-B Exchange, a flight-tracking platform.

• Mark Cuban: A Business Insider article said Cuban offered Sweeney business advice "for life" if he removed the jet tracker bot (@CubanJet) from Twitter. Sweeney said yes.

• Mark Zuckerberg: @ZuccJet tracked the Facebook CEO's private jet before it was suspended from Twitter.

• Robert Pera: The owner and chairman of the Memphis Grizzlies and founder/CEO of Ubiquiti has a jet-tracking account on Twitter programmed by Sweeney. The bio on @RJPJet states the flight info from Pera's private jet is posted a day later to comply with Twitter standards.

• Former president and businessman Donald Trump

• Mark Wahlberg, actor best known for "Transformers: Age of Extinction," "The Fighter" and "Ted" Floyd Mayweather, boxing legend.

• Blake Shelton, country music superstar and former judge on "The Voice."

• Kylie Jenner, influencer and "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" star.

• Kim Kardashian, reality TV star, pop culture icon.

• Drake, R&B singer.

• Steven Spielberg, Academy Award-winning director, best known for the "Indiana Jones" movies, "Ready Player One," "Jurassic Park" films (the originals and the reboots with actor Chris Pratt).

• Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.

Contributing reporting: C.A. Bridges, USA Today Florida Network

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Jack Sweeney, Taylor Swift: How legal is it to track private jets?