Lawyers for America singer, Taylor Swift, have written a cease-and-desist letter to a Florida college student who publishes the air traffic records of prominent people.
The student, Jack Sweeney, runs accounts of social media platforms that uses publicly available data to report on the movement of such people along with estimates of their carbon footprint. This is frequently used to name and shame people for their environmental impact. Swift herself has been subjected to this.
Swift’s lawyers aver that the information places her safety in jeopardy.
Sweeny has previously faced such accusations, including by Elon Musk who called the information ‘assassination coordinate’.
Sweeney told the Washington Post said that the lawyers were trying to intimidate him. He denied that this information could reasonably threaten anyone, since it is already public. Rather, he said he believed it arose from embarrassment of light being shone on her environmental record.
‘This information is already out there. Her team thinks they can control the world,’ he said.