Pop phenom Taylor Swift is threatening legal action against a Florida college student who tracks her private jet and its global travels.
The target of the threatened law suit runs social media accounts that follow her and other celebrities’ private jets to measure their carbon pollution levels — with Swift calling the issue a matter of “life or death.”
According to the Washington Post, Jack Sweeney, 21, was sent a cease and desist letter in December saying the singer would “have no choice but to all legal remedies” if the accused did not stop his “stalking and harassing behavior.”
The 14-time Grammy award winner claimed Sweeney’s accounts caused Swift and her family “direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress” and had heightened the singer’s “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,” wrote Katie Wright Morrone, the pop icon’s attorney, of the Washington law firm Venable.
She added there is “no legitimate interest in or public need for this information, other than to stalk, harass and exert dominion and control.”
When asked whether there is any evidence that some of Swift’s stalkers used the jet-tracking accounts, her spokeswoman Tree Paine told the Washington Post: “We cannot comment on any ongoing police investigation, but can confirm the timing of stalkers suggests a connection.
“His posts tell you exactly when and where she would be.”
But Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida who has run several accounts that track the flight paths of planes and helicopters owned by celebrities, billionaires, politicians and other public figures, claimed the “information is already out there.”
He further criticized the letter as a scare tactic.
File/Taylor Swift walks to her private jet before she departs Perth Airport on March 4 2012, in Perth, Australia. (Photo by Faith Moran/GC Images)
“Her team thinks they can control the world,” he told the Washington Post.
Sweeney, who has been monitoring Swift’s private jet flights for more than a year, also told the Post the situation is “eerily similar” to when Elon Musk threatened legal action against him for tracking the Tesla founder’s jet.
Musk claimed the accounts pose a “security risk” for him and his family.