Being sued for using publically available data?

[Tony The Welsh Twat]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68223602

"A student who tracks the private jets of celebrities says Taylor Swift's lawyers have threatened to sue him for sharing her flight information online.

Jack Sweeney uses publicly available data to track the take-offs and landings of planes belonging to the wealthy and posts them one day later.

The tracking amounts to "stalking", Swift's lawyers claim.

Swift's lawyers have issued a cease-and-desist letter to Mr Sweeney, a 21-year-old student at the University of Central Florida, demanding that he stop sharing the location of her private jet.

Mr Sweeney's posts do not provide any information about who is traveling on the planes, or where the travellers go once they land."

A power-crazy "do you know who I am?" sort or does she have a point?

[brian]

In message <9cfbad72-06a6-4cec...@googlegroups.com>,
Tony The Welsh Twat <tonythew...@gmail.com> writes

I think Barbara Streisand tried that on for Google Earth a while back.

When I read about it, I immediately had a look on Flight24.

"wishing to cover, more conspicuous"

Brian
--
Brian Howie

[Jon Ribbens]

Well firstly just because something's "public information" that doesn't
mean it's published on the Internet. You can go and inspect your local
electoral register in person if you like - it's "public information" -
but that isn't at all the same as if everyone's electoral register data
was downloadable and searchable on the Internet.

If the student tracking the jets was in the UK then they arguably could
be committing an offence under the Protection from Harassment Act,
although they could raise a defence that what they were doing was
"reasonable", which might succeed.

If I'm understanding correctly then it looks like Sweeney has changed
his twitter bot to add a 24-hour delay before the information is
published, which seems like a very reasonable compromise to defuse any
claim that he is endangering anyone's safety while still achieving his
aim, which I presume is to increase accountability of billionaires and
raise awareness of environmental damage.

At the end of the day, regardless of any legal or moral arguments,
it's probably unwise to personally antagonise billionaires too much.

[Nick Odell]

I believe Mr Sweeney has said that he does this for fun, not for
profit in which case, the old Spycatcher gambit ought to do the trick.
If he were to put his script out into the public domain and invite
anybody else to use it however they choose, surely with
100,000/10,000,000/whatever versions out there, all following
whichever private jets they wished, suing any one of them would become
pointless.

Nick

[Pancho]

Quote
===
In 2022, Swift topped the list of celebrities with the highest private
jet CO2 emissions, according to digital marketing firm Yard.
===

I think that is her point.

[GB]

On 08/02/2024 20:27, Jon Ribbens wrote:

> If I'm understanding correctly then it looks like Sweeney has changed
> his twitter bot to add a 24-hour delay before the information is
> published, which seems like a very reasonable compromise to defuse any
> claim that he is endangering anyone's safety

Anyone with the plane's ID can go to https://www.flightradar24.com/ and
get real time information.

I'm not sure whether Sweeney publishes the plane ID, but flight data,
even delayed 24 hours, would make it very easy to find the plane ID.

However, it would be even easier just to google 'Taylor Swift plane id'.
I was surprised that her plane has an ID with her initials in it. That's
hardly flying under the radar, is it?

Surely, the root of this issue is that https://www.flightradar24.com/
publish data for private planes? Maybe, there needs to be an opt out
available?

[Graham Nye]

On 2024-02-09 16:25:55, GB wrote:

> However, it would be even easier just to google 'Taylor Swift plane id'.
> I was surprised that her plane has an ID with her initials in it. That's
> hardly flying under the radar, is it?
>
> Surely, the root of this issue is that https://www.flightradar24.com/
> publish data for private planes? Maybe, there needs to be an opt out
> available?

Ms Swift could opt to fly on existing commercial flights rather than
apparently being 2022's top private flyer:

https://weareyard.com/insights/worst-celebrity-private-jet-co2-emission-offenders

--
Graham Nye
news(a)thenyes.org.uk

[notya...@gmail.com]

In the UK this was dealt with in https://www.stradalex.eu/en/se_src_publ_jur_eur_cedh/document/echr_10038-82

[Jon Ribbens]

On 2024-02-09, GB <NOTso...@microsoft.invalid> wrote:
> On 08/02/2024 20:27, Jon Ribbens wrote:
>> If I'm understanding correctly then it looks like Sweeney has changed
>> his twitter bot to add a 24-hour delay before the information is
>> published, which seems like a very reasonable compromise to defuse any
>> claim that he is endangering anyone's safety
>
> Anyone with the plane's ID can go to https://www.flightradar24.com/ and
> get real time information.

But they can't.

> I'm not sure whether Sweeney publishes the plane ID, but flight data,
> even delayed 24 hours, would make it very easy to find the plane ID.

He does publish the ID.

> However, it would be even easier just to google 'Taylor Swift plane id'.
> I was surprised that her plane has an ID with her initials in it. That's
> hardly flying under the radar, is it?

She's sold that plane apparently. And I think the "TS" is a coincidence.
Elon Musk's plane also has a "TS" suffix.

> Surely, the root of this issue is that https://www.flightradar24.com/
> publish data for private planes? Maybe, there needs to be an opt out
> available?

An opt-out *is* available, and Taylor Swift has used it, which is why
you can't in fact track her plane(s) on flightradar24.com. But the
opt-out just filters the planes out of the official data - it doesn't
prevent people with their own radios from detecting the transponder.

The FAA also has a scheme called "PIA" which means private jets can
change their ID every 20 days, which will make them significantly harder
to track (but not impossible, of course). But I imagine that also
involves hassle for the people operating the plane.

[Mark Goodge]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2024 16:25:55 +0000, GB <NOTso...@microsoft.invalid> wrote:

>On 08/02/2024 20:27, Jon Ribbens wrote:
>
>> If I'm understanding correctly then it looks like Sweeney has changed
>> his twitter bot to add a 24-hour delay before the information is
>> published, which seems like a very reasonable compromise to defuse any
>> claim that he is endangering anyone's safety
>
>Anyone with the plane's ID can go to https://www.flightradar24.com/ and
>get real time information.
>
>I'm not sure whether Sweeney publishes the plane ID, but flight data,
>even delayed 24 hours, would make it very easy to find the plane ID.
>
>However, it would be even easier just to google 'Taylor Swift plane id'.
>I was surprised that her plane has an ID with her initials in it. That's
>hardly flying under the radar, is it?

Apparently, she sold that plane a couple of weeks ago. As reported on
/r/TaylorSwiftJets, which also crowdsources exactly the same data that Mr
Sweeney has been compiling.

>Surely, the root of this issue is that https://www.flightradar24.com/
>publish data for private planes? Maybe, there needs to be an opt out
>available?

It's not the only website which publishes publicly available flight data.
Any other website operator could set up a similar service. And some do.

In any case, there's no way to know, from the publicly available data, that
a flight is private. Obviously, the registration data does tell you what
kind of plane it is, and it's a fair bet that smaller planes are more likely
to be privately operated. But not all are. Many of them are charter planes,
or available for hire by qualified pilots. So the only way to run an opt-out
is for the owner of the plane to request it.

As it happens, FlightRadar24 does participate in a Federal Aviation
Authority scheme which allows aircraft operators to request a certain amount
of anonymity. Ms Swift appears not to have taken advantage of that. Although
possibly she, or her aircraft management company, knows full well that other
tracking sites don't participate in it.

FWIW, I don't think she has a case. Her plane is owned by a company, not by
herself personally, so the registration information is not personal data
even in the UK or EU, let alone the US. Elon Musk tried and failed to get Mr
Sweeney to stop publishing the flight data of his plane, and he is
considerably wealthier than Ms Swift. It's also worth noting that Facebook
has no problem with Mr Sweeney running an account which tracks Mark
Zuckerberg's plane. Swift and Musk are the outliers here; most celebrity jet
owners are well aware that their plane's movements can be tracked and have
no problem with it.

On the other hand, there are probably far more Swifties than Muskovites, and
they almost certainly have the ability to make Mr Sweeney's life very
unpleasant if someone whips them up for it.

Mark

[GB]

On 09/02/2024 20:47, Jon Ribbens wrote:
> On 2024-02-09, GB <NOTso...@microsoft.invalid> wrote:
>> On 08/02/2024 20:27, Jon Ribbens wrote:
>>> If I'm understanding correctly then it looks like Sweeney has changed
>>> his twitter bot to add a 24-hour delay before the information is
>>> published, which seems like a very reasonable compromise to defuse any
>>> claim that he is endangering anyone's safety
>>
>> Anyone with the plane's ID can go to https://www.flightradar24.com/ and
>> get real time information.
>
> But they can't.

The plane comes up in a search, but there's no movement data shown for
the last 7 days. I assumed that is because it hasn't moved recently.
Maybe, I'm wrong about that.

[Adam Funk]

On 2024-02-09, Mark Goodge wrote:

> FWIW, I don't think she has a case. Her plane is owned by a company, not by
> herself personally, so the registration information is not personal data
> even in the UK or EU, let alone the US. Elon Musk tried and failed to get Mr
> Sweeney to stop publishing the flight data of his plane, and he is
> considerably wealthier than Ms Swift. It's also worth noting that Facebook
> has no problem with Mr Sweeney running an account which tracks Mark
> Zuckerberg's plane. Swift and Musk are the outliers here; most celebrity jet
> owners are well aware that their plane's movements can be tracked and have
> no problem with it.
>
> On the other hand, there are probably far more Swifties than Muskovites,

Good one!