https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/06/tech/taylor-swift-private-jet-tracker/index.html
Attorneys for Taylor Swift are threatening legal action against the Florida college student who tracks the private jets of celebrities and public figures, including Swift.
Alright you’ve been on a roll lately Swifty, but imma call you out; transponders are public information.
She's generally good at managing her public persona, except when it comes to her pollute more than a small city machine private jet addiction. When people show you who they really are, believe them.
She also showed who she really was during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes: someone who agrees to union demands, which was why she was allowed to release the best-selling concert movie of all time during the middle of the strikes.
On top of that, she got thousands of her fans registered to vote.
People are complicated.
Not to take away from one of the most powerful people on the planet*, but a decent number of companies did that. I want to say A24 almost immediately agreed and that is why they were able to keep making films during the strike.
*: Jesus christ. How did Taylor Swift become one of the most powerful people on the planet?
*: Jesus christ. How did Taylor Swift become one of the most powerful people on the planet?
You ever tried saying no to a teenage daughter?
"People are complicated."
Very much agree with this sentiment. I feel, too often, this gets lost in discussions. People will do stuff we agree with, and then they'll turn around and do something we disagree with. It's fine to praise and simultaneously lambast 'em.
It's pretty healthy, IMO. Seeing the fuzzy set of actions that people take that you agree with and don't agree with as part of a whole person is a sign of maturity mentally.
Having to cleave people into "the Madonna" and "the whore" or the "good object" and the "bad object" is in the mix for a variety of mental problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)
Also pulled her catalog from Spotify to protest their scummy royalty payouts. They changed the payouts for everyone as a result.
which was why she was allowed to release the best-selling concert movie of all time during the middle of the strikes.
When you put it like that, it doesn't really sound like she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart.
Sure, I'm not saying it's wrong what she did, just that it's not a good way to judge her character.
Yeah, I imagine she had someone crunch the numbers and figure out that it's worth it to agree to the union's demands to get a premiere in the middle of the strike AND the good PR. Sounds like a pretty safe bet.
Now mind you, I don't really know anything about the situation beyond what I read in your comment. I don't know what movie that was and I'm only somewhat aware there was a big strike in the entertainment industry in the USA. Just little pieces I caught here on Lemmy and maybe back on reddit too. I'm not claiming to have any particular insight into her motivations or anything, just that what you presented as her good side sounds very much like business acumen to me rather than philantropy.
Maybe I'm just a cynic.
She has a very good PR manager to keep her in such a good image. You know there are hundreds of people rooting for her downfall and are waiting for every slip up.
Anything Taylor goes straight to front-page, despite my efforts to block it.
Admittedly I don't know much about her as a person, but how can someone who uses a private jet in 2024 be considered a decent person by any stretch?
Having such a ludicrously unsustainable lifestyle in a climate emergency that will kill millions and displace hundreds of millions in just a few decades is a crime against humanity, change my mind.
The same way a pediatric heart surgeon who also drives a Land Rover can be considered a decent person. People shouldn't be judged on a single data point.
A land rover isn't nearly as polluting and doesn't drive nearly as far. More importantly, the heart surgeon isn't a role model in terms of lifestyle aspirations for literally hundreds of millions of followers.
People shouldn't be judged on a single data point.
It's not like we're talking about stealing some sweets from children or something. Climate change just gets worse and worse and worse until we reach net zero co2 emissions. As long as it's culturally accepted to cause massive amounts of completely unnecessary emissions, we don't have the slightest chance of fixing this.
The only way a decent person could be doing this is if they were completely uneducated about climate change and their impact as a role model.
Do you really think Taylor Swift not having a private plane is going to do anything about climate change when the real problem is major corporations?
When 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, why is Taylor Swift to be treated as a pariah because she has a private plane?
Neither the doctor nor Taylor Swift would make the tiniest dent in climate change if they gave those things up and we need to stop blaming individuals when it isn't individuals who are the problem unless those individuals are running one of those 100 companies. Which Taylor Swift is not.
There's always a supplier and a consumer. The pollution of these 100 corporations is caused on behalf of their customers who fund them in exchange for fossil fuels, directly or indirectly. They are both responsible, it's 2 sides of the same coin.
Of course, much of this pollution isn't really avoidable at this point. We can't have 100% renewable power and electric cars tomorrow. Some really polluting industries will take decades to decarbonize, like steel and cement production. But this makes it even more urgent to adress the low hanging fruit asap, i.e. big sources of pollution that can easily be cut. Private jets are a prime example.
You could say just a few private jet flights or chopping down one single forest won't make a dent in global carbon emissions, but that doesn't mean that thousands around the world can keep on doing it indefinitely without consequences for all of us. Especially if they are idols for millions of people, normalizing harm to society that we can't afford.
I think they're downvoting me for saying she's a generally decent person considering some of the replies I've gotten.
Whatever. If people don't like Taylor Swift it doesn't bother me. To be honest, I've only ever heard one of her songs all the way through. She just has done plenty of good things. This is one of the few things I've heard about her that wasn't her being a decent person.
I have also never knowingly heard her music. It's not that I avoid her, I just have never listened to pop music in lieu of jazz, classical, or world. But she does seem to be an upstanding person for the most part.
Well, we got some overriding scenario blasting away all nuance.
It's hard to be sympathetic toward a fundamental privacy limitation associated with flying in a plane exclusively owned by you. So in this context, it's easy to equate "Leave Taylor alone!" with "it's sad how she can't fly in her private jet without being tracked, there's nothing she can do!'
Now broadly speaking, I get that a lot of unreasonable piling on is coming with it, but the private jet is a symbol of excess and environmental harm and it's inherently a risk to hop into that whole mess. Particularly when she could charter private flights to the same effect without the tracking (still excess and environmental harm, but at least obfuscated from public eye a bit).
I never said she should be left alone or that it's sad that she can't fly without being tracked.
I don't care if she can be tracked when she flies. I said she was in the wrong here. All I said was that she generally comes across as a decent person.
nah shes a cunt like any other billionaire who deserves to be devoured by the starving masses.
Its a bit more complicated than that.
Traffic cameras are usually publicly accessible. You are also, generally, allowed to take pictures of people when they are in public spaces where there is not an expectation of privacy.
So at what point of this is the line crossed?
That is where this gets pretty murky. Because we all more or less acknowledge that parparazzi taking pictures of everyone leaving an airport are assholes (unless it is about figuring out if The Rock is going to come do PR to distract people from the WWE sexual slavery scandal...). But we have no issue with knowing that without even needing to send someone over to see who got off the 1235 LAX->DFW flight.
And while my initial stance is "fuck the super-rich": I am allegedly part of a private chat for "people in tech" to give each other a heads up if we see a CEO getting off a flight. Because if your boss is pretty regularly visiting Facebook HQ and not telling anyone? That is the sign that you need to refresh your CV because you might get layed off after an acquisition/merger. There are definitely business reasons for not making it trivial to track individuals.
So yeah. I am going to side on the stance of "if you need to travel secretly, wear sunglasses like the rest of us". Or, if you are too famous to even risk that, at least use one of the private jet companies rather than owning your own. But I also think this is something that we need to actually consider from a legal and privacy standpoint and it is a lot more complex than that.
That's fair, but that's a discussion about how accessible the info should be. If it's public, it's public, and the public has equal access to it. If it shouldn't be that easy to access, we fix the system, not punish the users. And suing is punishment/aggression, regardless of the outcome. Self defense isn't free.
Unfortunately, the way the legal system adapts is through precedent.
"Optimally"? That kid drops it before any legal action is actually followed up on (no harm, no foul). Then they and Swift work with the various lobbyist/activist groups to push this farther on their side.
Or the kid is an idiot and it goes to court and we begin the appeals escalation right then and there.
I don't think your analogy works, because, as long as you know the plane's identifier, you can just type it into a website and see where it is.
That's all you have to do.
How do you get that identifier for Taylor Swift's plane? That part I don't know and maybe that part is where her case lies, but I have a feeling she has no case or Musk would have tried the same thing.
Anyone can write a trivially simple program to analyze license plates (or even car profiles) and feed it traffic cam footage. I've done that for poops and giggles (never pushed since it was sketchy). Have broadband and a few medium sized computers and you can process the entirety of a state's traffic cameras. At which point, it is trivial to track 455M4N's '92 buick.
Where can I find live traffic cameras with high enough resolution to read license plates? I've only seen traffic cameras with something like 320x240 max.
You know how back in the day, Mythbusters would joke about "adding blah"? Or how a lot of chemistry and engineering youtubers won't provide the exact specifics once they start working with a gun or something meth adjacent?
Its one of those things where if you have the basic understanding of how these systems work, you can find it pretty trivially (or work around things). And if you don't? Then you really don't need to know.
That's a lot of words to avoid saying you're talking out your ass.
"Yeah, I could totally tell you. Honest. Promise. No I can't because... uh... I'd have to kill you."
That's still not the same thing because the FAA is a federal organization and you're talking about something you can only do in certain municipalities. Traffic camera footage is not available universally and a city may not even use them.
Hmm. Its almost like
But I also think this is something that we need to actually consider from a legal and privacy standpoint and it is a lot more complex than that.
Just because you can do something or it is even legal to do something doesn't mean you "should". That is why it is important to reassess laws and the like from time to time.
I feel like your example is way more granular than what is going on here. It’s more like ‘so and so has arrived at this city airport now’ and within an hour or two they could be anywhere in a fairly large radius without anyone reporting their location. Also there is the fact that this is ‘punching up’ which is often seen as ok.
I don’t pretend to have an answer here, but it’s hard to feel sorry for celebrities.
I am suspicious as to whether that is a "legit" site at all...
But yeah. Even mentioned below. It is REALLY not an insurmountable problem. But apparently people don't understand why people might not want to give step by step instructions for how to do something that, in my opinion, is fundamentally "bad". Can't imagine what would happen if Mythbusters talked about "adding blah" or Burn Notice did the "and other stuff" short hand for "Yo dog, this shit is not something we should explain the details of"
I'm pretty sure that's a legit site. It's a product being sold by TransUnion which is one of the big credit reporting agencies.
If you are for Musk being tracked, you should be fine with her being tracked the same way.
I'm for anyone in a private jet being tracked.
Every civilian aircraft is required by air traffic regulations to broadcast it's flight path and identifier.
So once a plane registration is publicly known to be owned by someone they can of course be tracked. Of course it doesn't mean that the owner is on the plane, but it certainly let's you gather how much they fly around. Turns out that Taylor's jet is used a lot even for private jets, which obviously doesn't make her look good from an environmental point of view. Now she tries to use her wealth to silence people tracking this and pointing it out to the public. Shame on her!
Woman who made over a billion being a public figure upset she is now a public figure.
Sorry, no privacy for private jets. I don’t care about the “danger.” She can fly commercial in business class or first class if she wants privacy.
Her Grammy speech was literally "I love doing this, thank you for giving me the opportunity to do what I love."
Bitch, if you don't want people to track you then fly first class.
Yes, and that's a problem.
Her complaint about her jet being tracked would be solved by renting as those companies tend to be rather quiet about who is on which plane at any given time.
Be a lot cooler if she had her own train car.
While true, the topic is about tracking, and as a pragmatic option this would bury her travel in obfuscation.
If it were just about tracking environment, then having the popular tracker be just an odometer rather than specific paths would show the point without the scary tracking vibes.
Of course, this suggests the tail number is somehow well known and thus she's got a problem regardless of this specific tracker. Once the tail number is known, all semblance of privacy is out the window.
They can charter jets and travel in greater luxury without having a tail number assigned to them personally. When I become a multibillionaire I will charter jets.
My step father is a private plane pilot.He owns the plane and rich people pay him to fly them places.
You're right, rich people like Swift don't need to own a jet themselves. It's very easy to find jets to charter and likely cheaper because you're not paying to maintain a plane.
So she can stop complaining about her silver spoon not being polished enough.
You don't seem to realize that these people are targets for verbal and physical harassment and assault. That's exactly why she's worried about her whereabouts being tracked.
taylor swift publicly has a tour schedule that anyone with internet access can get. and I'm sure that these places have airports. and flight logs are public. it's not hard to figure out what plane left from the city she was in is going to her next tour date.
if she, the most famous and richest white woman on the planet doesn't want her movements tracked her movements would not be tracked.
taylor swift publicly has a tour schedule that anyone with internet access can get.
Yes and she has security that escorts her every where she goes. That gets a lot harder in a metal tube 50k feet in the air.
and the flight logs are public
Yes that is the issue we're discussing, thank you.
Do you think someone is going to try to shoot down her plane or something??? She still has that security with her right before takeoff and right after she lands
Note that her private plane is a bit separate and I think flying a private plane means your privacy is screwed unless you absolutely know your tail number is a secret.
On the matter of tour schedule, that may be a matter of 'professional' versus 'personal' time. While doing her professional act, well, her whereabouts are obviously well known and extra precautions and vigilance are part of the cost of doing business. During 'off' time one might reasonably hope for being able to let your guard down a touch when you get to your rural mountain cabin that no one should know about.
Again, using a private jet as means of transport throws that out the window, but the concept that your work itinerary being widely known implies that of course your personal itinerary is fair game is not something I can get behind.
Oh, poor Billionaire that can afford 24 hr private security! /s
I don’t care. She has other options, anyway. She can’t have her cake and eat it, too.
Oh, poor Billionaire that can afford 24 hr private security!
Yes she can, she can also afford a private jet to fly her around. Not sure what your point is.
Private security ain't gonna do much in a sealed tube 10k feet in the air.
She has other options, anyway.
Such as?
Yes she can, she can also afford a private jet to fly her around. Not sure what your point is.
Choices have consequences. She chooses a private jet that will have an ADS-B transponder that will thus be linked to her travel. That’s just how it works.
And you are complaining she faces violence threats. My point is, she can easily mitigate them.
Private security ain't gonna do much in a sealed tube 10k feet in the air.
Stalkers aren’t going to do mush there, either. What danger do you think she faces in the air?
Such as?
Fly commercial. Much harder to find when you could be on any of dozens of flights. Also, she could charter different jets. People might still find her from flight plans, but it would be much harder.
That’s just how it works.
We all know how it works. I'm suggesting maybe the way it works should change to improve safety.
And you are complaining she faces violence threats.
I've "complained" about nothing. You're imagining things.
My point is, she can easily mitigate them.
Would you care to make a suggestion?
Stalkers aren’t going to do mush there, either. What danger do you think she faces in the air?
I literally just explained that in the comment you just replied to. Verbal and physical assault and harassment while in a sealed tube tens of thousands of feet in the air.
If you're just gonna go on and on while ignoring that little fact then there's no need to carry on this discussion.
We all know how it works. I'm suggesting maybe the way it works should change to improve safety.
I do not believe the current system is unsafe. This is 100% her not liking the articles about her massive carbon emissions. If anything, we should further expose these megapolluters.
I've "complained" about nothing. You're imagining things.
Oh, going off a semantics! Whatever. You certainly are stating it.
Would you care to make a suggestion?
I did. You ignored it. What do you think paid security is?
I literally just explained that in the comment you just replied to. Verbal and physical assault and harassment while in a sealed tube tens of thousands of feet in the air.
How on earth are people verbally or physically assaulting her on her private jet? It is literally only her and her entourage on board. How does being able to track her flight lead to someone able to assault her on board? You make no sense
Hell, even flying commercial, they will land the plane and place the offender under arrest. They will restrain you in the meantime. They carry zip tie handcuffs and tape to secure disruptive individuals. Celebrities fly commercial all the time. Aside from maybe stares or people asking for selfies, they are perfectly safe. But that is part of the deal of being a celebrity. She is well compensated for it.
And I am ignoring nothing. I just wholeheartedly disagree with you an every point you have made.
How on earth are people verbally or physically assaulting her on her private jet?
I said that clearly in reply to your assertion about flying commercial.
Hell, even flying commercial, they will land the plane and place the offender under arrest.
I mean that'll be wonderful like, 12 hours later.
They carry zip tie handcuffs and tape to secure disruptive individuals.
Who? The flight attendants? This is their job now?
Swift just walking into a public airport would cause an immediate security nightmare.
But that is part of the deal of being a celebrity. She is well compensated for it.
Great, so basically "she deserves it" is your response?
Same.
Track them all. Elon. Other Billionaires. Government using our taxes for private planes.
Didn't the richest person in the world try to do this exact same thing? I'm still convinced it's the reason he bought Twitter. Those flight logs are public information because they prevent mid air collisions, your not going to change that. No one is going to be putting military grade radar equipment on a Boeing 757 if they can't even stop the doors from opening mid flight.
Those flight logs are public information because they prevent mid air collisions, your not going to change that.
One way to prevent being personally identified is to not fly around in your own personal jet and use one of the many other available options that aren't trackable this way.
Several points:
Lots of information is public, such as your address. That doesn't mean somebody explicitly publishing your address for the purpose of harassing you isn't committing an offence.
Some celebrities can't fly on passenger planes for their own safety and even that of others or the proper functioning of infrastructure. Can you imagine Taylor Swift trying to fly on a public carrier? She would get mobbed at the very least. At worst she might be putting her health or even her life in danger. Especially now that the MAGA morons are attacking her.
I find Taylor Swift bland as beige, I don't get the appeal at all, and I think Musk is a rabid twatwaffle. I also don't believe anyone should really get to be so wealthy. Still, there are good reasons why one might need to travel by private means without their movements being broadcast.
My friend met Hugh Jackman on Eurostar, he seems pretty chill. Didn't get mobbed at all.
I mean, if I had the choice of meeting one of them, I’d 100% pick Hugh Jackman. By all accounts, the dude is a genuinely cool guy.
How about Keanu? I think he would be cool to meet as well. Would genuinely find it hard to choose between the two (Hugh and Keanu)
I honestly don't know.
I know Hugh Jackman has been in couple movies couple years ago, and he is also in one of the movies I liked.
I thought Taylor Swift stopped singing after the Romeo Juliet song. I didn't realize people still cares about her until last year.
Bland as beige; as entertaining as watching paint dry; as creative as rocks. All subjectively true, but if per rabid base of zombie fans come through and sink Trump's election, I will buy one of her CDs and display it, and pretend to have listened to the whole thing.
Some celebrities can’t fly on passenger planes
Note that isn't the only option. They can charter private planes. Still not publicly trackable as it isn't public knowledge that a given tail number equals that celebrity.
Still, if it's about environment, abstracting the flight to an odometer would suffice without stalkery implications. However I presume it's not hard to get the tail number for a rando, and then they don't need any help tracking her in particular, public flight tracking resources would do it. So while she might be able to fight a targeted tracker, probably the worst she has to fear would still be able to track her.
If I were anywhere vaguely in those shoes, I'd always use chartered private planes, limo services, etc. I would not move about in easily recognized and tracked personally owned transportation. Of course I'm not and definitely wouldn't want to be flying much at all, but if I were in a position where I needed to fly, but couldn't reasonably risk sitting among random folks, then chartering a flight seems a logical strategy.
Why wouldnt celebrities be able to fly on passenger planes?
If there was some security risk to consider, it would still be cheaper by a factor of 100 or more to just buy a business class ticket and buy some tickets for the security guards too. I am sure, there is also options to organize not going through the public check-in of the airport and to be able to board the plane discreetly before the normal boarding.
Also it is very easy to defend someone on a public plane. the aisles don't allow for more than one attacker at once, and i am sure there is enough tall muscular men for hire to block all aisles.
Musk is an idiot but that's not why he bought Twitter, especially when he balked at the idea of paying $10k instead of his offered $5k to do the same thing.
No, Musk bought twitter for a much, much more stupid reason.
But flight data is available - this guy just labels her N number and filters the data in a creepy way. I get that it's probably causing her danger to have stalkers waiting at the destination for her - but those stalkers always had access to this flight data.
Seems like a workaround for Taylor would be to not own a plane and charter a different one every time. (Or do something actually environmentally minded :/)
How is it creepy? It’s activism.
This person is a hell of a lot more useful to the world than some billionaire piece of shit.
Just because it's done to a woman it's suddenly "creepy". Don't think anyone ever called that guy creepy when it was done to Elon.
As an activist tool, a simple 'miles flown' counter would do it without the 'creepy' facet of knowing her general whereabouts at all times.
Of course, as a more mundane person without a private plane or cash to fly much, anyone who cares to know what airport I'm closest to just knows the answer is almost always the one nearest my home city... So in a sense I have no more privacy than Swift, since this only lets you know what airport she last left from and presumably is closest to, which is vague enough to describe 99% of my time just by sitting still.
I guess a workaround for the guy posting the data (if he is forced to stop) would be to instead just post the distance traveled and CO2 emissions for every flight. That’s still shaming her for being an environmental asshole while avoiding issues with stalkers or whatever their defense is.
There's a difference between the data being available and it being broadcasted, which is probably what her argument would attempt to stand on if it went to court
There is also a difference between paywalling info behind a company that only three letter agencies and targeting advertising firms will even know the name of most of the time, and broadcasting that information on social media.
Why should corporate entities get to stalk you more successfully or more permissively than anyone else?
They shouldn't, but they also use a method that's a lot more tedious and annoying for a rando to use than just being able to see it on Twitter, which is like, 99% of the definition of "more secure"
But flight data is available - this guy just labels her N number and filters the data in a creepy way. I get that it’s probably causing her danger to have stalkers waiting at the destination for her - but those stalkers always had access to this flight data.
Well, yes, but I think we can at least acknowledge when public information is used to harass. Home addresses are identifiable via public tax records, but it would obviously be different if someone posted your home address and reported in real time whether or not you're inside. We all know people actively want to stalk and harass her, and anyone making it easier to do so maybe shouldn't, even though it's technically legal. If someone drove around and picked up everyone who has explicitly said they'd like to rape or kill her, and dropped them off at her doorstep with knives and guns, I hope we'd all agree that's pretty fucked up and shouldn't be condoned.
It's a bit like the difference between having a gun stolen out of a safe and having a gun stolen out of an unlocked car that was left parked overnight in a crowded shopping mall. Yeah, the direct culprit might have stolen it one way or another, but there's also at least some culpability for the person who made it easy for them to steal it, and potentially later inflict harm. I'm not saying Sweeney should be charged with a crime, of course, but doxxing is poor form for a very good reason, and civil suits can be brought for all kinds of harm (direct or indirect) which are caused by actions that are otherwise legal. In the age of worldwide social media, these are boundaries that we can discuss with nuance, rather than dismissing them out of hand because the rules currently allow unfettered abuse.
If it's not safe for people to use publicly available information then it shouldn't be publicly available. No one was worried about it when it was used to call Musk out. Or the 1000s of people dealing with stalkers that aren't famous enough for anyone to give a fuck about. Either protect everyone or don't. You can't just single out the rich white girls.
My point is just going after this guy isn't going to fix the root of the problem. If him being able to do this is an issue then the information he is accessing should be restricted. Just making him stop won't prevent the next person from doing it to someone else.
I don't disagree. He's already had his Swift-specific accounts booted from Facebook, Instagram, and Xitter and started posting instead to his "Celeb Jets" FB and IG accounts, so it's clear he's going to play the cat-and-mouse game indefinitely.
But again, I didn't say a single thing about singling out rich white girls. That was a strawman you made up out of whole cloth.
That was meant more as a general statement to all the people who are up in arms about this but were jerking themselves off when it happened to musk a while back.
The federal government will take publicly available information and if it is bundled up with enough other information it is still considered classified and you can still (if you hold any sort of clearance) be in trouble for sharing that classified bundle.
Which is just to say there is legal precedent agreeing with your point, although AFAIK that responsibility only applies to folks who have already agreed to responsibly handle confidential information.
Yeah I don't think it's unreasonable to discuss harm avoidance here. There are likely workarounds she can employ, but it's sad that people seem to be taking the stance that "fuck her, it's public" is the end of the conversation. Maybe her lawyers know something we don't about what kind of harm this is actually causing. It's easy to cheer for Sweeney when he's giving the middle finger to a jackass like Elon Musk, but I find it harder to stand in his "I do it because fuck you" corner when he's weaponizing information against others who aren't huge assholes.
Speech is protected, but threats are not. Online shit talking is protected, but cyberbullying is widely condemned. As a society we need to figure out where the line is between what's allowable and what's highly discouraged. "It's legal" isn't a useful cut off for these kinds of discussions, because we've recently come up with all kinds of state laws to punish stalkers when their behavior crosses the line from benign to unwelcome to harmful. Stalkers can be held criminally liable for using telephone calls, letters, telegraphs, delivery of packages or engaging in any conduct which interferes or intrudes on another’s privacy or liberty, all of which are completely legal and acceptable behaviors except when they're employed to threaten or harass.
I always figured the point of tracking her, just like Musk, was commentary on the incredible waste that is the private jet industry. The politics of the person matter far less than the environmental consequences of their actions.
I don't disagree, but if obsessed incels are using this to assist in stalking and harassing her and it poses an immediate risk to her safety, then it obviously takes on a more immediate meaning than whether or not people can use it to shame her for being environmentally reckless.
Obsessed incels have been and will be stalking no matter if there's flight data or not. This isn't about that.
They will, and it is. That doesn't mean we should willingly and gleefully make it easier for them to inflict harm.
If someone drove around and picked up everyone who has explicitly said they’d like to rape or kill her, and dropped them off at her doorstep with knives and guns, I hope we’d all agree that’s pretty fucked up and shouldn’t be condoned.
We have legal ramifications for that already. That's being an accomplice in the commission of attempted murder. And the rest of your comment is mostly the exact same thing, we have laws for when we cross a particular line.
The thing is the publishing flight information on a social media site isn't technically crossing a line. Now I'll tell everyone here the same thing I said with Musk's whole thing. As citizens, we have to lobby for any of those lines to be redrawn. That's the same thing here. Should we place that line elsewhere? Maybe, maybe not. But that's for us to dictate.
But as it stands, we can extrapolate all kinds of bad things that could come to pass and a lot of those are very illegal. But at the moment, what the person is doing is distinctly not illegal. Should it be? Maybe. But it is currently not. Can it lead to bad things? Yes. That's kind of with anything in terms of public information.
The balance that is traditionally struck, is a balance between the public's need to know and an individual's right to privacy. There's not hard and fast rules on where we put the line on that and finding the right spot today for that line, doesn't mean that it's the right spot for it tomorrow. Society changes and sometimes our laws must change with it. Sometimes it shouldn't change. But that's for us the Citizens to direct.
In the age of worldwide social media
And I'm just going to say this is with a LOT of things. At the moment our laws woefully handle social media because it's just so new and law takes so long to catch up. But that's what I was getting at with Elon Tracker back in the day. Musk can go to the Government to ask for laws to be updated, not get petty and ban folks off his social media site. Now Musk has every right to ban who he deems fit to be banned. It is absolutely his ship to wreck here. But it was pretty petty when Musk could have channeled a lot of that energy into getting new laws enacted and we could have avoided this whole thing with Swift. And Swift seems to be mulling litigation rather than actually reforming laws, which means this will inevitably happen again and again and again.
The solution is to get our laws up to speed with our society. And thus far from Musk and Swift there's been every indication that people with the means to actually get a face-to-face with members of select committees in the House and Senate, are opting to take the whole thing personally than an opportunity to do good for the Nation at large. That's my issue with the Rich on this. All of these folks thus far have taken these things personally, and rightly so because crazy people hunting you down can absolutely trigger that self preservation instinct, but there's also a chance for them to look past how this affects just them. But we have yet to see any move in that direction without it being like Musk in the first bits of it before he banned Elon Tracker, calling for the FAA to just be completely done away with. That's clearly not a solution that the public at large should be okay with. So for Musk, there's likely a middle ground he could reach between where we are and a complete dismantling of Government regulations.
And for the public discourse on this, that's my issue because it seems that public discussion on the matters related to this, start veering off into maximums and ignoring any kind of slight changes in current regulatory power. It starts becoming discussions of "oh my god so and so could be killed and here's a what if indicating the path one COULD take to cause harm." And yeah, those are interesting to say the least thought experiments, but they are not addressing the issue of widely disseminating that information. Something that could be resolved with new rules indicating that FAA transponder information and matchup databases operate under a limited distribution model. So one can reproduce the data for personal consumption, but cannot reproduce the data wide consumption. Much like the same way the NFL (because we're talking Swift here so apt entity to pull in) says you can have a Super Bowl party but you cannot have a projector for your entire neighborhood. There's a middle somewhere and I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers, but just running the extremes doesn't talk about that middle. That's my issue with the Public on this.
We have legal ramifications for that already. That’s being an accomplice in the commission of attempted murder.
Well yes, but only if the person attempts murder. If no attempt is made, there's no crime for which the other is serving as an accomplice.
Should we place that line elsewhere? Maybe, maybe not. But that’s for us to dictate.
100% agree with this and the other two paragraphs. That's why I'm asking these questions and trying to have a more in depth conversation than the rest of the people in this thread. I don't know where the line is, but I'm not comfortable completely washing our hands of this until violence actually erupts. The threat alone should be enough for us to discuss the problem. Just as the threat of violence from Trump's words is enough for us to discuss the problem, and we need not wait for his followers to break a law to condemn his rhetoric. Same kind of deal here. I don't have to wait until someone tries to kill Taylor Swift to say that there might be a problem with streaming her location in real time.
But it was pretty petty when Musk could have channeled a lot of that energy into getting new laws enacted and we could have avoided this whole thing with Swift. And Swift seems to be mulling litigation rather than actually reforming laws, which means this will inevitably happen again and again and again.
Actually hadn't thought of this. On second thought, I do think there's a more constructive way to do this, and I wish high profile figures would do more to participate constructively in the political process so we don't keep having to fight this based on personality type and affiliation.
Something that could be resolved with new rules indicating that FAA transponder information and matchup databases operate under a limited distribution model. So one can reproduce the data for personal consumption, but cannot reproduce the data wide consumption. Much like the same way the NFL (because we’re talking Swift here so apt entity to pull in) says you can have a Super Bowl party but you cannot have a projector for your entire neighborhood. There’s a middle somewhere and I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers, but just running the extremes doesn’t talk about that middle. That’s my issue with the Public on this.
I hear that loud and clear, and can't say I disagree with any of it. Thanks for engaging respectfully and helping me understand a different perspective.
I agree, I think you're being down voted by the people who cheered on the Elon musk tracking kid. Sure it might be legal but I think everyone can all agree they wouldn't want this done to themselves.
99.999 percent of us here would never have this problem because we will never be close to owning a private jet, even if we wanted to for some reason. I also think most of us here agree that owning a private jet is selfish, and since its kind of a problem brought on by her own selfishness, it's kind of hard to feel bad for her.
People who don't have private jets get doxxed and harassed all the time because this story or that went viral. If you made a boneheaded comment to someone on the street that was recorded and uploaded, and the internet mob came for your blood, and someone made it their own personal mission to track your every move 24 hours a day, some of us would come to your defense and suggest that they might should stop for your safety. The rest of the mob would take the, "fuck you, it's public" line you're taking, and you'd probably have a hard time convincing them to give a shit.
"We want the artist to perform near us, all of us,but we don't want them to be on planes in a way that makes that possible."
There are plenty of ways to get someplace that don't involve owning your own personal jet.
I don't care if she tours or not, but I know for a fact my favorite bands either rent a bus or fly commercial.
The solution is obvious.
Stop owning private jets.
Billionaires threatening, harassing, and intimidating normal people with their army of lawyers and sycophant fans is never okay.
Fuck Taylor Swift and every other rich piece of shit.
Her lawyers must be crazy to think they can get anything done that elon couldn't. Taylor should be mad at her PR for not stopping her if she asked for this personally.
As for private jets. People with wealth, use that wealth to find an alternative. God knows you haven't found anything else to do with it.
Edit: Also, please let it be zeppelin technology.
They could invest in whole new rail lines with their own private cars and fill the other cars with low cost seats. Tons of people on it and no way reasonable way of tracking them because so many people boarding it each time.
(Top: Taylor Swift's private jet -- or at least the same model, a Dassault Falcon 900. Bottom: JP Morgan's private Pullman railcar.)
Dude dirigibles are STUPID EFFICIENT because they don't have to fly. They just float so you only need some tiny little fans to move them in the direction you like. I really do wish they'd come back
Airships; When you want to be as fast as an ocean liner, as cheap as an airplane, and as subtle as a train.
It can't be just that.
(I despise the "something something" meme, but that's another story.)
Well, that's a big one. Hydrogen is a much more available element to pump up an airship, and with hydrogen effectively off the table, then helium which if used at scale would be a problem, and it's already a bit of a problem as it is.
Aside from that, it forever shaped public perception, so airships have an uphill battle.
But it's still a thing, the butt-looking Airlander wants to bring back the airship. Their '10' model however has half the cargo payload of a 737. Their more hypothetical '50' would compete with an A300 on Cargo, which is respectable. However the top speed is 85mph, so 6 times slower than a typical cargo aircraft. However it may be able to tout versatility closer to a tractor trailer, they do still need a landing area, but not so much a runway. Tractor trailers are often used for long haul despite not being able to go 85mph, and definitely not 'as the crow flies'.
Afaik, mostly for not being too efficient in a suboptimal environment. Also for having a limit on minimal size, but there has been an article somewhere, I'll update if I find it
Edit: haven't found the article, but what I found is this. They fly relatively low (under 2 km), have a hard time going against wind, old ones also had trouble landing. Also contemporary ones are more of a hybrid of dirigible, plane, and helicopter, that probably makes them expensive, too. Existing airship infrastructure is also not suitable for them
Edit2: oh, and some claim that dirigibles don't work for commerce because commerce is too conservative, but it's not too likely because there were news of dirigibles almost taking over the cargo transportation since like 1960s and it didn't yet, so likely there are things to be solved
nope. sorry taylor. if your plane's tracking information is public knowledge it's allowed. if it's good for elon it's good for you too.
Ehh, she is still human. She is one of the most recognizable and sought after a celebrities we've seen in a very long time. It must be absolutely horrible to be 24/7 in the public eye. But you can't fight it and she hasn't learned that yet. Try not to blame her, just be glad we got a level of goodwill that you don't find in most celebrities, and hope that it continues.
You don't even need to fly commercial to avoid being tracked in this way. If you charter planes then the tracking strategy falls apart too.
Owning your own plane means that anyone who cares gets to know your rough goings on. For example, we get to hear Harrison Ford get in trouble for accidentally landing on a taxiway in his plane (he was quite reasonable about it)
No one is forcing her to fly around that much. And she's by no means a new up and coming celebrity but has been dealing with this since 2 decades now.
So no, she doesn't get a free pass to use her wealth to silence very deserved criticism of her disgusting global footprint! Heck, she could spend a tiny amount of her dragon hoard sized wealth to donate to environmental protection to offset this footprint. But no, she rather uses that money to sue someone who she knows doesn't have the wealth to fight her legally.
I feel you. Makes sense to me.
I wonder why someone hasn't started a Part 135 for celebrities that way they can't be tracked per se. Rent out planes instead of being owned by any one celebrity.
Only half the country is inundated and riled up to see her as an Enemy of the State and an Enemy of the people. There must be many thousands now who want to see her raped, tortured and killed. She's been vilified. And she's not really a political figure unlike Musk who controls a significant part of the worlds communication medium and is politically active.
Taylor Swift has enough money to protect herself, but imagine someone less wealthy would be similarly tracked and/or vilified.
They're not tracking her you barely sentient punching bag, they are tracking the plane which is kind of necessary for safety.
someone less wealthy would be similarly tracked
I'm sympathetic to the perspective, but actually no, someone less wealthy couldn't be similarly tracked. To be tracked in this specific way, you must have exclusive ownership of plane(s) with tail numbers.
If you fly commercial and don't publish your itenirary publicly, then the public won't know your association with the flight. If you charter a private flight, then again no one knows that chartered plane == you. You have to actually own a dedicated private plane for anyone to use these resources to confidently track you in particular.
So I'm broadly sympathetic to the plight of celebrities with respect to paparazzi and stalkers and such. But with the availability of charter flights, hard for me to be too sympathetic of someone afflicted by private plane tracking.
Just a small clarification: the GOP does not have half of the country. Not even half of the voting population.
I'm thinking since the super bowl drama she's probably getting more death threats than usual, and this is a reaction to that. It's not going to work. You cant sue someone for publishing publicly available information.
If you travel in the same plane all the time, and you own that plane, people will be able to track you. Why not just get a good contract with a private jet company so you can fly anonymously? Even if she wins this case, she will still be trackable until she takes advantage of any of the options she has at her disposal.
Or buy two more private jets and always have two fly randomly across the country while noone knows which one you're using
Checkmate
Heck she could spend a tiny amount of her dragon hoard sized wealth to offset the environmental impact of her air travel. For example by buying endangered rain forest land and donating it to a public charity. But no, she rather uses her wealth as a legal club to try to silence people pointing out the harm she does to the planet.
To be fair, she could do that put people would still fixate on the private flight usage.
No, obfuscating her travel in charters is the viable 'solution' to this problem. Still roughly equivalent environmental impact (actually, potentially a bit more since a charter company might have to do extra empty flights for repositioning), but her travel would be harder to discern.
To be fair, she could do that put people would still fixate on the private flight usage.
Some sure would. But with good PR she could definitely come up on top of it. Certainly better than she fares now. And if someone could pull it off, then it's her.
No, obfuscating her travel in charters is the viable ‘solution’ to this problem. Still roughly equivalent environmental impact (actually, potentially a bit more since a charter company might have to do extra empty flights for repositioning), but her travel would be harder to discern.
That would be the "rich way" to avoid such a problem yeah. But it certainly wouldn't make her a better person.
The irony of "all billionaires bad" is that Taylor Swift earned that money through album sales and live touring. She wasn't actively exploiting the labor of workers in order to be rich, she is just that popular.
And before everyone jumps down my ass about my opinion sounding too conservative for Lemmy, I invite you to check out my post history.
The thousands of people making those records sell and shows happen:
There is no self made billionaire, a billion is an absurd amount of wealth a singular person cannot actually earn or be worth.
He's talking about all the people working at the label and concert agency. Do you think the technicians and riggers whot take care of all the audio, light and show effects get more money at her concerts? What about the people doing the security, check-in, cleaning and so on?
Try having a concert without any of these. There is hundreds of people working to make stadion concerts happen.
What a sad state of affairs that you feel the need to "defend" yourself by claiming you're not conservative. What the hell happened that we can't have differing opinions without making blanket disclaimers?
If this one action makes her a bad person, then there are no good people, which then of course would mean there are no good billionaires.
"that one action" lol
She is basically the worst case of private jet usage and leading the list of such individuals, while somehow advocating for the environment.
This is just ridiculous.
And she is trying to fuck that guy up for "stalking" and "harassment", just for showing public data.
On top, for whatever reason, she had 2 private jets flying around until now. Seems like she sold one this month.
I'm don't want to defend her use of a private her, but it seems like a ridiculous puritan test if that this makes her a bad human.
Just such an incredibly weird statement to make that Taylor Swift of all people is the threshold for finding any good in the world, and if she's not it then no one is.
This is not at all what I said. I said the metric used here to paint Taylor Swift as a bad person requires a level of pureness that would mean pretty much everyone is a bad person.
I have no idea whether she is a good perspn, but I do know that "she flies in a private jet and her lawyers sued someone because they claim it is a threat to her safety... So she's a bad person!" Is a terrible argument.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
We all suck, there's no good in humans. Maybe we should stop looking at humans, dogs might be a good place to start after all the comments I've heard about us not deserving them.
Where we disagree is that I don't think all humans are bad. We all do sucky things from time to time; no one is pure. Additionally it's often hard to see why someone might do something if you don't share the same experiences, so it might seem evil to you.
What I see happening here is that people want to hate her because she's rich, and by golly anything they can latch onto to confirm that desire to be true will be trotted out.
But we certainly agree dogs are pimp.
It’s public information. If you have a problem then stop flying around in your fancy fucking jet.
God damn rich people. Fuck em all.
Looks like someone doesn't know how transponders work.
Understandable I guess: It's not really something most people know anything about, but you'd think someone working for her would've been like, "Yeah, no, that's not really how aviation works, they are public by design" before it got to the point where a legal threat was made.
They know how it works, but they also know the average person won't go against a billionaire and the army of lawyers they can afford. It's a scare tactic.
Yeah, that seems pretty probable, especially for someone with such a manicured public persona. Still though, they don't really have a legal leg to stand on no matter how many lawyers they throw at it.
Yeah, but if the cat is out of the bag with respect to her tail number, then it's just some rando typing in a random tail number in a flight tracking database. You don't have to be setting up a dedicated service to do this, just using publicly available stuff that would let you track a random delta flight just as easily as some celebs private plane.
Unless you start declaring the public tracking databases must honor requests to filter 'special' tail numbers from queries.
I'm expecting her to be revealed as a villain at some point. She was born with a silver spoon, there are skeletons in closets, and she knows it. Time will tell.
Threatening legal action against some kid because she is too much of a rich asshole to travel like a normal person. If being a billionaire wasn't it then this is should be the reveal.
Especially since she's definitely rich enough to offset her global foot print from her jet usage by actively donating to charities trying to protect the planet ten times and she wouldn't feel it one bit.
While true most of the carbon offset stuff is a scam and a way to shuffle your carbon emissions around enough that it just gets lost and not offset at all.
I don't know anything about her. Was she born wealthy? That could explain a lot of the success.
According to wikipedia:
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989,[1] in West Reading, Pennsylvania.[2] She is named after singer-songwriter James Taylor.[3] Her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, is a former stockbroker for Merrill Lynch[4] and her mother, Andrea Gardner Swift (née Finlay), is a former homemaker who previously worked as a mutual fund marketing executive.[5] Taylor has a younger brother, actor Austin Swift.[6]
Not an emerald mine, but at least upper middle class.
Her father also owns Swift trucking. So every truck you see on the road with a big "Swift" on it? His company.
Way higher than just upper middle.
Edit: Sorry, I was lied to by a friend. He owns Swift Group, a financial advisory group. Net worth of $5 mil.
Hum, that is not what wikipedia says:
Carl Moyes was a truck driver hauling produce for C.R. England in the 1940s out of northern Utah.[4] In the late 1950s Betty and Carl Moyes started a small trucking company in Plain City, Utah, B & C Truck Leasing. After their son, Jerry, graduated from Weber State University in 1966, they moved the small company to Phoenix, Arizona. Carl and his two sons, Ronald and Jerry (vice-president), formed the company Common Market in Arizona, that would become Swift.
Also
The name Swift Transportation was purchased from a descendant of the Swift Meat Packing family, when the Moyes family bought the trucking assets of Swift & Company. The three Moyes family members and a fourth partner, Randy Knight, grew the business to $25 million in annual revenues by 1984. Jerry Moyes became president, chairman, and CEO that same year, and when Carl died in 1985, Jerry bought out the other two partners, his brother Ronald and Randy Knight. Ronald would continue to hold shares in Swift while Randy would become a co-founder of Knight Transportation.[6]
Yep, you're right. I was lied to by a friend.
I think I need to stop trusting them with factual tidbits.
She was. She basically bought her way into the music industry. In her early years, a lot of her hype was manufactured and astroturfed. Notably she did write her early songs herself, (the vast majority of pop songs are ghostwritten,) but didn’t have enough appeal to actually break into the industry. So her rich parents basically bought her a record label contract.
She has managed to turn the original millions into over a billion. So that is absolutely notable. But she wasn’t born poor, and it’s not a rags-to-riches story. Even without music, she never would’ve had to worry about rent or groceries.
Turning a thousand dollars into a million is infintely harder than turning a million dollars into a billion.
Looks as if she grew up in a comfortably upper class family. Maybe not mega rich, but they had money, a giant house, and land, and seem to have been able to use money to get her seen in the right places.
Regardless, she clearly has talent far beyond simply coming from an affluent childhood.
We have different definitions of mega rich. Stockbroker money, giant house and land... what other boxes need to be ticked?
Because it's quite ignorant. In no world is an upper class daughter of a stockbroker not filthy rich.
Sure she has some songwriting talent, but would she be as big as she is without that generational wealth backing her from birth?
would she be as big as she is without that generational wealth backing her from birth?
Maybe? Dolly Parton had relatively humble beginnings. My wife's school had a random band that made a decent splash in the industry with radio play time and record sales. Not Parton or Swift level, but still; they seemed decent enough but didn't see anything to know why a label went for them over a bunch of other similarly decent acts.
Celebrity can be weird sometimes. Sometimes you see someone pour all sorts of resources in trying to be 'popular' and fail, and sometimes you see someone come randomly out of nowhere.
Well to do with parents who were shockingly willing to bend over backwards to give her a chance at success. She's still remarkably wealthy given where she started but it's no rags to riches story.
I kinda hope so. It'd be pretty boring if it turns out she's just a mostly milquetoast white girl from Pennsylvania with a penchant for writing pop songs who stumbled into a billion dollars...
ADS-B data is public. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy. I grew to respect her recently, but in this matter, she is full of shit.
