An airline passenger could face a $120,000 bill after fighter jets were scrambled when he joked about blowing up the plane
An airline passenger could face a $120,000 bill after fighter jets were scrambled when he joked about blowing up the plane
Spain sent two F-18 jets to flank an easyJet airliner after an 18-year-old said on Snapchat he was going to blow up the plane, per the BBC.
Or he won’t because this is an old story that already has an acquittal: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68099669
Are chats on snapchat public? Because if not, this is just an admission of automatically scanning and evaluating all communications on the app no?
It was not immediately clear how UK authorities were alerted to the message, with the judge noting "they were not the subject of evidence in this trial".
A literal "We're not the ones on trial here!" Holy shit.
Its the UK they invented that phrase.
Snapchat is not end-to-end encrypted, so they saw the message and notified the authorities. So yes, exactly.
"Intercepted while the plane was over England through unknown reasons" my ass lmao.
No they are not. It was intended as a private joke among friends.
It was not immediately clear how UK authorities were alerted to the message, with the judge noting "they were not the subject of evidence in this trial".
A spokesperson for Snapchat said the social media platform would not "comment on what's happened in this individual case".
On its website, in a section titled "How We Work with Law Enforcement Authorities", Snapchat says one of its goals is to "maintain a safe and fun environment where Snapchatters are free to express themselves and stay in touch with their real friends".
It adds: "We also work to proactively escalate to law enforcement any content appearing to involve imminent threats to life, such as school shooting threats, bomb threats and missing persons cases, and respond to law enforcement's emergency requests for disclosure of data when law enforcement is handling a case involving an imminent threat to life.
Uh Snapchat already does that. Nothing about it is encrypted. And deleted messages are only deleted from your device, not snapchats servers.
That was a big question during the trial, too
Serious question: what would these fighter planes actually do in such situation?
They'd get a really big megaphone and tell the pilot "Pull over!"
jk, they'll just fire a Sidewinder missile at it if it deviates from its flight path.
Guessing it gives them information on what is actually happening on the plane. If the pilots were being held against their will they could be following orders from a hijacker.
Sounds logical.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
An airline passenger who prompted the Spanish air force to scramble fighter jets after he said he was going to blow up the plane he was on appeared Monday in court, the BBC reported.
Aditya Verma was 18 when he and his friends traveled with easyJet from London Gatwick Airport to the Spanish island of Menorca in July 2022.
The BBC reported that before departing, he told a friend on Snapchat: "On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)."
Security services saw the message and flagged it to Spanish authorities, who sent two F-18 jets to follow the airliner until it landed, per the BBC.
According to The Telegraph, Verma told the court he first thought the jets were flanking the plane as part of a military exercise related to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Verma's lawyer told the court it was a "bad joke" but emphasized it was one made in private with friends.
The original article contains 281 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 43%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
How did they know the message came from him? Profile pic? Seems pretty work intensive (if it's even possible) to connect a UUID to an IP address and search everyone's phone for their UUID.