back

by pr337h4m·2y ago·view on hn ↗
"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."

If the reporting is accurate (a big if, to be fair), this doesn't seem possible unless either the friend reported his message or Snapchat was scanning private messages.

2 comments
It's odd how murky this is, considering that it was adjudicated in court. The BBC says[0]:

>A court in Madrid heard it was assumed the message triggered alarm bells after being picked up via Gatwick's Wi-Fi network.

But that seems implausible, given that Snapchat messages are encrypted (if not end-to-end, then at least client-to-server, which should be sufficient to prevent interception via a Wi-Fi network). And why would the court hear what is "assumed"? Shouldn't the investigator(s) who testified know how the messages came into their possession?

Then The Daily Mail says[1]:

>As [sic] spokesman for Gatwick Airport denied any suggestion their network could be compromised.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68056421

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13000923/snooped-ai...

He didn't tell a friend, he sent it to a group of friends. Any of which could have forwarded it to the authorities or told.
Between Snowden being over a decade ago now, and how many ideological nut jobs have pre-advertised their violent attacks on social media in recent years - I would assume that the spooks are doing direct & real-time monitoring of all substantial social media platforms these days.
They can all help him pay the fine.
What did they do legally wrong again? My fine legal expert?