British man Aditya Verma appears in Spanish court over plane-bomb hoax
Aditya Verma sent a Snapchat message in July 2022 saying he was about to "blow up" a plane.
TL;DR
Don't use snapchat
he wrote "On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)." in a private group chat on snap chat
...a private group chat. Nothing stupid like posting it on xitter or other public place.
Its a fucking in-joke. Do I need to worry about what I say to my friends now in private and worry about what my friendly local government spy would think about it... ?
All this invasion of privacy all these years and all they have to show for it are a few false positives.
Honestly I hope that this trial is swift and that the government ends up paying him for lost time and money.
On the other hand this is a really good reason to use encrypted communications
He was acquitted, thankfully.
And then you see the recent news about some presumably terrorists having "tails" and "signal" as evidence in their case
The spying is not what suprises me, it's the prosecution. I see why the term matched, I just don't see why it would be illegal.
In general I agree, but there's no privacy on airport Wi-Fi. And very little at an airport in general.
I wouldn't expect my data to be secure, but I wouldn't expect to be prosecuted as if I had willfully made it a public statement.
Snapchat gave the info to police. From BBC:
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.
Yes, especially in the UK, since they're a surveillance state.
There are some things that will always get flagged on any platform. This, drugs, and connections to sanctioned countries, for example. I've heard of people in the US having their Venmo accounts suspended because they put "Havana" in the transaction description. Havana is a local dance club.
You were convicted of thought crime, next time think what you.. think, punk
Exactly, this is such a silly case. I think its even funnier that he was interviewed by MI6 and MI7
I think the most newsworthy part of this is that UK monitors private communications of British citizens. The person was making an obvious joke within a private snapchat group of his friends who knew this was a joke. There was no threat and no hoax because this was a private chat where everybody had context that this was a joke. This is what life in a dystopian surveillance state is like.
TL;DR
Don’t use snapchat
TIL that Snapchat is an app used in 2024 without E2EE, Wikipedia article on Snapchat :
Encryption
In January 2018, Snapchat introduced the use of end-to-end encryption in the application but only for snaps (pictures and video), according to a Snapchat security engineer presenting at the January 2019 Real World Crypto Conference.[138][139][140] As of the January 2019 conference Snapchat had plans to introduce end-to-end encryption for text messages and group chats in the future.[141]
Its also proprietary so any claim can't be trusted.
Well, doesn't matter if it's proprietary. Just need to sniff packets and you'd find out if they are encrypted or not, no?
Edit: looks like it's not E2E truly. It might be encrypted in flight, but snapchat as an entity can read anyone's messages. They have a policy to act on threats within thirty minutes and report it to the authorities. Dystopian.
Probably Snapchat or the phone automatically reported something.
I don't believe the Snapshat app doesn't use TLS, nor the airport performed some sophisticated man-in-the-middle attack.
Its called mass surveillance. Everything you do and say is being recorded. End to end encryption will only buy you time. (Side note: don't trust proprietary apps)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
If found guilty, the university student faces a hefty bill for expenses after two Spanish Air Force jets were scrambled.
Mr Verma's message was picked up by the UK security services who flagged it to Spanish authorities while the easyJet plane was still in the air.
A court in Madrid heard it was assumed the message triggered alarm bells after being picked up via Gatwick's Wi-Fi network.
Appearing in court on Monday, Mr Verma - who is now studying economics at Bath University - said the message was "a joke in a private group setting".
He said that the plane's pilot made an announcement, telling passengers that the fighter jets had been scrambled because of a distress signal that had been sent by mistake.
Mr Verma is not facing terrorism charges or a possible jail term, but could be fined up to €22,500 (£19,300) if found guilty and the Spanish defence ministry is demanding €95,000 in expenses.
The original article contains 470 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Just for anyone curious, he wrote: "On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)." in a private chat.
That's a reasonable ruling. He honestly could sue if he wanted.