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So, wait a minute. This kid makes a private joke among friends, and his message is intercepted by security services and obviously taken out of context (in that they failed to realize he was privately joking among friends).
Seems to me that the security forces should eat the cost of this. This is the price you pay for spying on everyone and overreacting.
The kid didn't say this publicly
Even if this was a real terrorist, this is the worst move security services could've done.
They could bar a suspected terrorist from entering the plane via a temporary arrest. If they're wrong, just reimburse the travel costs. If correct, you didn't let a terrorist possibly hijack a plane.
They could use the "randomly selected for a search" card as an excuse for detailed screening. A terrorist can't blow up a plane without some sort of smuggled troublesome equipment anyway. If they're wrong, you spent like 10 minutes searching a random dude. At least you didn't gave a terrorist chance to hijack a plane.
They instead let a suspected terrorist enter the plane as usual; then tailed him with fighter jets. What the actual fuck was the plan if the suspected person was a terrorist? Blow up the fucking plane so all the civilians inside die?
Imagine the call done to the authorities
"This is airport, we've detected a suspicious individual that could be affiliated with a terrorist organization"
"Since you detected him, I assume you've detained him? We'll be sending units"
"Umm... no? Just let him board the plane"
"YOU WHAT?"
Yeah why the fuck were they spying on some 18 year old kid's snapchat?
He wrote:
"On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)."
There's no way that text doesn't get automatically flagged for review by Snapchat.
Who's reading these private messages?
I imagine Snapchat read it.
Then checked his location (since Snapchat likely asks users to turn on that permission, or it could've been found through photo/video metadata).
Then they informed the airport nearest to his GPS location.
And that's probably why it got blown out of proportion.
Snapchat says "Hey airport, we found someone at your location who said they're going to blow up a plane. Here's a cropped picture of the guy's face."
Then the airport staff are looking through everyone who's checked in, trying to match the Snapchat picture to the passport photos. By the time they found a match, the plan had already departed. (Let's be real, they probably have some facial recognition, but it was likely double-checked by humans, plus all the communication back and forth, etc.)
So now the airport knows that the guy who said he's going to blow up the plane is already on the plane, and the plane is in flight. What are your options at that point?
Probably doesn't need facial recognition even. Snapchat has people's phone numbers. Which are also used when booking tickets for most airlines. The airport could cross check phone record from Snapchat with their airlines' passenger info.
Snapchat is not private.
Because if a terrorist sent that then blew up a plane and they didn't act the public backlash would be insane.
While it's super invasive there are terrorists stupid enough to use services like this to communicate.
Also what's the goal of scrambling jets when the threat is a passenger inside said jet? Are they gonna ask the pilot to pipe the radio to the PA and say "you better not blow up that plane because we're in charge and we said so?" Do they have a sniper on the wing ready to take out just one guy meanwhile depressurizing the whole fuselage, potentially explosively? Maybe Top Gun Tom Cruise can hit the guy with a burst of the 20mm? Seems like there's no point whatsoever. Best case they can say "yep it blew up" or "nope it didn't blow up."
I mean, were there actually a terrorist onboard the plane, I imagine the logic would be "If they hijack it and decide to try to crash it into something 9/11 style, a fighter can at least blow it up in time to prevent more casualties on the ground"
This would make sense. Fighters were scrambled to take out Flight 93. The assumed target was the White House, so they were scrambled so fast they didn’t have time to arm them. Their plan was to literally crash into the hijacked plane. One into the tail, one into the cockpit.
By the time they arrived the plane had already been brought down by the passengers.
The jets are to shoot down the airliner if it aims towards a dense area, sensitive location, etc.
They'd shoot the plane down if they can't get the pilot to land safely. They'd rather one plane full of innocent passengers gets killed than a plane full of innocent passengers and a building full of even more innocents.
Is anyone stupid enough to think that Snapchat is private? Honest question. It's still a social media platform.
Private enough to use as the primary communication method for my multi-million dollar drug empire? No. Private enough to make a dumb joke to a friend and not expect to become a terrorist? It should be but clearly not
The kid didn’t say this publicly
I'm not sure what this changes. Do actual terrorists make their plans public? IANAT, but I'm pretty sure they discuss and plan their actions privately most of the time.
Besides, look at what he wrote:
"On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)."
If he somehow didn't expect that line of text to get his Snapchat auto-watchlisted, then he's even dumber than originally thought.
I mean yeah most people kinda assume that their private conversations are private, hopefully this will help more people aware that corporations and governments are spying on us all
Yeah I would personally tell them to eat shit.
This tends to be ineffective in court.
My first thought is what is the point of sending fighter jets to deal with a bomb threat?
"Don't you blow up this plane, or else........ we'll blow up this plane."
Bomb threats can be used to get control of the plane and then fly it into stuff. The fighter jet is there to bring down the plane if it seems like they’re trying to 9/11 it.
It would have been nice if they could have stopped him before he got on the plane. If he was serious, things likely wouldn't have ended well.
"The intention was never to cause public distress or cause public harm," Verma told the court.
That moment, the kid realised some joke is off-limit and could have serious consequences.
When you're in a group chat in Snapchat, Snap always has an ear on the group.
Suggesting anything illegal at an airport or border crossing is off-limits for me, no jokes, even with family/friends. I thought people knew better.
One 18-year-old is about to find out the very harsh consequences of being an adult.
The harsh consequences of being in a police state
What should happen if there is an explicit threat by a passenger to blow up a plane? Just hope it's a joke because it seems like one?
EDIT: As usual, lots of downvotes, but no actual answer to the question.
the article seems to suggest it wasnt even shared publicly, so I suspect that they hadn't even considered the possibility that anyone who might think of it as a threat might see it. Posting that on a public forum, I can see the reaction, and I can definitely see an argument that the joke was in bad taste, but to be perfectly honest, unless one of their friends thought the message was sincere and reported it (which the article doesnt mention and sounds dubious) a private message like that really shouldnt have been visible to the authorities in the first place.
The lawyer claims the joke was made with friends in private, but we don't know what 'in private' means. Does Spain have the authority to automatically flag private Snapchat conversations for terrorist threats? Because I'm dubious. I think it's much more likely that someone didn't have their account set private.
How is it a threat if said privately?
The same way it's a threat if you tell someone privately that you're going to blow up a building. But it's not clear that this was truly private.
He shouldn't have been allowed boarding in the first place. The security services saw that message, but let him board the plane. They're fully responsible for the bill of two jet fighters used to trail the plane, and would be in way more deep trouble if this was an actual terrorist.