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.
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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.
That's exactly how the Taliban talks. The highly cryptic methods used by this terror organization have been cracked.
What makes you think the Taliban is trying to hide? They're public. They have a Twitter account. They post memes. They're not trying to be cryptic, they're pretty out and open with their messaging these days.
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.
Wow. Eject or kamikaze?
I’m not totally sure, I don’t recall whether that was answered in the interview I saw with one of the pilots.
That's surprising that they don't keep at least a few jets armed in case they need to be scrambled for real. Guessing that's since changed and they do now.
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.
Or ... maybe don't let them on the plane at all?
he was at the airport check in when he sent it. assuming 2 hours between check in and boarding..... that's actually a really fast time to figure out who sent a random snap, unless somebody overheard him and then followed him while reporting it.
Or if Snapchat flagged it and reported it to the airport (which they absolutely will do.)
What's the fighter pilot got to do with that?
Because if a guy with a bomb manages to persuad the pilot to change course.....
You can shoot the plane down into a field or the sea, rather than letting it get hijacked and flown into a building. A lesser evil.
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.
Do actual terrorists go around saying “lol I’m a terrorist”? Maybe a little business card with some finely embossed “Taliban Suicide Bomber” printed under their name to hand out to everyone.
That's really not far off from actual Taliban recruitment and propaganda tactics these days. They have a public Twitter account, if anybody's forgotten.
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.