this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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A British man accused of public disorder after joking about blowing up a flight has gone on trial in Spain.

Aditya Verma made the comment on Snapchat on his way to the island of Menorca with friends in July 2022.

The message, sent before Mr Verma departed Gatwick airport, read: "On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)." Mr Verma told a Madrid court on Monday: "The intention was never to cause public distress or cause public harm."

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".

"It was just sent to my friends I was travelling with on the day," he said. Pressed about the purpose of the message, Mr Verma said: "Since school, it's been a joke because of my features... It was just to make people laugh."

So no one involved in the private Snapchat message reported this to Spanish authorities, the UK government intercepted private communications, read it, and misinterpreted a private joke as real threat.

Just imagine how western media reporting on this if it happened in China.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

A friend and I tried emailing each other fake terror plans in 2004 because we wanted the FBI to shutdown our high school. Maybe the technology wasn't there yet, or maybe the British are better than the US at the digital side of the whole police state thing

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This entire thing is insane, the UK monitors another country's internet traffic and private messages, and thinks it can prosecute a man because of an obvious joke made in private i mean are ANY journalists able to point out how batshit insane this entire thing is? Are journalists this fucking incompetent now? I'm going to lose my god damn mind

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Having no critical thinking skills is a must to get hired as a journalist in mainstream media.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This is blatant abuse of power by the state, and the fact that it's being presented as a totally reasonable thing is absolutely mind blowing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

would be a good thing if anglos had their actual minds blown, violently, and permanently.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Careful, the U.K. security services are probably reading these replies. They might arrest you for ‘inciting genocide’.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

yes, i wish all westerners would die, now please send one of your shitty DRM locked jets to my appartment. Hopefully the license runs out midflight and it crashes trhough my window and kills me, that way i wont have to read those stupid headlines anymore.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Love the idea that MI5 or whatever, thinks the first thing a terrorist would so before an attack would be post about it to their friends.

Got this image in my head of some grindbro terrorist posting a selfie in front of a huge pile of people he killed, and being roasted in the comments by his mates 'cos they counted the fingers and clocked it as an AI deepfake.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I am sure that plenty of ordinary British citizens are grateful that their tax dollars are going to efforts like this.

After all, the United Kingdom is a democracy. That must mean that one day everybody voted on being monitored.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Kind of reminds me of how some ppl say they got accounts blocked by banks because they put stuff like "isis funding" in the concept when making transactions to friends.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

So someone makes an obvious joke in a private chat about blowing up a plane, then the authorities launch fighter jets to do what exactly? What were the jets for? Were they going to blow up the plane to prevent a terrorist blowing up the plane?

Perhaps the entire scenario was run by an a series of algorithms - from flagging the text in the group chat right through to the scramble jets order, with no human at any point reading anything and taking a moment to think about what it actually meant or what the implications really were. Maybe we can add an AI commanded NATO Air Force to the list of shit this article has inadvertently leaked.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Were they going to blow up the plane to prevent a terrorist blowing up the plane?

Yes, but the jets would've made sure the plane fell on a major city to justify increasing the military, policing, and border budget.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

lol right, like none of this makes sense

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I guess they were there just incase the plane was hijacked. But doesn't make sense because they could ask the cockpit about that directly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

"Uhhhh control tower, why are there two fighter planes flanking me????"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I just realised they called it a hoax rather than a joke. The joke was said in private company, nobody was expected to be fooled, it's not a hoax.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The hoax is privacy laws in liberal countries.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, everybody in the conversation knew this was a joke. There was no intent to do harm or to fool the public. The whole case is nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It's so "literally 1984" that citizens are expected to know that their private conversations are watched and can make authorities lose money if they react to it. You can't make this shit up

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

If the student isn't heavily prosecuted, there's going to be a tiktok trend of doing this to your mate's phone when they're not looking.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

as always, everything they fear monger would happen under communism actually happens under capitalism

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