Aditya Verma is of Indian descent, so when he and his five buddies boarded a plane in London in 2022 headed for the Spanish island of Menorca, he decided to send a silly message to the group of friends via Snapchat — a message he assumed would be sent privately.
"On the way to blow up a plane, I am a member of the Taliban," he wrote, along with an attached photo.
Indian-born Verma said the joke was made in the context of recurring comments in the chat over his features and skin tone.
I can only imagine what his buddies had written in the previous messages 🤣
Anyhow, this joke was made in a private chat, or so they thought.
Fast forward to their time in the air, and they found out their messages were not private at all.
Yes, British intelligence somehow became aware of the Snapchat message and found Verma's joke to be quite disturbing.
The message was somehow intercepted by British security services who alerted the Spanish Air Force, which in turn scrambled a Eurofighter jet to escort the plane.
"Somehow."
On an encrypted app in a private message.
And they moved fast enough to contact the Spaniards and scramble fighters in real-time.
Hmm.
No explosives or weapons were found, but Verma was arrested on landing and spent the night in jail, police said at the time.
Arrested, jailed, and then prosecutors suggest a €117,000 fine.
That's $127,000!!
For a joke!!
A private joke made on a private chat of an app that advertises discretion and privacy.
Prosecutors had asked for a fine of 22,500 euros ($24,500) be imposed on Verma and that he pay 94,800 euros in damages to the Spanish defence ministry for the cost of deploying the fighter jet.
The charges were dropped in January, since, well, this was a private chat and it wasn't like Verma was threatening anyone.
Judge Jose Manuel Fernandez Prieto ruled the comments were not an offence as they were made in "a strictly private environment" and Verma could not have suspected the message would be intercepted.
The trial did not make clear how the British services managed to have access to Verma's private messages, the judge stressed.
He suggested one of the chat's other members could have warned the police, but if that were the case, that other member would have to be charged, not Verma.
Translation: Citizens of Britain have no privacy. And I'm being conservative when I contain this lack of privacy to Britain. This is crazy.
Like, how did British intelligence get ahold of this message?
Well, I'm thinking either British intelligence is receiving messages from Snapchat directly, or Snapchat is monitoring everything themselves and alerting authorities about specific things. And I don't think that's what I agreed to when I accepted those terms and conditions.
So this has fishy written all over it, and I'm beginning to think we don't have any privacy left in this world.
Anyway, next time you send literally anything over the internet, just assume the FBI, MI5/6, and the Pentagon will see it!
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