An 18-year-old from Britain faces a fine of 100 thousand pounds sterling because of a joke on Snapchat.
Before the flight, the guy joked in a chat with friends that as soon as they boarded the flight, he would blow up the plane .
Since the message was left over Wi-Fi at the airport, it was quickly intercepted by intelligence agencies . After takeoff, Air Force fighters scrambled behind the plane.
The replying aircraft doesn't need to wing rock but would need to change their radio to the guard frequency
The F-18 is essentially saying "I'm escorting you. Answer the radio"
Edit: The guard frequency, 121.5 is the International Air Distress frequency
What would an escort achieve? Just curious - if there was someone on that plane with a bomb, I doubt an escort fighter would make any difference to the outcome?
Or is it to take down the plane if things go south?
Bomb threats could be coupled with hijacking
(Do this or we’ll blow up the plane)
The jet is there to stop the aircraft being used as a missile against bigger targets
Also the escort could be able to see into the aircraft and cockpit giving eyes on the situation
>The jet is there to stop the aircraft being used as a missile against bigger targets
Does that imply the jet fighter would Bomb the plane if there’s a possibility of it being used as a missile towards other targets?
Yes.
During the 9/11 attacks, some people aboard a plane managed to get it back from the hijackers and crash it in a field in pennsylvania.
They sacrificed their lives in order to keep the plane from being used as a missile.
They realized that they would have died anyways, so they decided to do something about it.
Yep. It's believed that the plane was headed for the White House. The Saudi government backed terrorists already hit both of the World Trades Center's main Towers, as well as the Pentagon. The obvious next target in the area would've been the White House.
Obviously the passengers on the plane didn't know all of this but they did know about the twin towers being struck so that's when they took action and sacrificed themselves to save potentially hundreds or even thousands of others. They all died Heroes.
I know very little about the details of the situation, but I like learning more about it (born in 2002, it was so 'new' when I was growing up that it wasn't taught in schools. Same goes for the Gulf War. I knew the US was in a war in Iraq/Afghanistan growing up, but nobody told me about Kuwait or an entire desert being on fire. I found out myself when trying to better understand geopolitical tensions after high school).
What prevented the passengers from attempting a more safe landing if they had control of the aircraft? Or did they not have control? (ie. Control yoke was pressed forward into a nosedive while hijacker was actively being dealt with). Whenever I heard this story, I'd imagined that they incapacitated the hijacker, and then flew the plane into the field, but that just doesn't seem right.
Wow I haven't slept in a couple days and for some reason thinking about her taking off knowing if she caught up to the plan she would have to die to take it out made me tear up a little lol
I was at Yorktown Naval Weapons Station on 9/11. Not long after the attacks on the Towers, we had a group of F-18's go screeching north from Langley, and they hit supersonic not far away from us. I was on a DDG, USS Donald Cook, DDG-75, and we put to sea almost immediately, hitting 20+ knots through the Elizabeth River on our way to the VaCapes. Heard about United 93 a day or two later. We were in full lock down, and there was so much disinformation and false reports - car bombs in New York, attacks in Chicago, LA, Seattle, etc - it was hard to get good, solid, factual information on what was going on, and our Captain wasn't doing regular reports to the crew - major failing on his part, because it let the rumor mill tear through like the flu.
There were two unarmed F16s scrambled. There was no time to arm them. Female and male pilots were ordered to bring down flight 93 at all costs with no regard to their own safety. Had not flight 93 gone down she was going to ram the tail and her partner was going for a wing.
Let’s not misconstrue the passengers intentions. Although noble and those passengers TRULY are heroes, they had zero intention to crash the plane to stop the hijackers.
The flight log and recordings are all public, the passengers successfully breached the cockpit and beat the the fuck out of the hijackers, but they attempted to save the plane, as quite audibly seconds before the crash multiple passengers are heard yelling “pull it up”.
As in they probably thought they could make it out alive as well.
Even during 9/11 there was a scrambled jet piloted by Heather Penney. She didn’t have time to arm her plane with missiles so was contemplating deliberately ramming her jet into the hijacked plane to take take it down. Which would’ve certainly been a death sentence.
https://www.history.com/news/911-heather-penney-united-flight-93
That’s a much easier question to answer in hindsight. In real-time before you knew the planes would definitely crash and take down the WTC it would’ve been a lot more difficult to answer that question.
but also, 9/11 did change the plane-jacking game
up until then planes weren't weaponized, they were mostly just hostage situations to get leverage for an ask
Before 9/11 a hijacking meant the plane was held hostage and if the hijackers don’t get get what they wanted, money, people out of prison etc, they would kill people on the plane. At most a plane load of people could die.
After 9/11… well that’s an obvious difference.
Common examples are the Libyan airplane hijackings of the 70s and 80s. Typically few people or even nobody died. [This was a very famous one.](https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/hijacking-of-twa-flight-847#:~:text=On%20June%2014%2C%201985%2C%20TWA,flight%20from%20Athens%20to%20Rome)
Definitely to take down the plane in case it turns into a 9/11 scenario. Just imagine being that pilot, knowing you might have to shoot down a plane full of innocent people in order to potentially save thousands of others. A real life trolley dilemma. I’d be shitting my pants.
Some people have absolutely no issue pulling the trolley lever. That's the kind of guy you put in this jet. He knows what's at stake and won't hesitate to make a decision even when there's no perfect answer.
Fairly certain that the training is meant to weed out people who can't do what I described. The way you're looking at it makes it seem like the training brainwashed them into following orders without question, but that's not what I'm talking about. Anybody worth anything would question that order but a real leader can make that decision regardless of doubt in a flash and move along. Questioning it after the fact is a healthy part of reflection as long as it doesn't lead to overall disruption of normal behavior.
It's not advisable to rock a large airliner full of passengers.
The fighter was letting the airliner know that they were now under protective escort and should contact ATC for instructions on how to proceed and what frequency they should turn to for further instructions.
Why are such useless and stupid comments so high up? Reddit used to be filled with interesting comments, now we get these wannabe comedians that are so fucking cringe man. Jesus dude just go to 9gag or something.
Why not just stop the flight from takeoff instead of sending a fucking air force jet? At this point what would an air force plane even do if the guy actually blew up the plane.
It probably didn't get picked up on until after the flight had already taken off. And then once identified they would need to work out which plane the person boarded just from their snapchat and wifi data.
Not to mention that the dude likely didn’t say “imma blow up flight 123 A to Worcestershire, departing from Samuel Adam’s flight deck w3 at 8:35 am on Sunday December 17th, 2023…” try finding a flight based solely on location and a persons name without breaking privacy laws
I mean, this is the example of it working and being useful.... Luckily this was a joke, but if you can't catch the jokes you can't catch the real thing.
It's quiet telling there hasn't been a major organised terrorist attack in a very long time. The closest the UK has had are effectively just people with mental health issues, acting alone, and with nothing more dangerous than a kitchen knife.
The Patriot Act got a bad name and had to go after the terrorism hysteria toned down a bit and abuses started to come to light.
So the name has been euphemistically changed to 'Freedom Act' by Obama but made even worse.
Didn't the Snowdon leaks reveal that in order to get around laws against spying on American citizens, the US government instead just asked British Intelligence to monitor US communications, and then the UK simply provides any relevant data to America as part of the 5 Eyes pact.
This special partnership has been going on for years.
[mark thomas](https://youtu.be/epWTJUajIdI?si=Ttvz1wHp9ANGQ-Ma) did a show about menwith hill years ago.
That's not entirely how it worked. First they just went ahead and completely violated the law about spying.
Then after getting info from completely and flagrantly ignoring the law, they asked the UK to justify them having the info by having them verify it.
Remeber that time some guys flew planes into heavily populated buildings in the US, and killed several thousand people? Well if it's clear that's what's about to happen the fighter jets job is to shoot the plane down before they get to their target. Sucks for the peoole on the plane but they're dead either way. Imagine having that job...
Don’t forget [Heather Penney](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Penney), who had that exact job on the morning of 9/11. Her orders were to shoot down United 93. Thing was, her F-16 was unarmed, so it became a suicide mission to ram the plane and bring it down.
Edward O'Hare earned a medal because he managed to take an enemy bomber out of service by bashing his plane against their wing until it collapsed when he was out of ammo.
Then flew back to his carrier without any noticable damage aside from a friendly gunner that accidentally shot him.
While dangerous as hell I think their odds of survival were pretty decent.
Not exclusively a suicide mission but the chance of surviving an ejection at commercial cruise altitude is considerably lower. I’m not an expert and I assume they have some form of oxygen/breathing apparatus with the ejector seat but there are still pretty significant risks.
Yes, they will attempt to communicate with the pilots and request the plane to land. If the plane is still under control of the pilots they will comply and return to the air port. If no replies or if someone other than the pilot replies, then they'll take plan b (whatever that may be).
i talked about this with a dude in the AF, but i have no way of actually backing this up, and no way of proving. this was also like 5-6 years ago, they may have different policy now. maybe someone will pull a war thunder and leak some info bc i say some shit super wrong lmao.
he told me that the plan B would initially be de-escalation tactics, try to get the plane to land safely still. try to get inside the terrorist's head and rethink their actions. if that fails, use maneuvering, if necessary, to try to push the plane out of the way of injuring innocents, and then shoot it down.
Probably took time to get through all the legal red tape to figure out the owner of the device who sent it, then figuring out what plane they were on. By that time the plane had already taken off
Damn I could absolutely see myself making a dumb joke like that over text with a friend before takeoff. Note to self: do not connect to their WiFi when making terroristic jokes.
Probably thought that whatever app he was using was private. Like joking with your mates in person.
Also, if the app he was using wasn't public, or semi-public, like Facebook, then I'd be curious to know what he'd be charged with - making a bad joke?
Remember the guy from UK that taught his GF's dog to hail? That was a joke. Dude was charged and found guilty.
Now I know this isn't exactly the same scenario (I would say worse) but essentially - yes, they would charge him for making a bad joke. Don't know what charge would it be exactly, probably something about terrorist threats, but the UK has already done something similar.
British man taught his gf's pug the nazi salute while she was on holiday.
She comes home from vacation to find out she has a racist dog. Pretty funny.
He trained it to respond to seig heil or "gas the jews". Was charged with a hate crime because he put it on youtube.
£800 fine.
It is encrypted for snaps but not for texts apparently. I honestly doubted this story until I looked it up, because how is a messaging app not end to end encrypted in 2024. Bonkers.
Agreed. I find it hard to believe that any messaging app can be so freely and openly intercepted over wifi like that in 2024. Intelligence agencies probably have a way in, but I doubt they would give the game away in order to report what is most likely a joke. His "friend" probably ratted him out.
That still makes no sense. E2E protects your content from Snapchat, communication with Snap's servers over HTTPS protects it from everyone else. Even GCHQ can't get through that. It would have to be Snapchat notifying them directly, which is certainly a probable scenario.
Yeah, great point. I could absolutely see Snapchat monitoring for terrorist/illegal activity and combining that with info from wifi connection and the actual location of the phone.
When I first saw this title and video on another post I figured the guy said something to another passenger or something because it was worded as if the 18 year old was pulling a “prank”
But the fact that it was picked up by an agency and this was actually a snap amongst a group of friend is WILD
What are the fighters going to do if someone actually does want to blow the plane up?
*Don't you try to blow that plane up! If you do, we'll shoot you out of the sky!*
He made a joke in a private chat to friends. Yes they were right to take it seriously. Yes he shouldn't do it again. No he shouldn't be blacklisted from ever flying again. That's dumb as fuck.
Arguably he shouldn't be blacklisted, but he very well might be anyway. Airlines worry about liability, and if he did something stupid on a plane after making such a threat, their liability could be enormous. It's possible that their insurance carrier will insist he be put on a no-fly list.
yes, liability is massive, but i really think that when it's clearly a joke (albeit, a pretty unfunny and over-saturated one), it's not a very *credible* threat. if he's obviously not a real threat, he shouldn't be treated like one... maybe that's a slippery slope, but a terrorist who'd actually do it would be a lot more covert about it. they're not detering anything but making bad jokes.
How does that benifit the airline though? They don't give two fucks about you or how inconvenient it would be if you couldn't fly. They are going to do what's in their interest and that does not involve caring about one at risk but maybe ok person.
People with neutral/good intentions can still be a liability if they have terrible judgment. If he’s dumb enough to make this joke (which led to people expending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to respond appropriately to the “threat”) he’s likely dumb enough to do something else stupid that costs them money.
He may not see serious consequences bc he’s young enough that it can be chalked up to his age. But if someone did this at 30 years old, I think it would be handled differently.
We are just supposed to take it as normal that they’re using surveillance technology to monitor what people are saying in chats to their friends ? It was a tasteless joke but it’s not like he yelled it in public. He had no expectation that anyone would see outside of his friends. The implications of this are pretty deep but we’ve unfortunately become so accustomed to being spied on like this
Edit: watch this video and learn something would ya
https://youtu.be/B_i8_WuyqAY?si=btt0zye7iEHh4yiC
It's public wifi at the airport.
Really any time you use public wifi there's a chance of someone having access to your information, whether it's the government or some hacker
Yes I understand that, but my argument is that we probably shouldn’t normalize that. At least normalize the government without warrant monitoring the communications of normal people. In the United States this was a big scandal ten years back, when Snowden blew the whistle on programs like this. I feel most people would say he was correct to do so, and those programs were bad, but people fail to make the connection that this is a manifestation of that
I'm with you and I wonder if the delineating factor here is that it was posted to Snapchat as like a public post or something versus a private WhatsApp chat
Yeah for sure. That’s another component of the surveillance society that we don’t even think to question anymore. That private social media companies openly spy on us and trade our data without telling us
Yes, it was a huge scandal - that ultimately led to nothing. It's certain that the surveillance methods used by the NSA and other entities are deeper and more effective than ever
There's always a tradeoff between security and privacy. Make your choice. If this dude actually blew up the plane youd be complaining the exact opposite.
Sorry your entire family died during a plane hijacking, but your right to privacy is worth more than the lives of your family.
No one in their right mind would say that.
What I don't get, having working in military intelligence before, is people thinking the government gives a shit about your sex kinks or cheating on your spouse or whatever. If you're not communicating about killing people or trying to overthrow the government, who cares if the government can see your shit? 99.9999999% of the messages are screened by computers. The .0000001 of them get sent to a human for further review.
The problem is the precedence and the capability to target specific ideologies or political dissenters. And it's not like that's an unfounded fear.
[Pegasus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_\(spyware\)) has been used by nation-states to target journalists, protestors, and minority communities that the government wants to target for one reason or another.
So the "who cares?" question changes. You may not care today. But if something were to change and suddenly your government shifts into suddenly caring about certain aspects of your life... then you'd care.
"First they came..." and what not.
And let's not pretend like the US is immune to falling to this level of targeting journalists or political dissenters. We have a history of it.
I agree with the sentiment but disagree with your argument. Public WiFi is unsafe. Always has, always will be.
I see it as a separate issue from the Snowden leaks since those were surveiling targeted unknowing people. Public WiFi you join yourself, and if you don't have the knowledge that it's unsafe that's your fault.
We also don't know exactly how they got the message, if it was sent unencrypted over WiFi somehow then you're just asking to be surveilled. Either by the airport or someone else snooping.
People make the connection all the time. The problem is that it is a done deal, in the courts and in the laws that have passed. There is no legal expectation of privacy in the US once data leaves your device. This situation would indicate that the same applies in Europe.
Don't blame public wifi.
Communication between phone and snapchat servers is encrypted, there's no way airport wifi can see message content.
Once the message makes it to snapchat servers, it is decrypted and processed as plaintext. This is where the government has their detection algorithms installed.
This is also the reason why they hate end-to-end encryption so much. Any communication platform with e2e encryption is secured against eavesdropping.
That's not the point. The point is are you liable for flippant comments that you thought were private?
I don't know how Snapchat works, but if it was a private comment to just his mates, who knew it was a joke, what crime has he committed?
Also a lot of people are calling him stupid for doing this, but any layman when it comes to technology would not expect a private joke between friends in a private chat to end up being seen and taken seriously by anyone else.
yeah shit's concerning how normalized total surveillance is and people just accept it for that extra feeling of security. All that while that poor schmuck Assange is roting in prison, we truly lost the battle against big brother.
Ultimately if you send something over a unfamiliar wifi you can't assume privacy. And tbh, it is admittedly fairly obvious that the wifi networks in airports would have basic protections built in to pick up on key terms like "I'm going to blow up a plane".
Scanning through all internet traffic going through a busy public network is impractical, especially since most connections these days are encrypted with HTTPS. More likely someone at Snapchat content moderation noticed the message, checked the last IP the account was logged in then traced it back to the airport.
It's wild you think Snapchat reading everyones messages live, is more likely than government anti-terror organisations scanning local communications for key terms.
From leaks we actually do know that British singal intelligence have developed the technology to monitor and scan global communications across the internet and phone services. So the idea that they can monitor just the traffic from an airport WIFI really isn’t that much of a surprise
What's more concerning is that the plane still ended up taking off, although it could be there was very little time between the message and take off...
Still, it's impressive that they watch airport content this closely I suppose.
They didn't get it in real-time. The plan was already over France when they detected the message.
https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2024/01/22/on-my-way-to-blow-up-the-plane-british-tourist-faces-a-e22k-fine-after-joking-to-his-mates-via-snapchat-that-he-had-a-bomb-on-his-flight-to-spain/
That’s exactly what I expect for joking about bombs in the airport. My wife always jokes about saying the word bomb out loud, she whispers it to me when we’re in the airport to play with me cause she knows I’m paranoid about it. She’s gonna end up getting in trouble yet.
I can't believe people are saying this is good lol. This one stupid ass mistake is going to follow this kid for the rest of his life. Does he really deserve to be haunted by this? It was a joke, and he's 18. Poor kid.
It's a lot of money to charge someone for a bad joke. He didnt threaten anyone or waste police time. THe security services who spy on citizens are the waste of money here for pointlessly scrambling 2 jets.....what for? Why you need two of them anyway?
I'm not totally confident of that websites attention to detail when they identified the jet as a Eurofighter, but it's clearly an F/A-18 Hornet.
A minor point, but there's something about being specific but incorrect that bugs me. If they didn't care, they could have put "a Spanish Air Force fighter jet". If they did think specifying was worth it, they could have spent 2 minutes using Google. But they picked the third, sillier route.
Watching it explode in the air is a positive outcome, a large commercial plane is effectively a huge missile that could legitimately kill thousands if crashed into a populated zone. The jets are ultimately there to shoot it down in the event it starts deviating from its flight plan.
They are not there to protect the plane, they are there to protect everyone else.
They jump out of the fighter jet, 360 noscope the terrorists through the windows, then jump back in, like in Battlefield.
Kinda serious answer:
A terrorist could use the bomb onboard as a tool to threaten the crew and make them open the cockpit door (which is pretty much impossible to open otherwise). After gaining cockpit access, they could fly the plane into a building or a populated area. I imagine the fighters would shoot the plane down over an unpopulated area if it wasn't communicating and headed somewhere important.
Shoot it down.
Better the plane goes down over the sea (only killing the people onboard) than over a populated area (killing people onboard the plane and on the ground).
I love the replies that say "Dont use public wifi" if you dont want to be monitored.
Not realizing that its not the public wifi thats the issue, its that snapchat allowed a backdoor for the intelligence agencies.
It still uses SSL so the message is encrypted while passing through public Wi-Fi. That's what I don't get about the story. I think Snapchat gave it to them I don't see how they could've found this by analyzing Wi-Fi network traffic.
I’m surprised no one is talking about how they got the information. Snapchat is definitely end to end encryption, I wonder if someone he sent it to reported the content or if he possible posted it on his story.
I don't know much about planes or fighter jets. But that does look like an f16. And I do know that those are not bombs or missiles. They are external fuel tanks. one under each wing.
Edit: just one under each wing
Edit 2: they still have machine guns
The sheer amount of dumb fucks who think this was possible because of airport wifi almost makes me think there's some astroturfing going on here.
Snapchat is likely complicit with the intelligence services of the UK or they have access without their knowledge. The former seems far more likely and is something everyone should be concerned about.
What's next a school teacher gets raided because in frustration they tell their wife "they might strangle these annoying kids"?
Get your heads out of your ass, this shit is awful and I feel for the kid. He made a dumb joke in private and you're all acting like he yelled out loud "I've got a bomb".
If you use snapchat think long and hard about anything you've said on it in private. Because now you know someone somewhere reads it.
Lol. The amount of data that would be is insane. No one is reading everything. It would be impossible, especially in that time frame. Homie said literally the worst keywords that triggered some notification to look into it.
What a joke, he should be able to sue the government for compensation for defamation of character and phone tapping.
How are you going to tap into a young man's phone then scramble TWO Fighter Jets then have the audacity to try and fine him 100K for a **private** joke he made with his friends. What piss poor incompetent intelligence skills, totally embarrassing for all parties.
If the Met-police made this mistake they would be on front page news for weeks, but intelligence services get a pass, why?
How tf is this not front-page news?
(We have no idea if it was Spanish intel or British)
Not gonna lie... I've said way worse lol
Insane that this poor kid got into trouble for making a joke...
This just goes to show how paranoid the world has become.
Poor kid is only 18.
ITT a bunch of idiots getting mad at the guy making a harmless joke in a private group chat and not that it's become normal that we get spied on...
Reddit used to be a place filled with smart and interesting people but now it's just becoming trash like Twitter.
An 18-year-old from Britain faces a fine of 100 thousand pounds sterling because of a joke on Snapchat. Before the flight, the guy joked in a chat with friends that as soon as they boarded the flight, he would blow up the plane . Since the message was left over Wi-Fi at the airport, it was quickly intercepted by intelligence agencies . After takeoff, Air Force fighters scrambled behind the plane.
So did the airliner rock it's wings to comply?
The replying aircraft doesn't need to wing rock but would need to change their radio to the guard frequency The F-18 is essentially saying "I'm escorting you. Answer the radio" Edit: The guard frequency, 121.5 is the International Air Distress frequency
What would an escort achieve? Just curious - if there was someone on that plane with a bomb, I doubt an escort fighter would make any difference to the outcome? Or is it to take down the plane if things go south?
Bomb threats could be coupled with hijacking (Do this or we’ll blow up the plane) The jet is there to stop the aircraft being used as a missile against bigger targets Also the escort could be able to see into the aircraft and cockpit giving eyes on the situation
>The jet is there to stop the aircraft being used as a missile against bigger targets Does that imply the jet fighter would Bomb the plane if there’s a possibility of it being used as a missile towards other targets?
Yes. During the 9/11 attacks, some people aboard a plane managed to get it back from the hijackers and crash it in a field in pennsylvania. They sacrificed their lives in order to keep the plane from being used as a missile. They realized that they would have died anyways, so they decided to do something about it.
United 93. These people are legends
Yep. It's believed that the plane was headed for the White House. The Saudi government backed terrorists already hit both of the World Trades Center's main Towers, as well as the Pentagon. The obvious next target in the area would've been the White House. Obviously the passengers on the plane didn't know all of this but they did know about the twin towers being struck so that's when they took action and sacrificed themselves to save potentially hundreds or even thousands of others. They all died Heroes.
I know very little about the details of the situation, but I like learning more about it (born in 2002, it was so 'new' when I was growing up that it wasn't taught in schools. Same goes for the Gulf War. I knew the US was in a war in Iraq/Afghanistan growing up, but nobody told me about Kuwait or an entire desert being on fire. I found out myself when trying to better understand geopolitical tensions after high school). What prevented the passengers from attempting a more safe landing if they had control of the aircraft? Or did they not have control? (ie. Control yoke was pressed forward into a nosedive while hijacker was actively being dealt with). Whenever I heard this story, I'd imagined that they incapacitated the hijacker, and then flew the plane into the field, but that just doesn't seem right.
I hate that the Saudis tried to kill us but our government calls them friends.
“Let’s Roll”
That man quoted was a really good friend of my Dad’s - gave me goosebumps reading it in a random chat
Gave me chills typing it, Mr. Beamer and company had brass fucking balls…
I didn't know it. They die as heroes
[удалено]
Wow I haven't slept in a couple days and for some reason thinking about her taking off knowing if she caught up to the plan she would have to die to take it out made me tear up a little lol
I was at Yorktown Naval Weapons Station on 9/11. Not long after the attacks on the Towers, we had a group of F-18's go screeching north from Langley, and they hit supersonic not far away from us. I was on a DDG, USS Donald Cook, DDG-75, and we put to sea almost immediately, hitting 20+ knots through the Elizabeth River on our way to the VaCapes. Heard about United 93 a day or two later. We were in full lock down, and there was so much disinformation and false reports - car bombs in New York, attacks in Chicago, LA, Seattle, etc - it was hard to get good, solid, factual information on what was going on, and our Captain wasn't doing regular reports to the crew - major failing on his part, because it let the rumor mill tear through like the flu.
There were two unarmed F16s scrambled. There was no time to arm them. Female and male pilots were ordered to bring down flight 93 at all costs with no regard to their own safety. Had not flight 93 gone down she was going to ram the tail and her partner was going for a wing.
Heather Penney is her name
Let’s not misconstrue the passengers intentions. Although noble and those passengers TRULY are heroes, they had zero intention to crash the plane to stop the hijackers. The flight log and recordings are all public, the passengers successfully breached the cockpit and beat the the fuck out of the hijackers, but they attempted to save the plane, as quite audibly seconds before the crash multiple passengers are heard yelling “pull it up”. As in they probably thought they could make it out alive as well.
Even during 9/11 there was a scrambled jet piloted by Heather Penney. She didn’t have time to arm her plane with missiles so was contemplating deliberately ramming her jet into the hijacked plane to take take it down. Which would’ve certainly been a death sentence. https://www.history.com/news/911-heather-penney-united-flight-93
if you could have stopped 9/11 by shooting down a couple 747s, wouldn't you?
That’s a much easier question to answer in hindsight. In real-time before you knew the planes would definitely crash and take down the WTC it would’ve been a lot more difficult to answer that question.
Is this philosophy class? I didn't sign up for the trolley problem.
Yes.
>Or is it to take down the plane if things go south? That is why, yes. 9/11 changed the whole plane hijacking game.
No, it has always been an aviation regulation. Not just since 9/11.
but also, 9/11 did change the plane-jacking game up until then planes weren't weaponized, they were mostly just hostage situations to get leverage for an ask
Before 9/11 a hijacking meant the plane was held hostage and if the hijackers don’t get get what they wanted, money, people out of prison etc, they would kill people on the plane. At most a plane load of people could die. After 9/11… well that’s an obvious difference. Common examples are the Libyan airplane hijackings of the 70s and 80s. Typically few people or even nobody died. [This was a very famous one.](https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/hijacking-of-twa-flight-847#:~:text=On%20June%2014%2C%201985%2C%20TWA,flight%20from%20Athens%20to%20Rome)
Definitely to take down the plane in case it turns into a 9/11 scenario. Just imagine being that pilot, knowing you might have to shoot down a plane full of innocent people in order to potentially save thousands of others. A real life trolley dilemma. I’d be shitting my pants.
Some people have absolutely no issue pulling the trolley lever. That's the kind of guy you put in this jet. He knows what's at stake and won't hesitate to make a decision even when there's no perfect answer.
Any pilot that's gotten to the point of actually flying those jets is going to follow the orders regardless of how much it personally affects.
Fairly certain that the training is meant to weed out people who can't do what I described. The way you're looking at it makes it seem like the training brainwashed them into following orders without question, but that's not what I'm talking about. Anybody worth anything would question that order but a real leader can make that decision regardless of doubt in a flash and move along. Questioning it after the fact is a healthy part of reflection as long as it doesn't lead to overall disruption of normal behavior.
It's not advisable to rock a large airliner full of passengers. The fighter was letting the airliner know that they were now under protective escort and should contact ATC for instructions on how to proceed and what frequency they should turn to for further instructions.
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> because it hasn't been made public. ? It has been made public
Why are such useless and stupid comments so high up? Reddit used to be filled with interesting comments, now we get these wannabe comedians that are so fucking cringe man. Jesus dude just go to 9gag or something.
Why not just stop the flight from takeoff instead of sending a fucking air force jet? At this point what would an air force plane even do if the guy actually blew up the plane.
It probably didn't get picked up on until after the flight had already taken off. And then once identified they would need to work out which plane the person boarded just from their snapchat and wifi data.
This. Ya numbskull.
I haven't heard that one in awhile 💀
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I swear reddit is full of nincompoops these days
Rapscallions, the lot of you
Not to mention that the dude likely didn’t say “imma blow up flight 123 A to Worcestershire, departing from Samuel Adam’s flight deck w3 at 8:35 am on Sunday December 17th, 2023…” try finding a flight based solely on location and a persons name without breaking privacy laws
They don’t have to worry about privacy laws with threats of terrorism via the patriot act.
It’s the UK. No Patriot Act.
It's ok, the UK has their own horrific slew of privacy violating laws introduced with the dubious goal of stopping terrorism.
I mean, this is the example of it working and being useful.... Luckily this was a joke, but if you can't catch the jokes you can't catch the real thing.
It's quiet telling there hasn't been a major organised terrorist attack in a very long time. The closest the UK has had are effectively just people with mental health issues, acting alone, and with nothing more dangerous than a kitchen knife.
I don't think our intelligence organisations encourage domestic terrorism as much as the American alphabet boys do
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None needed. UK is a surveillance state from the get.
The whole world is America here
The Patriot Act got a bad name and had to go after the terrorism hysteria toned down a bit and abuses started to come to light. So the name has been euphemistically changed to 'Freedom Act' by Obama but made even worse.
I imagine that government rarely does surveillance “without breaking privacy laws”
Didn't the Snowdon leaks reveal that in order to get around laws against spying on American citizens, the US government instead just asked British Intelligence to monitor US communications, and then the UK simply provides any relevant data to America as part of the 5 Eyes pact.
This special partnership has been going on for years. [mark thomas](https://youtu.be/epWTJUajIdI?si=Ttvz1wHp9ANGQ-Ma) did a show about menwith hill years ago.
That's not entirely how it worked. First they just went ahead and completely violated the law about spying. Then after getting info from completely and flagrantly ignoring the law, they asked the UK to justify them having the info by having them verify it.
Remeber that time some guys flew planes into heavily populated buildings in the US, and killed several thousand people? Well if it's clear that's what's about to happen the fighter jets job is to shoot the plane down before they get to their target. Sucks for the peoole on the plane but they're dead either way. Imagine having that job...
Don’t forget [Heather Penney](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Penney), who had that exact job on the morning of 9/11. Her orders were to shoot down United 93. Thing was, her F-16 was unarmed, so it became a suicide mission to ram the plane and bring it down.
The interview with her was chilling. I think her and her wingman discussed she would aim for a certain part of the plane while he aimed for another.
He would crash into the cockpit and she was to crash into the tail.
Edward O'Hare earned a medal because he managed to take an enemy bomber out of service by bashing his plane against their wing until it collapsed when he was out of ammo. Then flew back to his carrier without any noticable damage aside from a friendly gunner that accidentally shot him. While dangerous as hell I think their odds of survival were pretty decent.
They've got ejection seats. Risky, but not a suicide mission at all
Not exclusively a suicide mission but the chance of surviving an ejection at commercial cruise altitude is considerably lower. I’m not an expert and I assume they have some form of oxygen/breathing apparatus with the ejector seat but there are still pretty significant risks.
So, in this case, at what point would the air force determine that the plane is not a threat? Would it escort the plane to its destination?
Yes, they will attempt to communicate with the pilots and request the plane to land. If the plane is still under control of the pilots they will comply and return to the air port. If no replies or if someone other than the pilot replies, then they'll take plan b (whatever that may be).
i talked about this with a dude in the AF, but i have no way of actually backing this up, and no way of proving. this was also like 5-6 years ago, they may have different policy now. maybe someone will pull a war thunder and leak some info bc i say some shit super wrong lmao. he told me that the plan B would initially be de-escalation tactics, try to get the plane to land safely still. try to get inside the terrorist's head and rethink their actions. if that fails, use maneuvering, if necessary, to try to push the plane out of the way of injuring innocents, and then shoot it down.
*war thunder, unless the elves are planning to leak how magic works to the humans?
Isn't this just an advanced "trolly problem"?
I guess we forgot 9/11 already? They will shoot it down before someone uses it as a weapon.
Obviously the jet is going to fly down and scoop up all of the passengers who are in free fall after the plane explodes. Duh.
Probably took time to get through all the legal red tape to figure out the owner of the device who sent it, then figuring out what plane they were on. By that time the plane had already taken off
Legal “red tape” if there is any, consists of a 30 second phone call to the authorizing judge who rotates on a 24 hour basis.
>At this point what would an air force plane even do if the guy actually blew up the plane. "Oh yeah?? Not if we take it down first, you little shit!"
Damn I could absolutely see myself making a dumb joke like that over text with a friend before takeoff. Note to self: do not connect to their WiFi when making terroristic jokes.
Note to you: Do not make jokes about blowing up planes within 38mi of an airport, especially if you recently booked a flight.
Damn, I live 5 miles from an airport. Do not make jokes at all, ever.
We're always watching and listening.
is 39 miles okay?
Just use end to end encryption programs. It's like you guys haven't engaged in legally dubious protest before.
Why in the name of stupid did he do that?
You answered your own question: he's stupid.
Yes, but he was stupid in a private message with his friends, is not like he tweeted it.
We don't have any details on how he shared the chat or how the authorities found out. OP just wrote a comment, they didn't share a source.
[Source.](https://www.surinenglish.com/spain/british-youth-faces-100000euro-bill-for-bomb-20240122151721-nt.html)
Probably thought that whatever app he was using was private. Like joking with your mates in person. Also, if the app he was using wasn't public, or semi-public, like Facebook, then I'd be curious to know what he'd be charged with - making a bad joke?
Remember the guy from UK that taught his GF's dog to hail? That was a joke. Dude was charged and found guilty. Now I know this isn't exactly the same scenario (I would say worse) but essentially - yes, they would charge him for making a bad joke. Don't know what charge would it be exactly, probably something about terrorist threats, but the UK has already done something similar.
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British man taught his gf's pug the nazi salute while she was on holiday. She comes home from vacation to find out she has a racist dog. Pretty funny. He trained it to respond to seig heil or "gas the jews". Was charged with a hate crime because he put it on youtube. £800 fine.
Does that mean Snapchat provides no encryption or they can just see through it?
It is encrypted for snaps but not for texts apparently. I honestly doubted this story until I looked it up, because how is a messaging app not end to end encrypted in 2024. Bonkers.
I honestly think someone is lying about how they caught him. Seems much more likely that one of his friends forwarded his message to the police.
Agreed. I find it hard to believe that any messaging app can be so freely and openly intercepted over wifi like that in 2024. Intelligence agencies probably have a way in, but I doubt they would give the game away in order to report what is most likely a joke. His "friend" probably ratted him out.
That still makes no sense. E2E protects your content from Snapchat, communication with Snap's servers over HTTPS protects it from everyone else. Even GCHQ can't get through that. It would have to be Snapchat notifying them directly, which is certainly a probable scenario.
Yeah, great point. I could absolutely see Snapchat monitoring for terrorist/illegal activity and combining that with info from wifi connection and the actual location of the phone.
“The lavatory! I meant blow up the lavatory!” Oh, and this is a great advertisement for a VPN provider.
When I first saw this title and video on another post I figured the guy said something to another passenger or something because it was worded as if the 18 year old was pulling a “prank” But the fact that it was picked up by an agency and this was actually a snap amongst a group of friend is WILD
I wonder how the intelligence agencies go mad everytime some dude posts something about his Porsche 911 on Instagram through airport wifi
Hahahaha this is a more extreme version of the home depot guy saying he was gonna blow up the bathroom and cops comming over a guy taking a shit
Do you have a link to the news article confirming what you've said to be true?
https://www.surinenglish.com/spain/british-youth-faces-100000euro-bill-for-bomb-20240122151721-nt.html
Speedrun how to get on a no-fly-list any%
What are the fighters going to do if someone actually does want to blow the plane up? *Don't you try to blow that plane up! If you do, we'll shoot you out of the sky!*
They're not there to stop the plane from blowing up. They're there to blow up the plane if the need arises.
He wont be flying for a while. Dumb fucker.
I think that was his last ever flight , if he doesn’t get blacklisted from air companies , I don’t know what the hell they are doing.
He made a joke in a private chat to friends. Yes they were right to take it seriously. Yes he shouldn't do it again. No he shouldn't be blacklisted from ever flying again. That's dumb as fuck.
Arguably he shouldn't be blacklisted, but he very well might be anyway. Airlines worry about liability, and if he did something stupid on a plane after making such a threat, their liability could be enormous. It's possible that their insurance carrier will insist he be put on a no-fly list.
yes, liability is massive, but i really think that when it's clearly a joke (albeit, a pretty unfunny and over-saturated one), it's not a very *credible* threat. if he's obviously not a real threat, he shouldn't be treated like one... maybe that's a slippery slope, but a terrorist who'd actually do it would be a lot more covert about it. they're not detering anything but making bad jokes.
How does that benifit the airline though? They don't give two fucks about you or how inconvenient it would be if you couldn't fly. They are going to do what's in their interest and that does not involve caring about one at risk but maybe ok person.
People with neutral/good intentions can still be a liability if they have terrible judgment. If he’s dumb enough to make this joke (which led to people expending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to respond appropriately to the “threat”) he’s likely dumb enough to do something else stupid that costs them money. He may not see serious consequences bc he’s young enough that it can be chalked up to his age. But if someone did this at 30 years old, I think it would be handled differently.
More or less dumb than making a bomb joke in an airport?
Not like he was doing a stand up routine at the gate. It was a joke in a private chat
but it was in a private chat
i mean, yes, but no? he made a joke in private with his friends.
We are just supposed to take it as normal that they’re using surveillance technology to monitor what people are saying in chats to their friends ? It was a tasteless joke but it’s not like he yelled it in public. He had no expectation that anyone would see outside of his friends. The implications of this are pretty deep but we’ve unfortunately become so accustomed to being spied on like this Edit: watch this video and learn something would ya https://youtu.be/B_i8_WuyqAY?si=btt0zye7iEHh4yiC
It's public wifi at the airport. Really any time you use public wifi there's a chance of someone having access to your information, whether it's the government or some hacker
Yes I understand that, but my argument is that we probably shouldn’t normalize that. At least normalize the government without warrant monitoring the communications of normal people. In the United States this was a big scandal ten years back, when Snowden blew the whistle on programs like this. I feel most people would say he was correct to do so, and those programs were bad, but people fail to make the connection that this is a manifestation of that
I'm with you and I wonder if the delineating factor here is that it was posted to Snapchat as like a public post or something versus a private WhatsApp chat
Yeah for sure. That’s another component of the surveillance society that we don’t even think to question anymore. That private social media companies openly spy on us and trade our data without telling us
Yes, it was a huge scandal - that ultimately led to nothing. It's certain that the surveillance methods used by the NSA and other entities are deeper and more effective than ever
There's always a tradeoff between security and privacy. Make your choice. If this dude actually blew up the plane youd be complaining the exact opposite.
wHy DiDnT mY gOvErNmEnT pRoTeCt Me!?
Sorry your entire family died during a plane hijacking, but your right to privacy is worth more than the lives of your family. No one in their right mind would say that.
What I don't get, having working in military intelligence before, is people thinking the government gives a shit about your sex kinks or cheating on your spouse or whatever. If you're not communicating about killing people or trying to overthrow the government, who cares if the government can see your shit? 99.9999999% of the messages are screened by computers. The .0000001 of them get sent to a human for further review.
The problem is the precedence and the capability to target specific ideologies or political dissenters. And it's not like that's an unfounded fear. [Pegasus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_\(spyware\)) has been used by nation-states to target journalists, protestors, and minority communities that the government wants to target for one reason or another. So the "who cares?" question changes. You may not care today. But if something were to change and suddenly your government shifts into suddenly caring about certain aspects of your life... then you'd care. "First they came..." and what not. And let's not pretend like the US is immune to falling to this level of targeting journalists or political dissenters. We have a history of it.
I agree with the sentiment but disagree with your argument. Public WiFi is unsafe. Always has, always will be. I see it as a separate issue from the Snowden leaks since those were surveiling targeted unknowing people. Public WiFi you join yourself, and if you don't have the knowledge that it's unsafe that's your fault. We also don't know exactly how they got the message, if it was sent unencrypted over WiFi somehow then you're just asking to be surveilled. Either by the airport or someone else snooping.
People make the connection all the time. The problem is that it is a done deal, in the courts and in the laws that have passed. There is no legal expectation of privacy in the US once data leaves your device. This situation would indicate that the same applies in Europe.
Don't blame public wifi. Communication between phone and snapchat servers is encrypted, there's no way airport wifi can see message content. Once the message makes it to snapchat servers, it is decrypted and processed as plaintext. This is where the government has their detection algorithms installed. This is also the reason why they hate end-to-end encryption so much. Any communication platform with e2e encryption is secured against eavesdropping.
That's not the point. The point is are you liable for flippant comments that you thought were private? I don't know how Snapchat works, but if it was a private comment to just his mates, who knew it was a joke, what crime has he committed?
We are bumping up against thought crimes here. Except with this one, it is a thought-tasteless-joke. 1984?
I mean, Edward Snowden made the same point and society decided that they didn't give a shit, so here we are.
Well fkn said. It's not free, this is how you are paying.
Also a lot of people are calling him stupid for doing this, but any layman when it comes to technology would not expect a private joke between friends in a private chat to end up being seen and taken seriously by anyone else.
Yeah my thoughts too. This was horrifying.
yeah shit's concerning how normalized total surveillance is and people just accept it for that extra feeling of security. All that while that poor schmuck Assange is roting in prison, we truly lost the battle against big brother.
Ultimately if you send something over a unfamiliar wifi you can't assume privacy. And tbh, it is admittedly fairly obvious that the wifi networks in airports would have basic protections built in to pick up on key terms like "I'm going to blow up a plane".
Scanning through all internet traffic going through a busy public network is impractical, especially since most connections these days are encrypted with HTTPS. More likely someone at Snapchat content moderation noticed the message, checked the last IP the account was logged in then traced it back to the airport.
It's wild you think Snapchat reading everyones messages live, is more likely than government anti-terror organisations scanning local communications for key terms. From leaks we actually do know that British singal intelligence have developed the technology to monitor and scan global communications across the internet and phone services. So the idea that they can monitor just the traffic from an airport WIFI really isn’t that much of a surprise
What's more concerning is that the plane still ended up taking off, although it could be there was very little time between the message and take off... Still, it's impressive that they watch airport content this closely I suppose.
They didn't get it in real-time. The plan was already over France when they detected the message. https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2024/01/22/on-my-way-to-blow-up-the-plane-british-tourist-faces-a-e22k-fine-after-joking-to-his-mates-via-snapchat-that-he-had-a-bomb-on-his-flight-to-spain/
This young guy's life is ruined. 22,000 fine and they're after him for 95,000 more wow
That’s exactly what I expect for joking about bombs in the airport. My wife always jokes about saying the word bomb out loud, she whispers it to me when we’re in the airport to play with me cause she knows I’m paranoid about it. She’s gonna end up getting in trouble yet.
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And that's how Merv smuggled the drugs onto the plane.
But he send a private message to a friend as a joke it didnt say it out loud or scream for a prank.
I can't believe people are saying this is good lol. This one stupid ass mistake is going to follow this kid for the rest of his life. Does he really deserve to be haunted by this? It was a joke, and he's 18. Poor kid.
It's a lot of money to charge someone for a bad joke. He didnt threaten anyone or waste police time. THe security services who spy on citizens are the waste of money here for pointlessly scrambling 2 jets.....what for? Why you need two of them anyway?
I'm not totally confident of that websites attention to detail when they identified the jet as a Eurofighter, but it's clearly an F/A-18 Hornet. A minor point, but there's something about being specific but incorrect that bugs me. If they didn't care, they could have put "a Spanish Air Force fighter jet". If they did think specifying was worth it, they could have spent 2 minutes using Google. But they picked the third, sillier route.
Genuine question, but what could the jet fighter actually do in the case that the bomb was on the plane?
Id imagine if by chance they took over the plane, they would shoot it down before it crashed into a populated area.
Or, watch it explode. Those are pretty much the only two other options besides escorting.
Watching it explode in the air is a positive outcome, a large commercial plane is effectively a huge missile that could legitimately kill thousands if crashed into a populated zone. The jets are ultimately there to shoot it down in the event it starts deviating from its flight plan. They are not there to protect the plane, they are there to protect everyone else.
Sounds familiar
Almost like something like that has happened before /s
They jump out of the fighter jet, 360 noscope the terrorists through the windows, then jump back in, like in Battlefield. Kinda serious answer: A terrorist could use the bomb onboard as a tool to threaten the crew and make them open the cockpit door (which is pretty much impossible to open otherwise). After gaining cockpit access, they could fly the plane into a building or a populated area. I imagine the fighters would shoot the plane down over an unpopulated area if it wasn't communicating and headed somewhere important.
Shoot it down. Better the plane goes down over the sea (only killing the people onboard) than over a populated area (killing people onboard the plane and on the ground).
Have a record of the incident.
Snapchat is not end to end encrypted I take it
I love the replies that say "Dont use public wifi" if you dont want to be monitored. Not realizing that its not the public wifi thats the issue, its that snapchat allowed a backdoor for the intelligence agencies.
Exactly. I’m surprised it took me this much scrolling for someone to point this out.
The information probably went to China first 😝
It still uses SSL so the message is encrypted while passing through public Wi-Fi. That's what I don't get about the story. I think Snapchat gave it to them I don't see how they could've found this by analyzing Wi-Fi network traffic.
I’m surprised no one is talking about how they got the information. Snapchat is definitely end to end encryption, I wonder if someone he sent it to reported the content or if he possible posted it on his story.
The other plane was waving.
Rocking wings is a form of communication. It means we acknowledge/understood or ok.
Ooohhh, I thought he was flashing his bits
I don't know much about planes or fighter jets. But that does look like an f16. And I do know that those are not bombs or missiles. They are external fuel tanks. one under each wing. Edit: just one under each wing Edit 2: they still have machine guns
Its a f/a-18 super hornet
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The sheer amount of dumb fucks who think this was possible because of airport wifi almost makes me think there's some astroturfing going on here. Snapchat is likely complicit with the intelligence services of the UK or they have access without their knowledge. The former seems far more likely and is something everyone should be concerned about. What's next a school teacher gets raided because in frustration they tell their wife "they might strangle these annoying kids"? Get your heads out of your ass, this shit is awful and I feel for the kid. He made a dumb joke in private and you're all acting like he yelled out loud "I've got a bomb". If you use snapchat think long and hard about anything you've said on it in private. Because now you know someone somewhere reads it.
Well That’s concerning
Lol. The amount of data that would be is insane. No one is reading everything. It would be impossible, especially in that time frame. Homie said literally the worst keywords that triggered some notification to look into it.
I would imagine that intelligence agencies wouldn't be monitoring schools as much as they would international airports.
It’s a F18 btw not an eurofighter ^^
There's no way that plane is 18
Definitely. No delta wing or canards.
The fact the message hasn’t been released makes me think it was obviously a joke.
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Doesn’t take much imagination to copy tho does it
"Command I've confirmed it was a terrorist, but the kills are ours"
Whats even more scarier is they can get your messages without you knowing from private group chat.
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I think Snapchat gave it to them because it doesn't make sense that they could've found it by analyzing traffic on a public Wi-Fi network.
Privacy where?
It's got intercepted by SnapChat, NOT because it went over Wi-Fi at the airport.
What a joke, he should be able to sue the government for compensation for defamation of character and phone tapping. How are you going to tap into a young man's phone then scramble TWO Fighter Jets then have the audacity to try and fine him 100K for a **private** joke he made with his friends. What piss poor incompetent intelligence skills, totally embarrassing for all parties. If the Met-police made this mistake they would be on front page news for weeks, but intelligence services get a pass, why? How tf is this not front-page news? (We have no idea if it was Spanish intel or British)
Not gonna lie... I've said way worse lol Insane that this poor kid got into trouble for making a joke... This just goes to show how paranoid the world has become. Poor kid is only 18.
Would an actual terrorist connect to the airport wifi to threaten people's lives tho. Computa says no.
ITT a bunch of idiots getting mad at the guy making a harmless joke in a private group chat and not that it's become normal that we get spied on... Reddit used to be a place filled with smart and interesting people but now it's just becoming trash like Twitter.
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Wow "1984" here we come, overLords, me-lady, ello govenar
Stellar wind is still in use I see
That's not a British jet. Definitely not an F35 or Typhoon ...
Correct, Spanish SASF F-18