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It doesn't explain how the authorities got ahold of that message, since it was sent in private allegedly.

Also the entire process is happening in Spain and he has British citizenship - can't he just ignore the courts?

It was sent over the airport's WiFi. Snapchat doesn't even claim their messages are encrypted end-to-end or anything, do they?

Even then I'm sure they are sent over TLS.

Probably a root certificate that you need to install to browse on the airport wifi.

I’m not saying this doesn’t happen but I can’t remember ever having been asked to install a root certificate when joining an airport wifi. And I am confident that this has never happened when I’ve flown out from Gatwick.

Perhaps the GCHQ have a backdoor in snapchat then, which is comforting

snapchat uses certificate pinning so i dont think this would work anyways

Right, so either the airport is running something that can break TLS, or snapchat is feeding a stream of private messages to the government with location information provided.

Almost certainly the second.

Why would you think he can ignore the courts?

Britain and Spain have an extradition treaty.

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