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Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

lbc.co.uk

21–30 of 206 posts

Re: Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

#21
post #2

Anything Meta should be binned if you care about yourself.

They didn't actually crack WhatsApp traffic. Someone in the group probably just reported it. WhatsApp's insecurities are that Meta has access to a full network graph of all users' contacts, and that it wants to upload an unencrypted backup to Google or Apple by default. If there was an actual backdoor in the closed-source crypto, I highly doubt they'd give Dubai police access to it.

I’ll preface this with agreeing that you’re probably correct.

That said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Meta built an intentional backdoor, and that someone else (or many someone else’s) found it and was utilizing it.

Re: Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

#22
post #10

> publishing information deemed harmful to state interests Is the charge, which I think kind of speaks for itself. Full on: "You embarrassed us, straight to jail." In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared by the media then we'd reflect on if our routing is safe/correct and make proportional changes for safety. Not a big deal, nobody is fired, life moves on. I feel like actions li…

It's not in the interests of the UAE to improve. There's the (possibly misattributed? but topical nonetheless) quote by the previous emir of Dubai: > My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel. They want to prolong the Land Rover phase as long as possible.

So in other words; Mercedes-Benz was the peak, and he was estimating a decline trajectory slower than the rise.

Re: Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

#23
post #9

> publishing information deemed harmful to state interests Is the charge, which I think kind of speaks for itself. Full on: "You embarrassed us, straight to jail." In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared by the media then we'd reflect on if our routing is safe/correct and make proportional changes for safety. Not a big deal, nobody is fired, life moves on. I feel like actions li…

how can you improve if there is no dialog The UAE doesn't have a self-advancement culture, it's a capital-backed monarchy that imports pretty much all of its research and production; in other words it piggy-backs on the knowledge produced in other societies. There is no advancement through dialog in the country itself.

[flagged]

Re: Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

#24
post #8

> publishing information deemed harmful to state interests Is the charge, which I think kind of speaks for itself. Full on: "You embarrassed us, straight to jail." In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared by the media then we'd reflect on if our routing is safe/correct and make proportional changes for safety. Not a big deal, nobody is fired, life moves on. I feel like actions li…

there are two sides, such as how photos can stress citizens and act as propaganda, making them harmful to state interests, ultimately it is their country and their rules, not yours, regardless of how much you disagree with it you are also missing the elephant in the room, whatsapp's claim of end-to-end encryption is a lie

Group chats are openly not E2E encrypted.

Even personal chats are publicly not E2E encrypted.

There are other insidious ways you can publicly and openly end E2E encryption (I think backups might do that).

Essentially, while WhatsApp may not be lying their default 1 to 1 chats are E2E encrypted, it makes sense to use it as if it weren’t because it’s so easy to disable it even with their publicly disclosed information.

Re: Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

#25
post #16

This is why the First Amendment is so important

Eh, there was a lot of media censorship during WWII.

So we give up our rights when at war? Why not always be at war? Eastasia has always been at war with us.

Re: Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

#26

> publishing information deemed harmful to state interests Is the charge, which I think kind of speaks for itself. Full on: "You embarrassed us, straight to jail." In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared by the media then we'd reflect on if our routing is safe/correct and make proportional changes for safety. Not a big deal, nobody is fired, life moves on. I feel like actions li…

Note that they did not "publish" the picture. They shared it in a private group. This is 1984 kind of stuff. This will hurt Dubai's brand way more than any kinetic attack from Iran.

Re: Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

#28

This is why the First Amendment is so important

“[w]hen a nation is at war, many things that might be said in times of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” Schenck v. United States (1919)

Re: Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

#29

> publishing information deemed harmful to state interests Is the charge, which I think kind of speaks for itself. Full on: "You embarrassed us, straight to jail." In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared by the media then we'd reflect on if our routing is safe/correct and make proportional changes for safety. Not a big deal, nobody is fired, life moves on. I feel like actions li…

  >In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared 
OTOH, anyone remember "loose lips sink ships?" Beyond the famous poster, it was backed up by robust censorship laws.[0][1]

You might say it's different since we were at war, but this ignores how the threat model and immediacy is very different in the UAE vs here in the (geographically well protected/isolated) US.

Battle damage assessment, especially if it's timely, is critical information in any conflict. This is especially true for modern drone-based / hybrid asymmetrical conflict.

[0] https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/spring/m...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship

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