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

lbc.co.uk

31–40 of 206 posts

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

#31

> 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.

Dubai's brand (before the war) was "you're welcome to come here to make money, but criticize the government and you're out". I'm sure there's a ton of young influencers who don't know the first thing about the place to not have internalized it, but I remember a spate of articles and books about 15 years ago of Westerners falling afoul of the local laws and losing everything.

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

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American. America didn't even exist when most of the core social concepts I referenced were popularized , and it certainly wasn't in the 20th century. Also, very self-telling, that I said "UAE should do better for UAE's own future sake" to which you responded: "you want to take away UAE's sovereignty!" Hmm, very odd, that.

[flagged]

Great, now my monocle is wet

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

#36
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes and yes.

It's unfortunate life isn't black and white, but that's the way it is.

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

#37
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If such a backdoor exists, it is probably cryptographically secured to prevent "unauthorized" access. E.g. the xz backdoor was secured like that.

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

#38
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wrong. Both WhatsApp and Signal group chats are E2EE.

Telegram group chats are not. Even 1on1 chats aren‘t E2EE on Telegram by default.

Also, reporting is an issue: If a member of the group "Reports" a message to WhatsApp, a copy of the recent messages in that chat is decrypted and sent to WhatsApp for review to check for terms-of-service violations.

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

#40

> 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…

Foreign residents cannot criticize UAE or its government and monarchy in any way, under threat of prison and/or torture.

How is that complicated to understand? It's a brutal regime with a fake Monaco to attract rich tourists, influencers, investors and prostitutes, but the moment you fall in disgrace in the eyes of the authorities, you're done.

> ‘I was beaten and tortured’: how a British father and son made a fortune in Dubai then became wanted men

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/05/british-father...

You're all acting here like UAE is some sort of reasonable country with fair laws, when it's a dictatorship.

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