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

lbc.co.uk

101–110 of 206 posts

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

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In 1969, Schenck was largely overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio, which limited the scope of speech that the government may ban to that directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot)." - Wikipedia

Thank you. It really is disturbing how many people want to take us back to the Wilson era. Civil liberties are a good thing, folks!

The legal term has its own wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster is right, it's very unlikely that WA has been backdoored/cracked, and it seems obvious why. A backdoor to the world's largest messaging app would be extremely valuable: while it can exist, it's unlikely that it'd be so widely available the UAE police can use it for such insignificant cases. And because of its value, no one with access to it (the US, the UAE, Meta) would want it to become public knowledge t…

It’s weird that the notification backdoor never gets talked about, but your Whatsapp messages are decrypted in plain sight when the text content is shipped through the notification services. This is mentioned always for Signal but Whatsapp always gets a pass even though it’s a way more malicious company and indeed probably using that hole to profile/track it’s users. The only response is “oh no Whatsapp cant leak any…

Signal got called out for it because it actually happened to a user with the police. Of course it affects all apps. It's also local, so irrelevant to the discussion of networked/encryption hacks someone alleged above.

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

#103

The irony is this arrest is most probably the first most people have heard of them getting flattened.

They also lost an aluminum plant, of which there are no pictures.

https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/aluminum-association-com...

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

#104
post #46

If you think WhatsApp is encrypted, I have a handful of magic beans to sell you.

Care to back that up? We know they don't encrypt metadata - that's not a secret. Message content however is E2EE - thankfully these things get audited: https://blog.cloudflare.com/key-transparency/

This doesn't prove WhatsApp is encrypted at all. It proves that a directory of public keys is being logged and audited. That's it.

The protocol existing or being referenced doesn't prove it's what the production client is doing. That requires verifying the client code and behaviour end-to-end, not just the key directory.

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

#105
post #68
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine does it to avoid assisting Russian damage assessment and targeting efforts. Avoiding embarrassment is not really part of the equation, especially when they need to push for more international support.

> Ukraine does it to avoid assisting Russian damage assessment and targeting efforts. Isn’t UAE doing this to avoid Iranian damage assessment and targeting efforts also?

The censorship is dual purpose.

They want to make it so Iran doesn’t know if they successfully hit that Oracle data centre.

But they also want to make it so foreign investors don’t get scared off by the prospect of their data centre getting blown up. Obviously investors will avoid the area so long as missiles are flying - but by coming through the conflict "unscathed" will let them bounce back fast. Likewise with tourism.

Which of these is the bigger motivation? Hard to say. But I gather most drones have cameras, so I imagine Iran have a pretty good idea of where their drones are striking.

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

#106
If you go to another country, you should be aware of their laws. If you don't like their laws, don't go. Personally, I've never understood Dubai's "charms". Is is Earth's Mos Eisley [1]. The legal system is completely corrupt and The economy is reliant upon slave labor [2].

For example, in Thailand it's a crime to step on the local currency [3]. Why? Because it's technically disrespecting the King, whose face is on the notes. Or in Japan, it's strictly illegal to bring adderall into the country under any circumstances [4].

I guess my point is that I really struggle to find sympathy for people who go to another country and act surprised that it's different to their home country.

The UAE's restrictions on spreading such images as hurting national security actually goes beyond that. Did you know that it's now illegal to criticize Israel in the UAE [5]?

Speaking of which, the US really isn't that much different on that last point [6].

[1]: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mos_Eisley

[2]: https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie...

[3]: https://nyccriminallawyer.com/weird-things-to-get-arrested-f...

[4]: https://miusa.org/resource/tip-sheets/japanfocus/

[5]: https://dawnmena.org/how-the-uae-is-suppressing-criticism-of...

[6]: https://www.aclu-nj.org/press-releases/secretary-state-lette...

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#108
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest You'd absolutely get detained by authorities in Ukraine or Russia for sharing consequences of airstrikes on critical infrastructure. I'm sure other countries would do the same (not that it's good).

Well, in Russia you would most likely accidentally fall out of the window that a careless person left open.

You can open Telegram and watch at videos and photos of almost any Ukrainian strike.

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

#109
post #94

> 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…

Honest question. The UAE is well known for very questionable imported labor. Do you think they or the people who live there care?

But how can they improve if they don't let the slaves criticise the state?!

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

#110
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

> you are also missing the elephant in the room, whatsapp's claim of end-to-end encryption is a lie

Not exactly.

E2E is illegal in the UAE, and Meta has only advertised E2E in countries where it can operate E2E freely.

All chat apps that operate in the UAE need to store data locally with full access given to the UAE's Telecom and Interior Ministries.

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