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

lbc.co.uk

111–120 of 206 posts

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

#111
post #96
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

The actual text from the article implies that OS exploits compromised the device. "The UAE government owns majority holdings in telecom companies Etisalat and Du. This gives security services the power to observe all communications on their networks. "The Arab state has also used the Israeli-developed software Pegasus which allows agents to listen into private calls and read messages, even if they are shared on encry…

I don't think that means anything as the author of the article almost certainly has no clue about anything but what the Government there told him. They're just quoting general knowledge and speculation by other equally-uninformed third parties.

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

#112

> 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…

Sadly I think for those in power it doesn’t hurt them.

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

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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,…

Iran is going to be getting constant satellite date. They not only have their own satellite surveillance systems, but also will be getting support, probably covert, from a variety of other countries which also have robust satellite networks. This is solely for "domestic" (which extends well beyond the UAE) PR purposes, and I expect the US is actively encouraging these countries, behind the scenes, to keep losses unde…

Feet and inches level precision matters. This is why these kinds of videos are tamped down because they can show how close or far off target a strike was, and is extremely valuable training data.

Additionally, seeing who responded, the agencies they are associated with, and their faces matter as well.

The UAE is an authoritarian state, but this is how most states operate during a state of war. Even Ukraine tamps down on videos and social media being shared of incidents based on the likelihood whether or not it would expose operational details.

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

#114
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why worry about it. Sudan has been getting a front seat viewing of "existential risk" for some time now. Fuck the UAE. Beautiful people - bullshit governments. Per usual.

Its almost like the idea of nations and representative government have been co-opted by sinister forces to advance an agenda that doesn't serve the people.

Perhaps its time humanity evolve beyond this foolishness?

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

#115
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A large number of those tend to be vetted. Additonally, frontlines level videos do go through significant vetting and some form of MDM is used on personal phones in the frontlines.

Additionally, on the Ukraine side as well as the Russian side, civilian strike information isn't deemed critical from a NatSec perspective as plenty of Russians and Ukrainians lived on both sides of the border and still have relatives on either side, so both assume the other has granular level knowledge of non-frontline spaces.

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

#116
post #111
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual text from the article implies that OS exploits compromised the device. "The UAE government owns majority holdings in telecom companies Etisalat and Du. This gives security services the power to observe all communications on their networks. "The Arab state has also used the Israeli-developed software Pegasus which allows agents to listen into private calls and read messages, even if they are shared on encry…

I don't think that means anything as the author of the article almost certainly has no clue about anything but what the Government there told him. They're just quoting general knowledge and speculation by other equally-uninformed third parties.

Well, how would you a) obtain the incriminating photo, then b) determine that it had been transmitted?

An OS exploit and stat() for an atime would do it.

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

#117
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.

WhatsApp put a (weirdly tame and unremarkable?) image a friend of mine tried to post into review and ended up never letting it show up in a thread, the other day. He was able to post a screenshot of it sitting in his view of the thread, and the message about why it was temporarily delayed (it never showed up, though).

This was in a chat of close friends, not one of those weird huge spammy groups of strangers or something. Nobody was using the report button on him, lol.

We’re all in the US. WhatsApp has some level of awareness of the images you’re sharing, apparently.

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

#118

> The UAE government owns majority holdings in telecom companies Etisalat and Du. This gives security services the power to observe all communications on their networks. > The Arab state has also used the Israeli-developed software Pegasus which allows agents to listen into private calls and read messages, even if they are shared on encrypted apps like WhatsApp,. This seems to be the key part from a tech standpoint.…

> Does Pegasus help governments read messages from Telegram? Signal?

Yes. It attempts privilege escalation and exfiltrates whatever message contents it can from multiple apps. Signal has some potential resistance to that since messages are encrypted in transit and at rest. The easiest weak link would be displaying message content in notifications, which is optional in Signal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

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

#119
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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,…

Loose Lips Sink Ships was itself an information management scheme to avoid informing the public. The Germans didn't have spies collecting rumors in the US. Nor did they need them during Operation Drumbeat (the U-Boat attack on the US coast). The US was completely unprepared for Drumbeat. They had no harbor defenses, no convoys, inadequate and unprepared coastwatcher and patrol services. The point of the censorship is…

>The Germans didn't have spies collecting rumors in the US.

Yes they did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duquesne_Spy_Ring

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

#120
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely common for the government to wipe their ass with the first amendment during wartime. > The objective of wartime censorship was to prevent the exposure of sensitive military information to the enemy. Similar censorship had been practiced by the U.S. Army in the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. During World War I, however, the press censorship system was formalized and extended, according to the Ar…

> It's entirely common for the government to wipe their ass with the first amendment during wartime. Happens even without a war, just saying...

Let me rephrase that: it's entirely common for the government to wipe their ass with the first amendment using war as a pretense.
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