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

lbc.co.uk

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

#161

Post by shell0x »

nutjob2 wrote: post #62

These ME countries are authoritarian hellholes with a thin veneer of civility and modernity. Think I'm exaggerating? How about being randomly dragged off your flight to have your vagina inspected: https://www.arabnews.jp/en/middle-east/article_30004/ Being thrown in jail arbitrarily without much recourse is such a common occurrence it's spawned its won business category: https://www.detainedindubai.org/ I personally…

Very racist comment. They’re not all the same and this article is about Dubai, not Qatar.

The UAE is the most open country in the ME and even allows gay people which is not legal in Qatar

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

#162

Post by expedition32 »

gerikson wrote: post #31
skywal_l wrote: post #26

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.

Actually all those people go to Dubai to SPEND the money. They still make the money in America, Australia and Europe.

An important footnote on the economy of Dubai.

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

#163

Post by shell0x »

jmyeet wrote: post #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 t…

The biggest risk for tourists visiting the USA is the high crime rate and the fact that crazy people are allowed to carry guns. This is an actual risk to my safety and part of the reason why I don’t even want to visit America again.

From a German perspective, the USA is the country with the craziest laws and UAE, Singapore, Thailand and Japan all sound better to me.

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

#164

Post by vrosas »

anigbrowl wrote: post #145
mikewarot wrote: post #137

In modern conflicts, sharing photos or videos of the results of enemy attacks greatly aids in their battle damage assessments. It's informative to look at history, and see how censorship as effective, as it was here in the US during WWII.[1] The Japanese were floating bombs into the US, which were effectively unguided intercontinental weapons. The censorship campaign kept all knowledge of the effects from reaching ba…

Your point is good but the example is not great. The damage from those Japanese bombs was minimal; one of them killed a few people in Oregon. Even if the Japanese had had reports on every incident they would likely have decided it was not worth it.

If the damage was large, it would be hard to cover up. And if it was very large the US would seek to minimize it. “A few people killed” might be interpreted as “probably a ton of people killed” by the enemy and they keep doing it. Zero information means you can’t argue the case one way or the other, and in those cases the project gets scrapped.

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

#165

Post by jnaina »

tremon wrote: post #9
Someone1234 wrote: post #3

> 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.

Unfortunately UAE has evolved to become a petro-dollar fueled private enterprise, run by the royal families, cosplaying as a nation.

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

#166

Post by fakedang »

tremon wrote: post #9
Someone1234 wrote: post #3

> 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.

Everything in the UAE is about being perfect. It's part and parcel of Arab culture, especially for the Gulf Arabs. Nope, we can't do any wrong, we're excellent individuals, we're an exceptional society, we're a remarkable nation. Every business deal is a fruitful deal, every investment is a multibagger investment, every project is a successful project, every Emirati/Gulf Arab professional is infallible. Normie government bureaucrats are addressed as "His/Her Excellency" even.

In such an environment, don't expect any introspection into failures or any risk-taking capacity. Because everything has to be perfect.

Dubai at least took a beating in 2008, and has since taken a more cautious and guarded approach than before. Abu Dhabi, Doha and Riyadh continue to take very cavalier attitudes - they're all ah so very perfect.

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

#167

Post by wat10000 »

shell0x wrote: post #159
wat10000 wrote: post #34

And people wonder why I refuse to connect through Dubai.

I also refuse to connect through the USA. Dubai is a much better place. At least i don’t get interrogated by a random TSA agent on a power trip.

Do you mean CBP? TSA likes their power trips but they don’t get to really interrogate people.

I certainly can’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to connect through the US, especially now.

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

#168

Post by wildzzz »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #11

> Radha Stirling, chief executive of London-based advocacy group Detained in Dubai, said Dubai police had "explicitly confirmed they are conducting electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages." Whoa.

At least they're being honest about it. In other countries, they'll never say it outright.

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

#169

Post by herewulf »

kelipso wrote: post #121
michaelt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tou…

Isn’t Ukraine’s censorship dual purpose as well? They are more likely to get funding from EU if they can make it look like they can win the war. Which of these is the bigger motivation? Hard to say. But I gather most drones have cameras, so I imagine Russia has a pretty good idea of where their drones are striking.

Russian satellites can see everything in Ukraine from a bird's eye view all the time.

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

#170

Post by Zak »

arduanika wrote: post #123
Zak wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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_(sp…

Interesting, thanks. I guess I'll carry on feeling marginally superior for choosing Signal over the others as my default, while remaining bleak about the overall landscape.

Pegasus tries to get root on your phone. If it succeeds, it could theoretically read message content or decryption keys right out of RAM and Signal doesn't have many options to defend itself.

If it doesn't, it tries to get additional permissions by other means, including asking the user for them. If it gets permission to read notifications and Signal is set to show message content in notifications, then it can exfiltrate your Signal messages. Your messages might be safe otherwise.

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