Discussion

Airline worker arrested by Dubai police after sharing photos of bomb damage in private WhatsApp group

wilburx3: Anything Meta should be binned if you care about yourself.

m0llusk: This defensiveness just makes the situation worse. If they came across as at a disadvantage and doing their best that could attract help and admiration. Trying to cover things up while being hostile just makes them look like reactionary creeps with too much power. An unfortunate turn of events in any case.

Someone1234: > publishing information deemed harmful to state interestsIs 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 like this are going to hurt the UAE themselves, because how can you improve if there is no dialog? No information to even start a dialog? A lot of hard conversations are NOT going to be had because I guess it is a state secret?

charliebwrites: This is why the First Amendment is so important

pixl97: Eh, there was a lot of media censorship during WWII.

rolymath: Not like I like the UAE (I don't), but during this war they made it plenty clear that it is illegal to record and share any videos or pictures of the damage that was caused by the Iranian attacks. Everyone in the country knows this, and I'm sure airlines have procedures to familiarize staff with the laws of the country they're flying to. If they don't, still not the UAE's problem. Don't like the law? Go somewhere else.(inb4 any arm chair analyst decides this law is a bad law. That's not the point. The police only apply the law and not write it)Secondly, I doubt this was some sort of high tech operation. More likely someone just snitched and/or some sort of meta data snooping.

uyzstvqs: 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.

Esophagus4: > 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.

post-it: 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.

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

adjejmxbdjdn: 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.

tremon: how can you improve if there is no dialogThe 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.

pydry: They're effectively at war and are freaking out about capital flight which poses a unique existential risk to them especially.I imagine most countries in that situation would clamp down on freedom of speech and prohibit sharing photos of missile strikes. This would include most of the ones that pay lip service to freedom of speech in peace time.Ukraine does this too.

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

jmye: 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.

throwanem: Presumably the UAE's legislators see the matter differently. But it is extremely "20th Century" of you, obvious American that you are, not really to understand sovereignty as a concept. Or not anyone else's sovereignty, anyway.

Someone1234: I'm not American. American 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.

throwanem: If you aren't an American, how come you write and argue exactly like an American liberal circa about 1997? - mealy-mouthed "motte-and-bailey" excuses for your own deeply illiberal and incoherent personal politic, inventing claims to project upon your interlocutor, and all.

f6v: > In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interestYou'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).

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

svachalek: Or that the government offered Meta $50 for a list of agitators and they said why not. Given Meta's track record it's totally on brand.

dralley: 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.

throw_m239339: 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 into 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 menhttps://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.

righthand: “It’s fine because it happened during WWII, the only thing we base history off of to determine limiting rights is fine. Dumber less informed people did it, so should we!”

xnx: ...in Dubai

esskay: 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/So I'll ask again. Care to back it up?

projektfu: There is no war in Ba Du Bai.

wat10000: And people wonder why I refuse to connect through Dubai.

t0mas88: Indeed. And interestingly those people also believe this myth that Emirates is somehow always super luxurious. Emirates Economy is just as cattle class as all other large airlines, but with a worse safety record and having to go through Dubai. Just don't do it.

kibwen: 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 Army's official history, to include anything that might "injure morale in our forces here, or at home, or among our Allies," or "embarrass the United States or her Allies in neutral countries."https://www.army.mil/article/199675/u_s_army_press_censorshi...

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."

tbrownaw: > 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."And later it mentions that they "also" use the Pegasus spyware. Although I'm not sure I'd trust that as actual confirmation that this was a separate attack vector. Even if "someone in the chat leaked it" is AIUI the most common way something like this would happen.