> 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 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?
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.
It's not just the UAE, it's pretty much all of the Gulf states. They're essentially a less obviously extreme version of Turkmenistan, or something like late-1930s Germany where everything looks prosperous and OK provided you walk very carefully and don't see some of the things that are happening.
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.
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.
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.
I think the main EU fear is ex-soviet countries fearing they are next if Ukraine falls. So Ukraine should not necessary win, it should mainly bleed Russia and not loose. An eternal standstill is probably best, realpolitik-wise (To be clear, I am not happy with this analysis).
True. As far as EU BigPowers are concerned, they know Ukraine has lost the war but don't really care if Ukraine is being destroyed and Ukranians are dying, as long as they kill as many Russians too.
It astounds me that even in 2026 people are still regurgitating this standard-issue Russian propaganda canard about "Ukraine already lost the war", consciously or subconsciously. While the war is going on, you can make equally vacuous claims that "Russia already lost the war" with about as much cause.
Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a fascist and colonialist invader that aims to end its nationhood. The final outcome is unclear.
The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war" without truly understanding what is happening on the ground.
The stark facts are simple - nearly 20% of Ukranian territory has been strategically captured by the Russians. Ukraine has no real chance of getting it back. Ukraine's counter-offensive has failed twice. It cannot launch any more counter-offensive because it doesn't have the men - any counter-offensive by recalling men from other parts of the frontline would weaken the defence line. So any new counter offensive launched needs to really bloody the Russians to completely back off, or the whole frontline will collapse and Ukraine will face a complete military defeat. Whatever Russian territory Ukraine had occupied has been recovered by the Russians. In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure (demilitarisation through de-industrialisation - https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/94244 ).
All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR (as it is the only way EU will keep funding Zelensky's government and the war), while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
>The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war"
All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
>In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure
You don't seem to be following this war very closely. Short of nukes, Russia has already done everything it possibly can, including trying to freeze old people in their flats during cold snaps, multiple times. They've been targeting industrial infrastructure since day one, but interestingly what's been changing is that Ukraine is increasingly playing that game too, focusing on demilitarizing Russia by targeting its defence industry and increasingly taking its oil exports offline. Turns out two can play this whole de-industrialisation game. It remains to be seen who succeeds, but things aren't looking as good on this front for Russia as they did in 2022 or 2023, that's for sure.
>All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR
Well and also to do things like take 46% of Russia's oil export capacity offline just when oil prices were soaring. You know, small trifles.
>while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
Slowly is doing all the heavy lifting here, to borrow a common AI slop refrain. Russia is now losing more men per month than it can recruit, somewhere in the vicinity of 30-40 thousand. Ukraine is extending the drone kill-zone to 30+ km from the so called "front line" (more of a zone). It produces millions of drones and is at the forefront of a drone revolution in warfare. In other words, its demilitarization is progressing swimmingly, but for the minus sign.
> All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
The break with factual reality in your post is enlightening. As is the misinformation of Russia "running out of men" when that is the situation Ukraine is facing. There is no "victory", is the point. There is no path to defeating Russia without a nuclear war. That Ukraine can bring about the economic collapse of Russia is a delusional fantasy.
I don't think Ukraine lost. They surely did a lot better than anyone expected. Right now, I'd say it can go both ways, with Ukranian deaths vs Russian economic crash and hurt for their rich class seeming the main determinaters. If Putin drops dead, if the rich feel enough bombs exploding in Moscow, .... Then Ukraine wins
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.
Definitely with tourism. FOAF flew through there a week or two back and said it was very much business as normal at the airport apart from slightly longer queues, otherwise it was the same as it was before the shooting started. This in a country that had been targeted by something like 2,500 dones and 500 missiles.
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?
>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, especially if it's timely, is critical information in any conflict. This is especially true for modern drone-based / hybrid asymmetrical conflict.
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 to not cause panic among the public as they realized how badly the US was losing. Drumbeat was worse for the US than the attack on Pearl Harbor was, both in terms of lost ships and number of Americans killed. It was about controlling embarrassment for the Navy. American ships were blowing up and sinking within eyesight of shore. Vacationers were finding dead seaman washed up on the beaches of Florida and New Jersey. The military did not want these events turning into major media events.
And to the extent that the censorship was justified, yes, at the very least we were legally in a properly declared war.
Ironically, there was one time the media did cause a massive problem that could have affected the outcome of the war.
The Chicago Tribune sent a reporter to Pearl Harbor after the battle of Midway and managed to learn from some indiscreet senior commanders that we knew where the Japanese fleet was because we cracked their codes.
The reporter published the story in the Tribune. It was pure dumb luck that the Japanese never noticed the story. Roosevelt wanted the reporter and Robert McCormick brought up on espionage charges, but Admiral King asked him not to prosecute because the Japanese didn't seem to notice the article but they'd definitely notice the trial.
This ring was broken up before the US was even in the war. Operation Drumbeat began after the Pearl Harbor attack at the end of 1941 but was most intense in early 1942. There was lots of Bund activity in the 1930s and prior to Pearl Harbor but very little afterwards.
But also, even if there were Bund spies in American ports was unnecessary and unable to provide tactical information to the German U-boats. Unable due to practical limitations of communication. Unnecessary because the US was so ill-equipped for the battle. For instance, the Bund wouldn't have been able to report on the movement of convoys because there were no convoys.
The US still had charted aids to navigation light up, and cities weren't blacked out allowing the submarines to sit off the coast and see US ships silhouetted against the city skyline behind them. A German submarine sailed into New York harbor using a tourist map as a chart!
Germany not only had spies, there were multiple (albeit failed/foiled) sabotage attempts by Germany on US soil.
Part of the issue the US had is the very large (significant percent of the population) 1st gen German immigrant population. There were concerns they would sympathize.
What was actually happening is many of these immigrants were there to get away from Hitler and Germany as it was at the time, so Germany found most of its attempts stymied instead. But they did try.
Mostly your post is just about the side-issue of whether (in 20/20 hindsight) the censorship in the USA was justified. However this ignores the fundamental double-standard toward the USA vs the UAE. In 20/20 hindsight the UAE censorship may turn out to be justified, or not, however we don't know yet.
> And to the extent that the censorship was justified, yes, at the very least we were legally in a properly declared war.
Didn't I (preemptively) respond to this already?
"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."
In the UAE these laws are (equally) "proper" and "legal," so I don't see how the presence or absence of a formal declaration of war makes any difference here, or meaningfully responds to my point above.
Legal process is important when you're curtailing people's rights. Although I guess if you're going to argue that the regime is already despotic and lawless that's.. a valid argument that I concede to?
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 under wraps.
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.
Spy satellites do have precision in the feet and inches. Resolution tends to be in the sub-foot per pixel now a days. But nowhere near this resolution is realistically needed since precision munitions tend to have precision in the tens of meters, and all that really matters is whether you're hitting your target or not.
Another way you can see clearly that this is for "domestic" PR and propaganda purposes is that the US government has also compelled US satellite footage providers to censor the entire region. That is providing absolutely zero information to Iran, but is a desperate effort to pair impair the public's access to footage that would either confirm or reject various narratives around the war. I say desperate because Chinese commercial satellite imagery firms continue offering full access to footage of the warzone.
The US is even telling satellite firms which language to use, which is loaded with propaganda. For instance instead of speaking of locations being destroyed they're being compelled to say things like "Imagery shows the structure largely collapsed with debris covering the building footprint." I'd say it's 1984, but it's all so painfully ham-fisted that it's far more Brazil. [1]
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.
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
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.
Yeah, tbh people not scared by stories of people as wealthy and white and Western as then being prosecuted for kissing their unmarried opposite sex partner on the beach or falling out with the wrong person are not going to be worried about how wartime paranoia interacts with airline employees
There are a lot of things that I would expect to hurt Dubai's "brand" but people still travel there. I don't understand why anyone would travel there in times of peace, let alone during war. You don't even need it for connecting flights.
> 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).
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.
obviously, countries have ways to determine BDAs for their attacks, but you don't have to give it to them for free. The concept of oversharing is lost in the age of social media.
You are providing confirmation of a hit to the enemy as well as the state of the area after the explosion. This is valuable intelligence used for target lists on future strikes. Such information is also used for determining air defense coverage and estimating hit rates.
Open source intelligence is a very high priority in modern war. Social media provides massive amounts of free intelligence. For instance, a few secret US bases in Afghanistan were mapped using Strava data from runners.
> Is the charge, which I think kind of speaks for itself. Full on: "You embarrassed us, straight to jail."
That's exactly it, and the UAE admits it. The Atlantic covered this last month.[1]
Dubai uses influencers as part of their strategy to market Dubai as a safe place for rich people. There's an influencer visa. There's a government Creators HQ office to help with relocation and permits. Dubai requires an “Advertiser Permit”, which include a ban on publishing anything that “might harm the national currency or the economic situation in the State.”
The BBC showed several influencer videos side by side, all with the same message: "Are you scared? No, because we know who protects us."[1] They're as on-message as Sinclair in the US.
So is AlJazeera, now. Earlier in the war, attacks on Dubai were reported. Now, they don't seem to be, although coverage on hits outside the UAE is good. AlJazeera is run by the UAE government.
The UAE has been cracking down on this for a while, according to Bellingcat.[3] "Think before you share. Spreading rumors is a crime."
The hits on the Burj Al Arab hotel, the Fairmont hotel, and Dubai's airport were too big to hide completely, but UAE authorities did take action against people who posted videos. That was back
in late February - early March. News of later hits appears to have been successfully censored.
It's public interest of Dubainers of not to expose any problems, as the premise of the emirate is built on loose money, loose rules and high life and this kind of money is first to flee in the case of hiccups.
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 encrypted apps like WhatsApp,.
"The spyware can infect a device even without the user activating a link - such as via a WhatsApp call, even if it isn't answered.
"Once inside, it can access all WhatsApp messages, logos and contacts."
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.
That only works if you assume that Meta is lying about the E2EE. But earlier you took this very event as evidence of that fact, hence it seems you're begging the question.
Someone else has pointed out that it isn't legal to offer E2EE services in the UAE and so Meta intentionally compromises it in that market one way or another. They don't seem to be hiding that fact though so it's hardly an elephant.
> E2E is illegal in the UAE, and Meta has only advertised E2E in countries where it can operate E2E freely.
From my experience, the no-advertisement claim is untrue. I've used WhatsApp with several users in the UAE. The end-to-end encryption notice appeared on my side (as always in user-to-user communication).
> 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.
Do you have a source for that claim?
Compromised endpoints, monitoring accounts or unencrypted cloud backups are far more likely to be the source than hidden deals or large conspiracies where many people need to keep a secret.
The UAE's Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) passed in 2021.
Any internet service that is used by UAE residents has to store data domestically within UAE borders.
Assuming zero days are being used to enable mass surveillance is much more conspiratorially minded - once a zero day is used, it's often detected within days and patched.
But wait, you sourced the trivial part of your claim (a law exists), but not that WhatsApp breaks E2E. The encryption part is the important part, right?
I'm no expert in the UAEs data protection law, but I did not immediately find any reference for a mandate for government backdoor access to encrypted content.
Also: compromising endpoints obviously does not require zero-day exploits. Otherwise, I'd assume, the services of the surveillance industry (Pegasus, Cellebrite, etc.) would be far more expensive.
There is probably no large conspiracy where Meta breaks E2E for a government and nobody involved ever leaks it. The more traditional threat is probably service blocking where users get pushed to less secure alternatives that the government can more easily monitor, like Russias new government messenger.
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.
> In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest
In peacetime, definitely. In war time, there's a necessary balance to be found between “information as public interest” and “providing free battle damage assessment” to an adversary.
I'm not saying I'm in favor of jailing people for pictures, but we cannot ignore the importance of intelligence in modern combat with ubiquitous precision weapons.
People have similarly been arrested for filming air defense at work in Ukraine, and again it makes sense because giving away key sensitive information for social network cred isn't something you want in a country suffering from a military aggression.
These days when you hear "most of the world.." used as a kind of indirect appeal to common-sense legislation, you just gotta wonder what or who they are talking about anymore.
Its a strange beautiful notion though. That there is some grand consesus out there somewhere, in The-most-of-the-world, where laws are just and rational, where states-of-exception only exist in the kitchens and the classrooms. I just know one day the barrelman will cry out, and we will know we have reached the-most-the-world.
When did Americans care so much about the poor laborers from India? Honest question. The United States is well known for funding a genocide and protecting pedophiles. Do you think they or the people who live there care?
> In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared by the media
Perhaps, but increasingly not here in the US, which used to consider itself the leader of the "Free World".
Trump thinks nothing of declaring journalists terrorists and threatening to take away the broadcast licenses of TV stations that are embarrassing him.
It'd be nice if we could say this is just Trump, a bad president gone gaga, but the Republican party supports him, so unfortunately this authoritarian control of the media seems to be becoming normalized.
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.
> 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.
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 back to Japan, which factored in their decision to abandon the effort as resources ran short toward the end of the war.
So, yes... publishing information can indeed be directly harmful to state interests. I'm generally opposed to censorship, and it shouldn't be allowed unless there's been an ACTUAL declaration of war. Far too often, censorship is used to cover up war crimes, and other abuses of public trust.[2]
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.
> 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."
To be fair, an operation where you encourage people in group chats to report and share anything suspicious with police would be consistent with "electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages."
> 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. Notice that it doesn't come out and say whether Pegasus played a part in this particular arrest, or the telecoms, or both, but it seems to be implied.
Also, I'm intrigued by the punctuation error at the end: "...like WhatsApp,." Did an earlier draft go on to list others? Does Pegasus help governments read messages from Telegram? Signal? It would be interesting to know more.
> 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.
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.
I'm of two minds on this. In peacetime, I'd consider something like that to be unreasonable and harmful, not that I'd ever even consider setting foot anywhere on the Arabian Peninsula. But, if anyone has noticed, World War III is raging all around us, and when an enemy who wants to kill you is backing that up with explosive payloads, you really don't want to be handing them battle damage assessments.
We do that as a matter of course. It's entirely unavoidable; the cost of living in society and all that. The question is the exchange rate, which is what your botched quote there actually refers to.
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.
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.
> They didn't actually crack WhatsApp traffic. Someone in the group probably just reported it.
So you don’t know any of this? You have no proof someone in the group reported it. You have no proof they weren’t using a backdoor they found with or without Meta knowing this…
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 through such an insignificant case, because everyone they really want to spy on would switch to Signal in a second.
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 anything the security model of how chat messages are backed up is a-okay!”
WhatsApp bothers me incessantly about backing up my messages, and from a quick search online it seems like these backups are not E2E encrypted unless you go into settings and explicitly make them so, which I doubt most people do. And if they are encrypted, I would have a lot of questions about how secure those keys are and where they're stored and if they're using password managers from other tech companies, which of those companies have had NSLs requiring them to backdoor said password managers
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.
My point is that we simply don’t know what the police mean by “broke encryption”. It could be they are able Mitm the notifications server not that they’ve broken the whatsapp double ratchet.
The censorship is to shield embarrassing info from GCC and American audiences. As others have pointed out, Iran has its own satellites, and allies with satellites that can conduct their own battlefield damage assessments.
If you have a private conversation to have that would risk you getting arrested, you shouldn't be using WhatsApp or Signal for it. Consider something more obscure, not connected to your phone number or name, and make messages disappear after 24h. Consider SimpleX, Briar, etc. Obviously don't leave any trail or photos on your device either. Moreover, the device shouldn't be reachable via WhatsApp, Signal, SMS, or even a phone number, as these are common vectors for attackers. Your mobile device should probably be using hardened GrapheneOS or something else with sufficient obscurity. Do not make the mistake of activating a SIM or installing any Google app on the device. As a legal disclaimer, do not break the law.
Sorry, I meant the border security. I’ve generally had a good time in the US, but when you’re already get treated like crap just getting into that country, I’d rather avoid it. Plus places like the UAE don’t require any visas for transit so it’s straightforward!
Yeah, transit through the US is pretty bad. I get the impression they don't really want people doing it. They sure don't put effort into making it easy.
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.
Probably referring to crew rest hours (esp. a problem in the late 2010s, near-misses at DXB etc.
Not having had passenger fatalities is a bad indicator for safety records in the 21st century.
The ek521 report is a good example documenting systemic failures at EK
Well, if not ever having a fatality isn’t good enough, they’re consistently top 10 rated for safety. I just don’t buy ops criticism. It’s fine to not like Dubai, but emirates are provably one of the best airlines.
They got lucky to keep their 0 fatalities, could have easily been 300 if one of their significant near misses went slightly different. Their crew rest rules are dangerous, Middle Eastern crew resource management is much worse than US and EASA, and airline oversight in the region is much less independent. Sure it hasn't gone wrong yet, but with how low the number of fatalities is overall that's a bad metric.
Edit: Just to quote the official investigation on an Emirates fuckup: "The flight crew reliance on automation and lack of training in flying go-arounds from close to the runway significantly affected the flight crew performance in a critical flight situation which was different to that experienced by them during their simulated training flights."
That reflects exactly how the rest of the industry thinks about the gulf carriers and their crews. Combine that with non optimal CRM and you have a disaster waiting to happen. They already did this twice, not understanding automation and (nearly) flying a jet into the ground.
There isn’t a single FAA or EASA airline in the top 5. Maybe they’re just unlucky? And emirates, which has been going since 1985, one of the busiest airlines in the world, still waiting for it to all go wrong. Delusional to try and spin this as ME bad at safety, when Qatar is the other major airline flying the region.
Industry bodies that rate airlines on safety. Last year Emirates, third equal.
The criteria is safety.
No legitimate response has been received, there's no debate here. This isn't some obscure knowledge thing, these ratings come out every year. You can go and look them up, it took me all of 15 seconds to confirm this.
And I'll even go one further, there isn't a single airline in the Americas, Africa or Europe that rates higher than Emirates on safety.
"Safety" is far too nebulous for that to be a criterion. Safety would be a conclusion reached from analyzing other factors.
I'm guessing you're referring to the rankings from airlineratings.com, since their list last year put Emirates tied for third place. They don't appear to be an industry body, or really much of anything. Their rankings get cited all over the place but I can't figure out why, other than it being convenient, and media not really caring about authoritativeness or accuracy. It's just an aviation journalist and a few employees with, as far as I can tell, no real connection to the industry.
Their list doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. They describe their methodology at https://www.airlineratings.com/safety-ratings. The rating is out of seven, with five criteria contributing one or two points each. Very coarse, but reasonable enough. Then they add on a PLUS for airlines that max out the points and also pass an onboard audit focused on safety within the cabin.
"Airlines that already excel in safety and hold a Seven Star safety rating who successfully complete these anonymous audits, conducted over six flights (including a mix of overnight, day, domestic, international, short-haul, and long-haul journeys), will earn special recognition as a Seven Star Plus airline, the highest accolade we now offer."
There's a lot of fluff and very little detail about exactly what these audits entail.
Looking at their full list of ratings, there are five airlines rated Seven Star Plus. Yet there are not five airlines tied for first place. The full list doesn't match their announcement of their top rankings, probably because things have changed since the top rankings were announced. But their methodology doesn't line up with the structure of their list at all. There are 5 airlines rated Seven Star Plus, and an additional 145 airlines rated 7/7. How, then, are they producing a ranked list of 25 that isn't just two sets of ties?
Interesting note in how they evaluate incidents: "We do not deduct stars for accidents caused by terrorism, hijacking, or pilot suicide." I can see why they'd exclude terrorism and hijacking, although I disagree with that choice. But pilot suicide? That's absolutely something that should be included. Pilot evaluation and well-being is completely within the airline's purview.
Long story short, this ranking seems like a bunch of BS.
What people do not know or understand about the Arabian Peninsula is that you have essentially zero rights.
People think, "It cannot be that bad" because a lot of money is spent on good PR for the region, and also because they never find themselves in situations where they get to see how little their lives are worth in those places.
You go to a hotel for a week or take a business trip, everyone smiles, the food is good, whatever. You are not going to trigger any of the bad stuff that way. Before you say, "Well, yeah, if you do something egregious...", nope. Something as innocuous as disagreeing with a superior at work could land you in jail. You are 100% at the whim of people who have more power than you over there.
“[w]hen a nation is at war, many things that might be said in times of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” Schenck v. United States (1919)
"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
Yes because with the first amendment, a president can’t sue news organizations for saying mean things and get them to pay him personally $15 million a piece (Paramount/CBS and Disney/ABC) and teachers can’t be fired for quoting racist comments of a dead podcaster.
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."
It's entirely common for the government to wipe their ass with the first amendment whenever it suits their interests, using whatever plausible-enough pretense they can find.
Hauntingly, they’re actually calling the ME “west asia” now.
In my copy of animal farm, there’s actually a foreword relevant for this discussion. It goes into Orwells difficulty getting things published around ww2 as there was speech that whilst legal was frowned upon during wartime.
“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!”
If you believe Trump wouldn't be doing things like this if America was actually facing direct consequences for its warmongering, I have a bridge to sell you.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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 would not step foot in any of these places. This article is not news, it's par for the course.
The article claims the photo was shared in a private group chat. I think the image only became public because of the arrest and subsequent media interest. BDA from social media posts is a very real risk, but that is not what happened here.
I’d pick low taxes first. I lived in Singapore, Hong Kong for years and Dubai for few months and it’s significantly safer and cleaner. Taxes are low, law is enforced.
You don’t need freedom of speech if a place is well run. Look at Europe and America. Everyone has an opinion and nothing works properly
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.
The onus is not on us to prove that it's not E2E encrypted, but on Meta/WhatsApp to prove that it is. The only way they can do that is by open-sourcing the client application, and providing a method for anyone to verify that the binary on their device was built from those sources, without modification.
Anything else is just theater. Anyone who is worried that their communications could get them arrested or attacked cannot safely use something like WhatsApp. There is no way to trust that a third party's keys haven't been added to a conversation, or that the client isn't leaking message content through some other means.
> 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 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?
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.
Unfortunately UAE has evolved to become a petro-dollar fueled private enterprise, run by the royal families, cosplaying as a nation.
It's not just the UAE, it's pretty much all of the Gulf states. They're essentially a less obviously extreme version of Turkmenistan, or something like late-1930s Germany where everything looks prosperous and OK provided you walk very carefully and don't see some of the things that are happening.
[flagged]
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.
"They want to make it so Iran doesn’t know if they successfully hit that Oracle data centre."
And how do you suppose that is going to work when Iran has it's own spy satellites in orbit, and access to chinese commercial imaging satellites?
It works even less for Ukraine.
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.
I think the main EU fear is ex-soviet countries fearing they are next if Ukraine falls. So Ukraine should not necessary win, it should mainly bleed Russia and not loose. An eternal standstill is probably best, realpolitik-wise (To be clear, I am not happy with this analysis).
True. As far as EU BigPowers are concerned, they know Ukraine has lost the war but don't really care if Ukraine is being destroyed and Ukranians are dying, as long as they kill as many Russians too.
It astounds me that even in 2026 people are still regurgitating this standard-issue Russian propaganda canard about "Ukraine already lost the war", consciously or subconsciously. While the war is going on, you can make equally vacuous claims that "Russia already lost the war" with about as much cause.
Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a fascist and colonialist invader that aims to end its nationhood. The final outcome is unclear.
It's not a moral statement, Ukraine has fewer bodies and will run out first in a grinding war of attrition.
Wars of attrition aren't simply decided by who has more bodies.
The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war" without truly understanding what is happening on the ground.
The stark facts are simple - nearly 20% of Ukranian territory has been strategically captured by the Russians. Ukraine has no real chance of getting it back. Ukraine's counter-offensive has failed twice. It cannot launch any more counter-offensive because it doesn't have the men - any counter-offensive by recalling men from other parts of the frontline would weaken the defence line. So any new counter offensive launched needs to really bloody the Russians to completely back off, or the whole frontline will collapse and Ukraine will face a complete military defeat. Whatever Russian territory Ukraine had occupied has been recovered by the Russians. In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure (demilitarisation through de-industrialisation - https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/94244 ).
All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR (as it is the only way EU will keep funding Zelensky's government and the war), while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
>The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war"
All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
>In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure
You don't seem to be following this war very closely. Short of nukes, Russia has already done everything it possibly can, including trying to freeze old people in their flats during cold snaps, multiple times. They've been targeting industrial infrastructure since day one, but interestingly what's been changing is that Ukraine is increasingly playing that game too, focusing on demilitarizing Russia by targeting its defence industry and increasingly taking its oil exports offline. Turns out two can play this whole de-industrialisation game. It remains to be seen who succeeds, but things aren't looking as good on this front for Russia as they did in 2022 or 2023, that's for sure.
>All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR
Well and also to do things like take 46% of Russia's oil export capacity offline just when oil prices were soaring. You know, small trifles.
>while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
Slowly is doing all the heavy lifting here, to borrow a common AI slop refrain. Russia is now losing more men per month than it can recruit, somewhere in the vicinity of 30-40 thousand. Ukraine is extending the drone kill-zone to 30+ km from the so called "front line" (more of a zone). It produces millions of drones and is at the forefront of a drone revolution in warfare. In other words, its demilitarization is progressing swimmingly, but for the minus sign.
> All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
The break with factual reality in your post is enlightening. As is the misinformation of Russia "running out of men" when that is the situation Ukraine is facing. There is no "victory", is the point. There is no path to defeating Russia without a nuclear war. That Ukraine can bring about the economic collapse of Russia is a delusional fantasy.
I don't think Ukraine lost. They surely did a lot better than anyone expected. Right now, I'd say it can go both ways, with Ukranian deaths vs Russian economic crash and hurt for their rich class seeming the main determinaters. If Putin drops dead, if the rich feel enough bombs exploding in Moscow, .... Then Ukraine wins
UAE is not democratic country in the first place. Never pretended to be one. Saudo Arabia is neither and proud of being autocracy.
In fact, the laws and rules between Ukraine and these countries were and still are much different. Regardless of attempts to make them sound the same.
Also EU pays Ukraine because them not folding makes Europe safer. If Ujraine fails, Russia will attack other European countries.
There not much difference in freedom of press between UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index
Russian satellites can see everything in Ukraine from a bird's eye view all the time.
>Ukraine does it to avoid assisting Russian damage assessment and targeting efforts.
Which is why they also arrest people who take videos of missiles hitting but not of the damage?
Russia also has satellites.
"Avoid embarrassment" is very much why you quench public discourse.
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.
Beautiful people - I am not sure. They are terribly entitled, at least in companies.
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?
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, especially if it's timely, is critical information in any conflict. This is especially true for modern drone-based / hybrid asymmetrical conflict.
[0] https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/spring/m...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship
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 to not cause panic among the public as they realized how badly the US was losing. Drumbeat was worse for the US than the attack on Pearl Harbor was, both in terms of lost ships and number of Americans killed. It was about controlling embarrassment for the Navy. American ships were blowing up and sinking within eyesight of shore. Vacationers were finding dead seaman washed up on the beaches of Florida and New Jersey. The military did not want these events turning into major media events.
And to the extent that the censorship was justified, yes, at the very least we were legally in a properly declared war.
Ironically, there was one time the media did cause a massive problem that could have affected the outcome of the war.
The Chicago Tribune sent a reporter to Pearl Harbor after the battle of Midway and managed to learn from some indiscreet senior commanders that we knew where the Japanese fleet was because we cracked their codes.
The reporter published the story in the Tribune. It was pure dumb luck that the Japanese never noticed the story. Roosevelt wanted the reporter and Robert McCormick brought up on espionage charges, but Admiral King asked him not to prosecute because the Japanese didn't seem to notice the article but they'd definitely notice the trial.
>The Germans didn't have spies collecting rumors in the US.
Yes they did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duquesne_Spy_Ring
This ring was broken up before the US was even in the war. Operation Drumbeat began after the Pearl Harbor attack at the end of 1941 but was most intense in early 1942. There was lots of Bund activity in the 1930s and prior to Pearl Harbor but very little afterwards.
But also, even if there were Bund spies in American ports was unnecessary and unable to provide tactical information to the German U-boats. Unable due to practical limitations of communication. Unnecessary because the US was so ill-equipped for the battle. For instance, the Bund wouldn't have been able to report on the movement of convoys because there were no convoys.
The US still had charted aids to navigation light up, and cities weren't blacked out allowing the submarines to sit off the coast and see US ships silhouetted against the city skyline behind them. A German submarine sailed into New York harbor using a tourist map as a chart!
Germany not only had spies, there were multiple (albeit failed/foiled) sabotage attempts by Germany on US soil.
Part of the issue the US had is the very large (significant percent of the population) 1st gen German immigrant population. There were concerns they would sympathize.
What was actually happening is many of these immigrants were there to get away from Hitler and Germany as it was at the time, so Germany found most of its attempts stymied instead. But they did try.
Mostly your post is just about the side-issue of whether (in 20/20 hindsight) the censorship in the USA was justified. However this ignores the fundamental double-standard toward the USA vs the UAE. In 20/20 hindsight the UAE censorship may turn out to be justified, or not, however we don't know yet.
Didn't I (preemptively) respond to this already?"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."
In the UAE these laws are (equally) "proper" and "legal," so I don't see how the presence or absence of a formal declaration of war makes any difference here, or meaningfully responds to my point above.
Legal process is important when you're curtailing people's rights. Although I guess if you're going to argue that the regime is already despotic and lawless that's.. a valid argument that I concede to?
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 under wraps.
Yes, I read in the FT this week they're getting data from Chinese satellite companies
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.
Spy satellites do have precision in the feet and inches. Resolution tends to be in the sub-foot per pixel now a days. But nowhere near this resolution is realistically needed since precision munitions tend to have precision in the tens of meters, and all that really matters is whether you're hitting your target or not.
Another way you can see clearly that this is for "domestic" PR and propaganda purposes is that the US government has also compelled US satellite footage providers to censor the entire region. That is providing absolutely zero information to Iran, but is a desperate effort to pair impair the public's access to footage that would either confirm or reject various narratives around the war. I say desperate because Chinese commercial satellite imagery firms continue offering full access to footage of the warzone.
The US is even telling satellite firms which language to use, which is loaded with propaganda. For instance instead of speaking of locations being destroyed they're being compelled to say things like "Imagery shows the structure largely collapsed with debris covering the building footprint." I'd say it's 1984, but it's all so painfully ham-fisted that it's far more Brazil. [1]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)
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.
For what it's worth, the quote is half and half. The full context is that he went on to say he wanted to avoid the second camel.
https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/dubai-sheikhs-words-lost-in...
So in other words; Mercedes-Benz was the peak, and he was estimating a decline trajectory slower than the rise.
Assuming that our civilizations can wean ourselves both from fossil fuels and chemical feedstocks, then the camel may be in their future.
I think the timing stated here is quite optimistic.
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.
We now know what happens to a lot of influencers and wannabes: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/dubai-porta-potty-influencer...
The car junk yards are also really sketchy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrGCv3sZXAQ
Exactly. A dictatorship with a medieval religious view on human rights related topics.
And most of those influencers aren't even rich...
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.
Yeah, tbh people not scared by stories of people as wealthy and white and Western as then being prosecuted for kissing their unmarried opposite sex partner on the beach or falling out with the wrong person are not going to be worried about how wartime paranoia interacts with airline employees
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.
There are a lot of things that I would expect to hurt Dubai's "brand" but people still travel there. I don't understand why anyone would travel there in times of peace, let alone during war. You don't even need it for connecting flights.
> 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.
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.
In see tons of consequences of attacks on Ukrainian cities. They arw fairly normal thing to see.
Ukraine is not trying they are safe country as of now.
obviously, countries have ways to determine BDAs for their attacks, but you don't have to give it to them for free. The concept of oversharing is lost in the age of social media.
You are providing confirmation of a hit to the enemy as well as the state of the area after the explosion. This is valuable intelligence used for target lists on future strikes. Such information is also used for determining air defense coverage and estimating hit rates.
Open source intelligence is a very high priority in modern war. Social media provides massive amounts of free intelligence. For instance, a few secret US bases in Afghanistan were mapped using Strava data from runners.
https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-f...
> Is the charge, which I think kind of speaks for itself. Full on: "You embarrassed us, straight to jail."
That's exactly it, and the UAE admits it. The Atlantic covered this last month.[1] Dubai uses influencers as part of their strategy to market Dubai as a safe place for rich people. There's an influencer visa. There's a government Creators HQ office to help with relocation and permits. Dubai requires an “Advertiser Permit”, which include a ban on publishing anything that “might harm the national currency or the economic situation in the State.”
The BBC showed several influencer videos side by side, all with the same message: "Are you scared? No, because we know who protects us."[1] They're as on-message as Sinclair in the US.
So is AlJazeera, now. Earlier in the war, attacks on Dubai were reported. Now, they don't seem to be, although coverage on hits outside the UAE is good. AlJazeera is run by the UAE government.
The UAE has been cracking down on this for a while, according to Bellingcat.[3] "Think before you share. Spreading rumors is a crime."
The hits on the Burj Al Arab hotel, the Fairmont hotel, and Dubai's airport were too big to hide completely, but UAE authorities did take action against people who posted videos. That was back in late February - early March. News of later hits appears to have been successfully censored.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/03/dubai-...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-giBHZ31RMU
[3] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/04/02/war-uae-iran-infu...
Most of what you've stated is relevant to Qatar, not UAE. I think that you've got the two confused.
It's public interest of Dubainers of not to expose any problems, as the premise of the emirate is built on loose money, loose rules and high life and this kind of money is first to flee in the case of hiccups.
Problems such as 'Dubai porta-potty'
The UAE is a bunch of absolute monarchies. You are applying the processes of a democracy to hereditary absolute monarchies.
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 encrypted apps like WhatsApp,.
"The spyware can infect a device even without the user activating a link - such as via a WhatsApp call, even if it isn't answered.
"Once inside, it can access all WhatsApp messages, logos and contacts."
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.
By asking Meta polity
That only works if you assume that Meta is lying about the E2EE. But earlier you took this very event as evidence of that fact, hence it seems you're begging the question.
Someone else has pointed out that it isn't legal to offer E2EE services in the UAE and so Meta intentionally compromises it in that market one way or another. They don't seem to be hiding that fact though so it's hardly an elephant.
polity - a political organization
politely - courteous, socially correct, or refined manner
> 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.
> E2E is illegal in the UAE, and Meta has only advertised E2E in countries where it can operate E2E freely.
From my experience, the no-advertisement claim is untrue. I've used WhatsApp with several users in the UAE. The end-to-end encryption notice appeared on my side (as always in user-to-user communication).
> 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.
Do you have a source for that claim?
Compromised endpoints, monitoring accounts or unencrypted cloud backups are far more likely to be the source than hidden deals or large conspiracies where many people need to keep a secret.
> Do you have a source for that claim?
The UAE's Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) passed in 2021.
Any internet service that is used by UAE residents has to store data domestically within UAE borders.
Assuming zero days are being used to enable mass surveillance is much more conspiratorially minded - once a zero day is used, it's often detected within days and patched.
But wait, you sourced the trivial part of your claim (a law exists), but not that WhatsApp breaks E2E. The encryption part is the important part, right?
I'm no expert in the UAEs data protection law, but I did not immediately find any reference for a mandate for government backdoor access to encrypted content.
Also: compromising endpoints obviously does not require zero-day exploits. Otherwise, I'd assume, the services of the surveillance industry (Pegasus, Cellebrite, etc.) would be far more expensive.
There is probably no large conspiracy where Meta breaks E2E for a government and nobody involved ever leaks it. The more traditional threat is probably service blocking where users get pushed to less secure alternatives that the government can more easily monitor, like Russias new government messenger.
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.
> In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest
In peacetime, definitely. In war time, there's a necessary balance to be found between “information as public interest” and “providing free battle damage assessment” to an adversary.
I'm not saying I'm in favor of jailing people for pictures, but we cannot ignore the importance of intelligence in modern combat with ubiquitous precision weapons.
People have similarly been arrested for filming air defense at work in Ukraine, and again it makes sense because giving away key sensitive information for social network cred isn't something you want in a country suffering from a military aggression.
These days when you hear "most of the world.." used as a kind of indirect appeal to common-sense legislation, you just gotta wonder what or who they are talking about anymore.
Its a strange beautiful notion though. That there is some grand consesus out there somewhere, in The-most-of-the-world, where laws are just and rational, where states-of-exception only exist in the kitchens and the classrooms. I just know one day the barrelman will cry out, and we will know we have reached the-most-the-world.
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?!
When did Americans care so much about the poor laborers from India? Honest question. The United States is well known for funding a genocide and protecting pedophiles. Do you think they or the people who live there care?
What does your commentary have anything to do with the thread?
I don’t think it matters one way or another what Americans think.
Edit: I see your post history and it makes sense now.
I'm just tired of the hypocrisy
>How can you improve if there is no dialogue
Didn't UAE have a phone line to the king that anyone can call?
Sounds like the cost of actually calling it may be higher than I thought though.
I visited and asked a friend there if women can vote. She became very offended. What! Of course we can vote!!
10 seconds later
Hang on a minute. We have a king. Nobody can vote!
Sadly I think for those in power it doesn’t hurt them.
This was posted inside a private group, so I doubt this applies. He should get a good lawyer.
> In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest
I take it you’ve never driven past Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska.
Just stopping your car on the public highway or taking photos is a serious crime.
Imagine how much shit you’d be in if you took photos of smoke rising from it after a hit.
> In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared by the media
Perhaps, but increasingly not here in the US, which used to consider itself the leader of the "Free World".
Trump thinks nothing of declaring journalists terrorists and threatening to take away the broadcast licenses of TV stations that are embarrassing him.
It'd be nice if we could say this is just Trump, a bad president gone gaga, but the Republican party supports him, so unfortunately this authoritarian control of the media seems to be becoming normalized.
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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.
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Great, now my monocle is wet
Sonra kurutun.
> 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.
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 back to Japan, which factored in their decision to abandon the effort as resources ran short toward the end of the war.
So, yes... publishing information can indeed be directly harmful to state interests. I'm generally opposed to censorship, and it shouldn't be allowed unless there's been an ACTUAL declaration of war. Far too often, censorship is used to cover up war crimes, and other abuses of public trust.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb#Censorship_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Gaza_war
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.
> 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.
To be fair, an operation where you encourage people in group chats to report and share anything suspicious with police would be consistent with "electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages."
At least they're being honest about it. In other countries, they'll never say it outright.
The “nothing to hide” people need to be real quiet about now.
The "tech solution can't fix a human problem" people on the other hand...
> 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. Notice that it doesn't come out and say whether Pegasus played a part in this particular arrest, or the telecoms, or both, but it seems to be implied.
Also, I'm intrigued by the punctuation error at the end: "...like WhatsApp,." Did an earlier draft go on to list others? Does Pegasus help governments read messages from Telegram? Signal? It would be interesting to know more.
> 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)
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.
I'm of two minds on this. In peacetime, I'd consider something like that to be unreasonable and harmful, not that I'd ever even consider setting foot anywhere on the Arabian Peninsula. But, if anyone has noticed, World War III is raging all around us, and when an enemy who wants to kill you is backing that up with explosive payloads, you really don't want to be handing them battle damage assessments.
If you give away freedom for security you deserve neither
We do that as a matter of course. It's entirely unavoidable; the cost of living in society and all that. The question is the exchange rate, which is what your botched quote there actually refers to.
The headline makes it sound as if it could have been useful for terrorism or something. Like "how bombs affect airplanes".
But the actual article is much more haunting.
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.
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.
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.
> They didn't actually crack WhatsApp traffic. Someone in the group probably just reported it.
So you don’t know any of this? You have no proof someone in the group reported it. You have no proof they weren’t using a backdoor they found with or without Meta knowing this…
You’re just here to defend Meta then?
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 through such an insignificant case, because everyone they really want to spy on would switch to Signal in a second.
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 anything the security model of how chat messages are backed up is a-okay!”
WhatsApp bothers me incessantly about backing up my messages, and from a quick search online it seems like these backups are not E2E encrypted unless you go into settings and explicitly make them so, which I doubt most people do. And if they are encrypted, I would have a lot of questions about how secure those keys are and where they're stored and if they're using password managers from other tech companies, which of those companies have had NSLs requiring them to backdoor said password managers
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.
My point is that we simply don’t know what the police mean by “broke encryption”. It could be they are able Mitm the notifications server not that they’ve broken the whatsapp double ratchet.
It’s just Occam’s razor chip out
Way easier for one of a group of humans to report than for a conspiracy hack
Turns out a marketing company doesn't care about your privacy go figure
The censorship is to shield embarrassing info from GCC and American audiences. As others have pointed out, Iran has its own satellites, and allies with satellites that can conduct their own battlefield damage assessments.
Could the weak spot with WhatsApp be that images are saved to a persons device? Also the metadata is not encrypted.
If you have a private conversation to have that would risk you getting arrested, you shouldn't be using WhatsApp or Signal for it. Consider something more obscure, not connected to your phone number or name, and make messages disappear after 24h. Consider SimpleX, Briar, etc. Obviously don't leave any trail or photos on your device either. Moreover, the device shouldn't be reachable via WhatsApp, Signal, SMS, or even a phone number, as these are common vectors for attackers. Your mobile device should probably be using hardened GrapheneOS or something else with sufficient obscurity. Do not make the mistake of activating a SIM or installing any Google app on the device. As a legal disclaimer, do not break the law.
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...
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.
Sorry, I meant the border security. I’ve generally had a good time in the US, but when you’re already get treated like crap just getting into that country, I’d rather avoid it. Plus places like the UAE don’t require any visas for transit so it’s straightforward!
Yeah, transit through the US is pretty bad. I get the impression they don't really want people doing it. They sure don't put effort into making it easy.
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.
Emirates has never had a passenger fatality. What do you mean worse safety?
Probably referring to crew rest hours (esp. a problem in the late 2010s, near-misses at DXB etc. Not having had passenger fatalities is a bad indicator for safety records in the 21st century.
The ek521 report is a good example documenting systemic failures at EK
Well, if not ever having a fatality isn’t good enough, they’re consistently top 10 rated for safety. I just don’t buy ops criticism. It’s fine to not like Dubai, but emirates are provably one of the best airlines.
They got lucky to keep their 0 fatalities, could have easily been 300 if one of their significant near misses went slightly different. Their crew rest rules are dangerous, Middle Eastern crew resource management is much worse than US and EASA, and airline oversight in the region is much less independent. Sure it hasn't gone wrong yet, but with how low the number of fatalities is overall that's a bad metric.
Edit: Just to quote the official investigation on an Emirates fuckup: "The flight crew reliance on automation and lack of training in flying go-arounds from close to the runway significantly affected the flight crew performance in a critical flight situation which was different to that experienced by them during their simulated training flights."
That reflects exactly how the rest of the industry thinks about the gulf carriers and their crews. Combine that with non optimal CRM and you have a disaster waiting to happen. They already did this twice, not understanding automation and (nearly) flying a jet into the ground.
There isn’t a single FAA or EASA airline in the top 5. Maybe they’re just unlucky? And emirates, which has been going since 1985, one of the busiest airlines in the world, still waiting for it to all go wrong. Delusional to try and spin this as ME bad at safety, when Qatar is the other major airline flying the region.
> they’re consistently top 10 rated for safety
By who? What's the criteria? You appear to be hand waving away the legitimate response you received.
Industry bodies that rate airlines on safety. Last year Emirates, third equal.
The criteria is safety.
No legitimate response has been received, there's no debate here. This isn't some obscure knowledge thing, these ratings come out every year. You can go and look them up, it took me all of 15 seconds to confirm this.
And I'll even go one further, there isn't a single airline in the Americas, Africa or Europe that rates higher than Emirates on safety.
"Safety" is far too nebulous for that to be a criterion. Safety would be a conclusion reached from analyzing other factors.
I'm guessing you're referring to the rankings from airlineratings.com, since their list last year put Emirates tied for third place. They don't appear to be an industry body, or really much of anything. Their rankings get cited all over the place but I can't figure out why, other than it being convenient, and media not really caring about authoritativeness or accuracy. It's just an aviation journalist and a few employees with, as far as I can tell, no real connection to the industry.
Their list doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. They describe their methodology at https://www.airlineratings.com/safety-ratings. The rating is out of seven, with five criteria contributing one or two points each. Very coarse, but reasonable enough. Then they add on a PLUS for airlines that max out the points and also pass an onboard audit focused on safety within the cabin.
"Airlines that already excel in safety and hold a Seven Star safety rating who successfully complete these anonymous audits, conducted over six flights (including a mix of overnight, day, domestic, international, short-haul, and long-haul journeys), will earn special recognition as a Seven Star Plus airline, the highest accolade we now offer."
There's a lot of fluff and very little detail about exactly what these audits entail.
Looking at their full list of ratings, there are five airlines rated Seven Star Plus. Yet there are not five airlines tied for first place. The full list doesn't match their announcement of their top rankings, probably because things have changed since the top rankings were announced. But their methodology doesn't line up with the structure of their list at all. There are 5 airlines rated Seven Star Plus, and an additional 145 airlines rated 7/7. How, then, are they producing a ranked list of 25 that isn't just two sets of ties?
Interesting note in how they evaluate incidents: "We do not deduct stars for accidents caused by terrorism, hijacking, or pilot suicide." I can see why they'd exclude terrorism and hijacking, although I disagree with that choice. But pilot suicide? That's absolutely something that should be included. Pilot evaluation and well-being is completely within the airline's purview.
Long story short, this ranking seems like a bunch of BS.
What people do not know or understand about the Arabian Peninsula is that you have essentially zero rights.
People think, "It cannot be that bad" because a lot of money is spent on good PR for the region, and also because they never find themselves in situations where they get to see how little their lives are worth in those places.
You go to a hotel for a week or take a business trip, everyone smiles, the food is good, whatever. You are not going to trigger any of the bad stuff that way. Before you say, "Well, yeah, if you do something egregious...", nope. Something as innocuous as disagreeing with a superior at work could land you in jail. You are 100% at the whim of people who have more power than you over there.
> "Well, yeah, if you do something egregious...", nope.
Leaving a bad review online for a local business can get you arrested and jailed.
Are you talking about Germany? https://support.google.com/maps/thread/395192907/is-it-norma...
No, because defamation is a civil matter, so you can't be arrested or end up in jail.
The article's frame is concerning, but is it right to attribute the arrest to zero-click spyware? How is the process of the police's discovery known?
This is why the First Amendment is so important
“[w]hen a nation is at war, many things that might be said in times of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” Schenck v. United States (1919)
"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
Yes because with the first amendment, a president can’t sue news organizations for saying mean things and get them to pay him personally $15 million a piece (Paramount/CBS and Disney/ABC) and teachers can’t be fired for quoting racist comments of a dead podcaster.
https://cbs12.com/news/local/matthew-theobold-florida-martin...
Eh, there was a lot of media censorship during WWII.
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...
> 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.
It's entirely common for the government to wipe their ass with the first amendment whenever it suits their interests, using whatever plausible-enough pretense they can find.
So we give up our rights when at war? Why not always be at war? Eastasia has always been at war with us.
Hauntingly, they’re actually calling the ME “west asia” now.
In my copy of animal farm, there’s actually a foreword relevant for this discussion. It goes into Orwells difficulty getting things published around ww2 as there was speech that whilst legal was frowned upon during wartime.
Yes and yes.
It's unfortunate life isn't black and white, but that's the way it is.
Guess why the US now has a "Department of War".
“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!”
If you believe Trump wouldn't be doing things like this if America was actually facing direct consequences for its warmongering, I have a bridge to sell you.
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.
After Whatsapp was bought by Facebook why would anyone assume it is still private?
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...
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.
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.
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 would not step foot in any of these places. This article is not news, it's par for the course.
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
Its called free BDA, straight up aiding the enemy by correcting his fire.
The article claims the photo was shared in a private group chat. I think the image only became public because of the arrest and subsequent media interest. BDA from social media posts is a very real risk, but that is not what happened here.
Do we really want to dwell on sharing stuff in private group chats? cough alcoholic idiot cough Yemen
Someone still trusts Whatsapp with their data?
Middle ages, in 2026. Dubai hasn't changed.
There is no war in Ba Du Bai.
Seeing millionaires praise Dubai was really eye opening to me. Seems that we don't really value democracy and freedom of speech as much as we pretend.
Give up the entire fucking Constitution for order, low taxes and non unionized servants.
I’d pick low taxes first. I lived in Singapore, Hong Kong for years and Dubai for few months and it’s significantly safer and cleaner. Taxes are low, law is enforced.
You don’t need freedom of speech if a place is well run. Look at Europe and America. Everyone has an opinion and nothing works properly
...in Dubai
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These foreign agitprop accounts have gotten so ridiculous lol.
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I guess you'll change your tune the first time they force you to submit to an inspection of your vagina.
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.
Got it, so you can't back it up at all. You just made something up with zero actual evidence and rolled with it.
there have been claims as part of a recent lawsuit, which also influences peoples thinking
see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47738339
https://xcancel.com/BowesChay/status/2042399259316588793 (replies)
The onus is not on us to prove that it's not E2E encrypted, but on Meta/WhatsApp to prove that it is. The only way they can do that is by open-sourcing the client application, and providing a method for anyone to verify that the binary on their device was built from those sources, without modification.
Anything else is just theater. Anyone who is worried that their communications could get them arrested or attacked cannot safely use something like WhatsApp. There is no way to trust that a third party's keys haven't been added to a conversation, or that the client isn't leaking message content through some other means.
> The onus is not on us to prove that it's not E2E encrypted
It is when someone posts as if they've got hard evidence it's not.
it show whataspp key transparency is currently disabled since `Verified: Mar 13, 2026, 15:37:48 UTC`. any idea about this?
https://radar.cloudflare.com/key-transparency