> 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?
tremon 35 minutes ago [-]
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.
pydry 15 minutes ago [-]
They're effectively at war and are freaking out about capital flight which poses a unique existential risk to them especially.
I imagine most countries in that situation would clamp down on freedom of speech and prohibit sharing photos of missile strikes. This would include most of the ones that pay lip service to freedom of speech in peace time.
Ukraine does this too.
dralley 37 seconds ago [-]
Ukraine does it to avoid assisting Russian damage assessment and targeting efforts. Avoiding embarrassment is not really part of the equation.
post-it 33 minutes ago [-]
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.
Teknomadix 15 minutes ago [-]
So in other words; Mercedes-Benz was the peak, and he was estimating a decline trajectory slower than the rise.
schiffern 11 minutes ago [-]
>In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared
OTOH, anyone remember "loose lips sink ships?"
You might say that'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.
skywal_l 13 minutes ago [-]
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.
gerikson 9 minutes ago [-]
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.
f6v 19 minutes ago [-]
> 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).
throw_m239339 38 seconds ago [-]
Foreign residents cannot criticize UAE or its government and monarchy in any way, under threat of prison. How is that complicated to understand? It's a dictatorship with a fake Monaco to attract rich tourists, influencers, investors and prostitutes, but the moment you fall into disgrace in the eyes of the authorities, you're done.
> ‘I was beaten and tortured’: how a British father and son made a fortune in Dubai then became wanted men
You're all acting here like UAE is some sort of reasonable country with fair laws, when it's a dictatorship.
miohtama 39 minutes ago [-]
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.
netdur 35 minutes ago [-]
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
adjejmxbdjdn 15 minutes ago [-]
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.
Tepix 2 minutes ago [-]
Wrong. Both WhatsApp and Signal group chats are E2EE.
Telegram group chats are not. Even 1on1 chats aren‘t E2EE on Telegram by default.
throwanem 41 minutes ago [-]
Presumably the UAE's legislators see the matter differently. But it is extremely "20th Century" of you, obvious American that you are, not really to understand sovereignty as a concept. Or not anyone else's sovereignty, anyway.
Someone1234 24 minutes ago [-]
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.
throwanem 16 minutes ago [-]
If you aren't an American, how come you write and argue exactly like an American liberal circa about 1997? - mealy-mouthed "motte-and-bailey" excuses for your own deeply illiberal and incoherent personal politic, inventing claims to project upon your interlocutor, and all.
soopypoos 5 minutes ago [-]
Great, now my monocle is wet
tbrownaw 30 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
DarkmSparks 1 minutes ago [-]
The irony is this arrest is most probably the first most people have heard of them getting flattened.
Esophagus4 31 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
wilburx3 1 hours ago [-]
Anything Meta should be binned if you care about yourself.
uyzstvqs 30 minutes ago [-]
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.
jmye 16 minutes ago [-]
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.
breisa 2 minutes ago [-]
If such a backdoor exists, it is probably cryptographically secured to prevent "unauthorized" access. E.g. the xz backdoor was secured like that.
dijit 37 minutes ago [-]
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.
charliebwrites 30 minutes ago [-]
This is why the First Amendment is so important
Maxious 12 minutes ago [-]
“[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)
pixl97 24 minutes ago [-]
Eh, there was a lot of media censorship during WWII.
tencentshill 13 minutes ago [-]
So we give up our rights when at war? Why not always be at war? Eastasia has always been at war with us.
pixl97 3 minutes ago [-]
Yes and yes.
It's unfortunate life isn't black and white, but that's the way it is.
152334H 24 minutes ago [-]
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?
wat10000 5 minutes ago [-]
And people wonder why I refuse to connect through Dubai.
rolymath 26 minutes ago [-]
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.
m0llusk 44 minutes ago [-]
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.
WangComputers 13 minutes ago [-]
I'm 100% fine with this. People like Dubai BECAUSE it's authoritarian, as a woman I love being in a place where I can feel safe because all the troublemakers have been removed from society. No homeless, no junkies, no sexual harassment, no idiots publicizing enemy air strikes so the Twelvers can aim the next ones more accurately.
My only problem with the UAE is that they only give these fools two years, Israel gives them FIVE!
guzfip 11 minutes ago [-]
These foreign agitprop accounts have gotten so ridiculous lol.
WangComputers 8 minutes ago [-]
I'm just a woman who wants to shop in peace.
7 minutes ago [-]
Rendered at 14:34:07 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
I imagine most countries in that situation would clamp down on freedom of speech and prohibit sharing photos of missile strikes. This would include most of the ones that pay lip service to freedom of speech in peace time.
Ukraine does this too.
> 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.
You might say that'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.
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).
> ‘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.
you are also missing the elephant in the room, whatsapp's claim of end-to-end encryption is a lie
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.
Telegram group chats are not. Even 1on1 chats aren‘t E2EE on Telegram by default.
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.
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.
Whoa.
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.
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.
But the actual article is much more haunting.
It's unfortunate life isn't black and white, but that's the way it is.
(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.
My only problem with the UAE is that they only give these fools two years, Israel gives them FIVE!