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

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chasil 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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."

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ufmace an hour ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	chasil 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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alephnerd an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

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adjejmxbdjdn 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.