Here’s one guaranteed to make us all feel better:
Dubai police snooped on a private WhatsApp group to snare an airline worker who shared images of a building damaged in the Middle East crisis.
Authorities accessed a closed chat between colleagues, downloaded evidence and then lured the man to a meeting and arrested him.
He is in custody facing charges including publishing information deemed harmful to state interests which carries a maximum sentence of two years.
Radha Stirling, chief executive of Detained in Dubai, said: ‘Dubai Police have now explicitly confirmed they are conducting electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages.
‘Individuals are being tracked, identified, and arrested not for public statements, but for private exchanges between colleagues.
‘Companies like WhatsApp must answer urgent questions about user privacy.
‘If private communications can be detected and used as the basis for arrest by overreaching or hypersensitive states, users worldwide need clarity on how their data is being accessed.’
According to the police report, authorities stated the clip was detected ‘through electronic monitoring operations’.
So much for “privacy” and “end-to-end encryption. The question — now that the cat’s out of the bag — is quite simple: did the Dubai feds hack into WhatsApp, or did WhatsApp just hand the encryption key over to them?
We all know that in Arab nations, personal freedoms have about as much permanence (and relevance) as an ice cube in the desert when it comes to their governments.
But lest we get all smug and complacent, I’m willing to bet that a similar situation is in place pretty much everywhere — and the United States is no exception.