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How the United Arab Emirates Intelligence Tried to Hire Me to Spy on Its People
- erlehmann_ 10y agoIt is not mentioned in the article, but the UAE is a country with sharia law: Flogging is a punishment for criminal offences such as adultery, premarital sex and alcohol consumption, while apostasy and homosexuality are crimes punishable by death. Amputation and crucification are legal punishments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Ara... I wonder if the author is afraid of retribution (e.g. abduction, “disappearance”).
- evilsocket 10y agoI didn't know that! ... anyway, yes I'm afraid, I just did what I felt to be my "duty" and hope for the best :)
- erlehmann_ 10y agoJust never – ever – visit UAE again.
- evilsocket 10y agoahaha of course not! :D
- angry_octet 10y agoOr any of the GCC states. https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/04/26/gcc-joint-security-agreement-imperils-rights https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/04/26/gcc-joint-security-agree...
- cup 10y agoI like the UAE. As long as you don't break their laws the experience is fine. To be honest, I'm more frightened of going to America as a non-white person where even obeying the laws can result in death. Edit: If you disagree with my post please add to the conversation rather than just down-voting.
- ethanbond 10y agoThere's not even a way to frame a disagreement. Your statement is just intellectually dishonest. You can die obeying the laws anywhere as a person of any race. America has problems with racial violence, but your comment indicates a total disconnect from reality in pretty much every way.
- nfd 10y agoI'd still stay away if I were evilsocket.
- erlehmann_ 10y agoReferring to racial discrimination in the west as reaction to allegations of human rights abuse is a quite old technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes Edit: The rhetorical device is called a “whataboutism”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism. The fallacy involved is called “to quoque” – a special case of an “ad hominem” argument, i.e. attacking the speaker and not the content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
- upofadown 10y agoThere was no attempt to excuse human rights abuses in the post you are responding to. Only a comment about visiting such places vs the US while brown. In general despotic regimes love visitors who are willing to keep their opinions about the local political situation to themselves no matter what sort of person they are. Places like the US tend to be indifferent to the political beliefs of visitors and as a result any local racial biases will be applied fairly to those visiting.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nprescott 10y agoPuts me in mind of Moxie's experience in a similar incident with Mobily and Saudi Arabia[1] [1]: https://moxie.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/ https://moxie.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/
- evilsocket 10y agoto be honest, finding out that someone else disclosed something very similar in the past has been a big contribution to my final decision to publish the post.
- hackaflocka 10y agoLittle known fact: Most top intelligence officials from Western countries retire to form "security analysis and consulting" firms. Rudy Giuliani has such a firm. http://www.giulianisecurity.com/index.php/us/ http://www.giulianisecurity.com/index.php/us/ His former Police Chief has one. http://www.thekerikgroup.com/ http://www.thekerikgroup.com/ Most former U.S. Secretaries of Homeland Security have one (each). Look up https://chertoffgroup.com/team.php https://chertoffgroup.com/team.php Ever wondered what exactly they do? They help wealthy dictators and despots in other countries monitor their populations, and crush dissent.
- xyzzy4 10y agoI'm pretty sure the UAE is obsessed with spying. Personal anecdote: I once dated a girl who's the daughter of a high ranking official (while she was in the US), and the government spied on her text messages and forced her to break up with me. At least according to her.
- bowmessage 10y ago"It's not you, it's the UAE government..."
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoElaborate on "forced"
- xyzzy4 10y agoSomeone from the UAE government, possibly a relative, met up with her with a printout of all the conversations and then heavily pressured her to break up.
- return0 10y agoLook Dubai is all for the biggest and largest, so if they are getting serious about surveillance, you can bet they ll want to boast about it. Also of note is that dubai is ~85% immigrants, which i think it the object of their surveillance.
- angry_octet 10y agoHeck no, it's the local nationals they care about: The UAE's bizarre, political trial of 94 activists http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/06/uae-trial-94-activists http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/06/uae-tri... They seem to have everyone pretty cowed. They treat the guest workers like dirt, but don't seem to be concerned about a slave revolt.
- raulito123 10y agoIt is really funny the article, you say you use signal to communicate which is totally interceptable nowadays, you register using your real phone, so i could trace you and intercept your real phone!. If you are a real top goverment security guy NEVER use signal my friend. Seems you are newbie on the security scene.
- evilsocket 10y agoI'm not really sure who you're talking to ... they asked me to use Signal, honestly I didn't really care ...
- erlehmann_ 10y agoSignal is bad for other reasons, too, like creating a lock-in effect and being hostile to clients that remove the dependency on Google Play Services: http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/posts/signal-lock-in.html http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/posts/signal-lock-in.ht...
- whyever 10y agoYou could also say that Signal is good because they realized the shortcomings of federation and want to sign their binaries themselves.
- erlehmann_ 10y agoWhat would those shortcomings be? I think that networked software systems should be forward-compatible, so that new features can be introduced without breaking every existing client. Some programmers assert the only way to innovate is by having everyone run the latest version of their software and excluding competing implementations. You can see this phenomenon not only with Signal, but also, for example, with systemd.
- whyever 10y ago> What would those shortcomings be? Moxie wrote about it: https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
- raulito123 10y agoIt is really funny the article, you say you use signal to communicate which is totally interceptable nowadays, you register using your real phone, so i could trace you and intercept your real phone!. If you are a real top goverment security guy NEVER use signal my friend. Seems you are newbie on the security scene.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoIt looks like Britain's got competition for the dubious award of most surveilled country. But seriously, this is an absolutely despicable act on the part of the UAE. And that fact that Tor's security has come into question of late just makes it worse (not that Tor would help you with this sort of thing).
- throwawayosiu1 10y agoI lived in UAE for 10 years. All I can say is...it's not a "bad" place if: 1) you are working as a direct hire for any of the govt companies (Adnoc, Etisalat, etc.). 2) if not, you are contracted directly by those companies 3) if you are on contract and your visa's sponsor is good (won't take your passport on arrival, won't create issues when you need to leave, etc.) 4) If you keep your head down basically - go to work, come home, have fun - Don't get involved in politics, using encrypted chatting applications, talking about human rights or anything along those lines. oh and there's definitely a lot of brain washing going on. Almost everyone claims that it's the best place to be, discrimination ain't a thing (yes it is), everyone's fair (nope) and so on...
- erlehmann_ 10y agoSo UAE is “not a ‘bad’ place” for people whose definition of “fun” does not include premarital sex, alcohol consumption, kissing in public, adultery, blasphemy, homosexual sex, criticizing rulers … may I ask, what do they do then?
- throwawayosiu1 10y agothat was a bad choice of words from my end. Sorry. By "have fun", I meant - go around, visit places, hang out with friends, shop etc. While I am personally not aware of premarital sex, alcohol consumption is fine (as long as you have a licence, and do it indoors) kissing in public, adultery, blasphemy, homosexual sex, criticizing rulers - yep, all these are big no-nos.
- kejaed 10y agoQuestion: if "using encrypted chatting applications" is banned, can on use iMessage?
- analog31 10y agoOr for that matter, HTTPS?
- throwawayosiu1 10y ago
- x1798DE 10y ago@evilsocket FYI, the <pre> blocks on that page are really hard to read on mobile because the line breaks are enforced, requiring left-right scrolling. Seems like a blockquote would be a better choice here.
- evilsocket 10y agothat should be fixed now, thanks
- dredmorbius 10y agoNB: you've fixed the styling (renders fairly reasonably on my 10" tablet) but not the markup. <pre> should be used for preformatted code blocks or similar. When you're quoting something, the appropriate markup is a <blockuquote> tag pair. Most sane CSS should render that reasonably, preferably simply by indenting the content.
- evilsocket 10y agoi write posts in markdown, they're then "compiled" into html, I should fix the software I'm using ... but as long as it works, for me it's ok, being it styling or markup :)
- x1798DE 10y agoIn markdown I think a blockquote is indicated by >, so: > This is a quote > it is rendered as a blockquote.
- chinathrow 10y agoAnother brilliant example on why people should shun travelling to and most notably _through_ these countries. The UAE is not a safe place to travel through at all. As others have said, the laws are different. People have been detained for reasons beyond imagination. https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-woman-faces-insult-charge-united-arab-emirates-151700874.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-woman-faces-insult-charge-unit... http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/jailed-and-fined-for-no-fault-of-his-1.232118 http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/jailed-and-fined-for-no... http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/561528/British-plane-spotters-arrested-prison-Dubai-UAE http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/561528/British-plane-spo...
- DKnoll 10y agoThat's interesting... DarkMatter LLC has an office here in Mississauga, ON, CA. I kept wondering what the hell they do exactly. Their online presence is a bit vague and ominous.
- evilsocket 10y agonow you know :)