Much of the terrain is similar to Afghanistan. Tribal islamic alliances are resilient against loss of central governance. There is a massive porous mountainous border to 2+ countries that conceivably will look the other way for certain islamic militants.
I know everyone wants to gobble down the campaign about complete air superiority and toppling of leaders, and that WhatsApp may be separating the regime from 52 virgins, but realize this is a propaganda campaign. This initial propaganda only serves to manufacture consent long enough to buy citizens in to blood so they can't back out. We're in the process of being tricked.
It wouldn't be a cake walk. But America could topple the government in Tehran about as easily as it did in Baghdad or, frankly, Kabul. The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't a failure to decapitate the opposing state. It was in filling the vacuum that left.
This seems so exceptionally counter productive.
Anyway we have plenty of people here that hate the US and are far more likely to actually create a problem.
Furthermore I'd argue the deficit spending (a very large portion of which is defense) is a much more serious existential threat.
So does the US.
> They also call for the annihilation of the Big Satan (USA) and the Small Satan (Israel)
You are literally calling for the annihilation of their state here.
> All the while running for The Bomb.
Only one country has ever used nuclear weapons in war.
There is definitely a cold war going on between Israel and Iran. I'm not sure if it escalating to a hot war would be better. The 20th century Cold War had all the same things you mentioned, with both sides fighting proxy wars, calling for the annihilation of the other side, and had atomic weapons. And I think everyone agrees that the end of the cold war that we had was definitely better than nuclear Armageddon.
And I don't know if the 20th would have been better if only the US had atomic weapons. MAD might have saved millions of lives in both sides.
I'm guessing that doesn't include Turkey or the rich oil arab states.
I don't want to speak to the other foreign governments, and I think there is a LOT of room for healthy criticism of how the USA handles its foreign policy, past & present.
But to answer the question directly with respects to Iran, specifically: the leadership has been repeatedly chanting "Death To America" for its 45 year history and have been actively trying to develop a nuclear weapon program. It calls Israel the "Little Satan" and America the "Big Satan." A mantra often repeated: "First we come for the Saturday people, then we go for the Sunday people."
Say what you want about the USA. I'll be the first to join you in criticism of many of it's foreign policy actions, including the 1953 CIA-backed Iranian coup that arguably led to the Islamic revolution in 1979 and got us the Iran we have today. And if people want to express concern for what evils could fill the vacuum if the current regime falls... fair.
But I'm certainly not going to blame any free country for responding to an enemy state vowing to destroy it while actively trying to develop the means to do so. If there is ever any moral justification for going to war - that's it. It's defensive. That's arguably the only justification for going to war.
Feel free to disagree with me about the threat that Iran poses to the western world. Maybe it's all propaganda and overstated. You're welcome to that theory. But this is the answer to the question: "Why should the USA get involved?"
I think the difference is that Iran has been actively trying to follow through with its threats and this has been demonstrated through its actions towards an American ally over the past year. This gives reason to believe that Iran's threats are both credible and, while a full-scale war between Iran and the USA might not fare well for Iran ... you don't need to demonstrate that you are capable of wiping out a population or winning a war in order to represent a credible threat. If only one of Iran's missiles manage to land in a densely populated area... people die. And that's enough to warrant a response IMO.
And what about that ally's actions towards Iran? Like assassinating political and military figures inside the country? Which would traditionally be considered an act of war. If anything, Iran has been too passive.
They could hit any number of US bases, they also have ICBMs "estimated to be at least 15,000 km (9,300 mi), allows it to reach targets anywhere in the contiguous United States."[0]
"Kim announced a Five-Year Defense Plan that said the country would field a new nuclear-capable submarine, develop its tactical nuclear weapons, deploy multiple warheads on a single missile, and improve its ICBMs' accuracy, among other goals. The plan includes development of an ICBM with a range of 15,000 km for "preemptive and retaliatory nuclear strike," and ground-based and sea-based solid-fueled ICBMs. Some analysts predict an increase in missile testing this year in order to meet these goals by 2026." [1]
They are also working with Russia now. "Russia is increasingly supporting North Korea’s nuclear status in exchange for Pyongyang’s support to Moscow’s war against Ukraine."[2]
The threat assessment[2] says about Iran: "We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-19
[1] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10472
[2] https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
This is a good read: https://www.mypersiancorner.com/death-to-america-explained-o...
The phrase is ugly, but it's how you say "fuck the US government" in a very melodramatic and poetic language where the most common way of calling your friend's baby cute translates to "let me martyr myself for this child."
Nonetheless... they've had 45 years to figure out what it sounds like to us. Those 45 years started with actual violence, and has continued with various forms of proxy conflict. So I don't think it's 100% on us to de-escalate the situation.
(That said... they had been working on that de-escalation, and we're the ones who threw that in the bin about a decade ago. So I'd say the burden has shifted substantially back in our direction.)
The US Director of National Intelligence testified to congress a few weeks ago that no US intelligence agency believes that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb, and that they believed Iran was at least 3 years away from having the ability to build a nuclear bomb even if they tried.
What you are saying directly contradicts what US intelligence agencies have said.
A couple sources: https://jewishinsider.com/2025/03/gabbard-iran-is-not-curren... https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2...
The US Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard) has a very public history of backing Assad and Iran during the Syrian Civil War, and any mention of the DNI without mentioning it's currently Tulsi Gabbard is clearly a bad faith discussion.
Furthermore, the DNI is at the lowest rung of the intel hierarchy on the Hill, as it is a post-9/11 invention, and faces inter-service competition from the CIA, FBI, and NSA.
The DNI is by law [0] the head of the intelligence community; the role was created to separate that function from the CIA Director (formerly, "Director of Central Intelligence"), who previously was the head of the intelligence community as well as the head of one of the major constituent agencies within that community. The CIA, FBI, and NSA or components of the intelligence community, not "competitors" with the DNI.
(And all of those are executive branch positions, so not in any hierarchy "on the Hill", which is a metonym for the Legislative branch because of the location of the Capitol complex on Capitol hill.)
[0] 50 U.S. Code § 3023(b)(1) Subject to the authority, direction, and control of the President, the Director of National Intelligence shall— (1) serve as head of the intelligence community; (2) act as the principal adviser to the President, to the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security; and (3) consistent with section 1018 of the National Security Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, oversee and direct the implementation of the National Intelligence Program. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3023
> which is a metonym for the Legislative branch because of the location of the Capitol complex on Capitol hill.
IK. I used to work there. It is the general denonym for working in either the Executive or Legislative.
> And all of those are executive branch positions, so not in any hierarchy "on the Hill"
Strongly disagree from personal experience. Just like any organization, resourcing gives certain groups or agencies more heft and leeway than others.
And that it should be no one's concern about a regime that is stretched for resources yet has over a dozen very expensive facilities working on militarizing nuclear technology that also publicly and repeatedly calls for the destruction of not just Israel but also America ?
Then the USA created the Saddam regime in Iraq to fight the Iranian regime and that went great.
And now the USA is supporting Israel to terrorize the Middle East in their name and with their bombs and that’s going swimmingly too. Top job everyone.
But the Islamic Republic wasn’t an American creation. Neither was Saddam’s Iraq or the Mujahideen or Al Qaeda. We variously facilitated, opposed and ignored these elements, mostly the last. Ignoring the Soviet history in the region, together with the fact that Iranians aren’t automatons, but human beings with agency and preferences, continues this tradition of American fatalism that ignores how complicated (and independent of ourselves) these systems are.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9ta...
Imagine if someone installed a puppet king in the USA to exploit the resources of the US for their gain, would you think that would be dramatic?
As for the Islamic revolution, it was a reaction to being colonized and subjugated, and I would argue it’s still around because the only other option is being a puppet of the US.
Literally the colonial governors.
> it’s still around because the only other option is being a puppet of the US
Iran didn’t have to become a hardline theocracy, or a state sponsor of terror, or a nuclear pariah. The IRGC didn’t have to be corrupt and autocratic [1].
The tragedy of the present is it still doesn’t have to be. And while we contributed to the malaise that gave rise to the Islamic Republic (and continue to contribute to its geopolitical insecurity), it’s a step too far to say we caused it.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_th...
I'm unsure as to how the US installed him in 1953. He had been Shah for 11 years.
Sorry, you’re correct. We installed him as an autocrat in ‘53.
Iran was not a British-style constitutional monarchy. The Shah was not a ceremonial position. His father ruled with even more power than he did. He was just an absentee ruler for the first part of his rule until someone tried to assassinate him.
Never mind that Prime Minister Mosaddegh had dissolved parliament and had been ruling by decree for a year also acted as an autocrat. Even his own party turned against him for abuse of power.
At best, one could argue the British installed the Shah. They are, after all, the people who made him Shah in the first place.
Operation Ajax
It’s not defending or supporting but pointing out that not every foreign policy choice made on the planet is a result of our actions. There is a mixture of culpability, credit and thus obligation to fix things.
And I’m not going off on a humanistic arc. The criticism is in line with that of Big Man historical models, or conspiratorial ones involving all-knowing shadow governments. These models are simpler to apply than reality, which involves imperfect (and changing) actors acting through the fogs of war and history.
Saddam's Iraq was, though; Saddam's rise to power in Iraq was backed actively by the US because he was seen as a useful anti-Communist, and once in power he was backed by the US government (to the point of rushing Donald Rumsfeld out as Reagan's special envoy to assure both Saddam and the world of our support for him after he used chemical weapons) in its long war of aggression against Iran in the 1980s.
Thank you for the opportunity to engage in healthy criticism of rogue states.
Iran has a right to defend itself.
People may disagree on the ethics of who is the "right" side, if the war was fought "fairly" and according to the "ethics of war", but you would have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to believe that Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthis were not Iranian proxies armed and funded by Iran and acted independently from Iran's goals.
As a corollary, I do not buy into the idea that this Israel/Iran war was/is being fought (only) because of the nuclear issue. It is being fought because it is the last (hopefully) part of the larger war of Israel vs Axis of Resistance, which can only be resolved through the defeat of either Israel or Iran.
If Israel is defeated, the Muslim world can then go on to fight their Shia vs Sunni war, if Iran is defeated, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iran in Iraq, and Houthis will basically go away and those nations/territories will need to determine their future, both internally and their relationships with Israel and the Muslim world.
If we're being extremely generous, the goal of regime change would be to bring a new stability with economic prosperity and inclusion as well as more meaningful political inclusion, so as to reduce the amount of marginalized population with nothing to loose that are easy to recruit for terrorism.
Of course, when the nation building fails or is never even tried, it's pretty easy for recruiters to say "look around, they destroyed our country (with bombs or embargoes or tariffs or resource exploitation or offensive media), we have nothing to live for, and it's their fault; let's make them pay"
I don't think you can stop all terrorism, but if you want to put a dent in it, you need to give the broad population hope for prosperity, and you need to fulfill that hope on the regular.
1) we want to control oil and oil prices because it’s crucial to our bank accounts. 2) if the Middle East unites we will lose control over oil 3) we must make sure they never unite 4) we need to support varying regimes to increase instability in the region. If we keep the Middle East fighting we can continue to extract oil.
Lots has changed since 50s so one would think this strategy would get updated, but it seems it has not.
(Also for the record I think this is abhorrent, but I think some people do think like this)
All of those cases involved a whole lot of troops on the ground, which is something that I see as notably missing from any plans discussed so far. Outside troops invading seems like a very bad idea, because Iran's population is about that of those other three combined. Operating sufficient outside country ground troops to topple the existing government would quickly lead to friction between civilians and the outside troops, which would almost certainly quickly turn into a revolt of some kind, and fatally undermine any government they attempted to put in place. Also, it would take a very long time for sufficient US force to topple the Iranian government to arrive in the area, and then either launch a D-Day style opposed amphibious assault or operate from one of Iran's neighbors with sea access (2). But because there is no preexisting Iranian civil war, there is no local source of ground troops either.
I don't think we've ever seen a government toppled by external air-strikes alone. The general consensus from research is that being bombed makes citizens support the government more, not weaken their resolve.
1: It didn't lead to change of government, but Operation Allied Force- the NATO bombing of Serbia helped the Kosovo Liberation Army achieve their independence- again air-power supporting troops on the ground to achieve an aim, not air-power alone. What eventually toppled the government of Serbia was the Bulldozer Revolution a year later, with no outside military force involved.
2: Your choices are not going to be good ones. Iraq? Turkey through Kurdistan? Pakistan?
Oh absolutely. I compared it to Kabul and Baghdad (and not Libya) for a reason. There is not a mobilised resistance in Iran.
The lack of boots-on-the-ground plans is why I don’t see us teetering towards Iraq 2.0, but instead the U.S. eventually using bunker busters at Fordo and calling it a day. (To the extent we’re seeing the right recipe “liberation” rhetoric, it’s in respect of domestically deploying the military.)
There will be no nation building component. Israeli leadership has no interest, nor does American leadership. And the Gulf States, Turkiye, Russia and China lack the capacity and/or manpower.
Sadly, I feel Iran will most likely teeter into a Libya or Myanmar style Civil War with the Army, IRGC, Basij, and local police at each others throats in the heartland, and ancillary regions like Iranian Azerbaijan, Iranian Kurdistan, Khuzestan+Ilam, and significant portions of Balochistan and Khorasan becoming de facto autonomous and meddled in by regional powers.
A number of meetings / manifestations of expatriate Iranians happened around the world, supporting the Israeli actions. The current regime earned no love from most of the population, it seems; massive anti-government protests happened in Iran for last few years, sometimes lasting for months.
If there is no civil war and no actual troops on the ground, the regime may still be unstable enough, its pillars like IRGC being paper tigers, and willing to defect. It can still fall. An example: the Soviet regime fell in 1991 within a week, basically without any war, and the USSR split into its formal constituent republics, most of which stayed peaceful since then. Another example: the Portuguese regime fell within a week in 1974, with zero shots fired.
Thanks to historians, we can understand things like the collapse of the USSR better (my favorite English language book- I am sadly monolingual- would be Plokhy's _The Last Empire_) and see the personal and impersonal forces that ended up tearing the country apart, and doubtless some of those are present in Iran right now. But I personally would not bet on these strikes helping to topple the existing government.
Iran had a very violent succession crisis in the late 80s-early 90s, but the titans of the revolution and rallying behind the flag due to the Iran-Iraq war helped ensure some base amount of unity.
There is a vacuum in Iran's elite, as most of the upper and mid-level echelons are those who solidified their fiefdoms in the 1990s.
Iranian Regime has strong backing from Brics and others.
The BRICS meme from a security standpoint is hollower than the financial one.
Russia and China have no interest (the former, ability) in getting enmeshed in another Anglo-Iranian war. Most of the oil travelling through the Strait of Hormuz goes to Chinese refineries; they really don’t want this to escalate. Both would probably make the occupation phase painful for Americans. Like we did for the Soviets. And the Iranians did for us. But that’s again post-regime change, the part we’ve never figured out how to do since the Marshall Plan, and not in the toppling of the regime bit, which we’re ridiculously good at.
The evidence for the above is the current lack of military or intelligence support anyone is providing Iran.
Chinese planes with transponders being turned off are landing in Iran with unknown Cargo on board. (Reported across the news). Iran is supplying Russia with Drones for Ukraine so strategic partner.
Russia recently lost Syria as an ally with the change in government, they will not want to lose Iran to the USA too.
If the West can back Ukraine to the level they have done, then no different for Iran's friends to do the same.
There is really only one thing Iran would sell its soul for right now, and it’s Russian or Chinese troops announcing that they’ve stationed themselves at Fordo. (Thereby turning an attack on the regime’s nuclear ambitions into an attack on a nuclear state.)
> If the West can back Ukraine to the level they have done, then no different for Iran's friends to do the same
Excluding China, orders of magnitude of differences in capability.
Everyone wants to gobble down... I.e. here’s another invasion war but it’s our ally this time so it’s good actually. They’re gonna dezanify^W de-islamism Iran.
Whatever the case, the current Iran regime hasn't given nuclear material, chemical weapons, or biological weapons to these terror groups.
If the current Iran regime is eliminated from afar, with some fly-by bombings or whatever, what happens in the chaos that follows? Nuclear material and other weapons do not poof out of existance when the government that created them falls. Which group will control the nuclear material going forward? Roll the dice to find out.
“We do not track your *PRECISE* location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the *PERSONAL* messages people are sending one another," it added. “We do not provide *BULK* information to any government.”
There's also supposedly a key transparency service deployed (similar to Certificate Transparency), but I haven't looked into that in detail.
https://transparency.meta.com/reports/government-data-reques...
They can't see your messages but then can give ips or accounts that can be inferred to be related given the info meta has access to
The backdoor in Lotus Notes (differential cryptography) wasn't a secret. It was public information. Ray Ozzie used it as a way to circumvent US encryption export laws. Today companies have to be more discrete.
[1] http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/hacks/lotus-nsa-key.html
Camera: https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/facebo...
Audio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41424016
Conversations: https://www.vice.com/en/article/facebook-said-it-wasnt-liste...
Mass surveillance: https://thehill.com/video/facebook-spying-on-users-new-repor...
Across the web: https://www.wired.com/story/ways-facebook-tracks-you-limit-i...
Beacon: https://www.wired.com/2007/12/facebook-ceo-apologizes-lets-u...
Apps: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...
People who aren't even on facebook: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17254312/facebook-shadow-profi...
Others do it too, e.g. Amazon: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone...
But Facebook has always been on a whole other level
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/17/facebook-...
The alternatives are also probably up to the same sketchy shit, so your choices are to be a hermit, or accept that your services will spy on you.
If you want to participate in society, you have to either trust a very large list of untrustworthy people... Or acknowledge that they are untrustworthy, and mitigate accordingly. Part of that mitigation is accepting the possibility that if the Mossad want to murder you by blowing up your toaster, nobody's going to stop them.
Imagine that times a billion.
That ends with them mostly not communicating with me, not with them switching apps.
Are you going to suggest to me that I should force them onto Signal and a pile of other DIY platforms? I dare you. Look a burned out parent in their bloodshot eyes first.
- tell parents and teachers I can be reached at xxx-xxx-xxxx if they need anything
- absolutely never had meta-requirement to volunteer. if I did I would 100% know my time there is better spent elsewhere
I am not going to suggest you anything except to tell you that you can live a beautiful live outside of the meta-world. it is super easy
Great it is super easy for you, but why do you think your individual experience is valid for other people (who might be thousands of km away in a very different setting)?
People did find out.
Imagine if Snowden decided to just do his work and move on? How much longer would it have taken for these facts to be revealed to the public?
So literally no downside to putting a backdoor and lying about it
Zuck dribbled and 3D Chessed the Law
META DATA. Literally they did say truthfully they "only" read all the Meta Data, which is actually all data of the company Meta.
Mixed metaphors aside, you can't cheat the law by naming yourself something.
Well, you can try, but the courts take a dim view of it.
> Mixed metaphors aside
Zapp hit that bullseye, causing the rest of the dominoes to fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.
And on top of that if you want make any money with company like X, you need to send your biometrics to some company in Israel. What is this Israel and surveillance capitalism? Or has this always being the case, and I am just now start to realizing it.
just selected people then?
"This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service."
Surely they must, how else are the messages… you know… available when you use the app?
From https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967/?locale=en_US:
> In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them. Additional information about WhatsApp's security can be found here.
Note specifically "information about how some users interact with others on our service", which contradicts their claim they don't keep logs of which people are messaging each other.
> Actualllly you can't prove that it was me who made that search query.
> Actualllly you can't prove that it was me who had that cellphone around that cell tower. Could have been anybody. I could have been hacked.
Judges always allow those evidence and jury always views it as incriminating. What makes more sense, that some unknown hacker hacked into your account and googled something about the thing you're here for, or that you actually just googled it yourself?
On Android, push notifications were always processed by the receiving app, so it can just decrypt a payload directly (or download new messages from the server and decrypt these); on iOS, this isn't as reliable (e.g. swiping the app out of the app switcher used to break it in several iOS versions), but "VoIP notifications" and the newer "message decryption extension" [1] are.
The same principle applies to Web Push – I believe end-to-end encryption is even mandatory there.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
Now I don't know the exact details of which governments had which access (was it just for warrants, which nations, what was the line between actual terrorist versus persecuting journalists), but there was absolutely bulk export and the fact that they are lying about it makes me inclined to presume the worst.
The US agency would type in the gmail address of the subject (ie the primary key/identifier) and somewhere between the agency and Google a decision would be automatically made as to whether the owner of the account was a US person* or not.
If yes - FISA warrant was required
If no - the US agency user would have immediate access to the entire google account (think Google Take Out).
In other words, if you were not a US person there was no duty to protect data.
* = US Person is either a US citizen located anywhere in the world or anyone of any nationality who is physically in the US (current interpretation includes visa holders, visitors and even undocumented but that's shifting)
I'm much more inclined to believe they track everything in high precision and also MITM all the messages. Especially now that they are inserting ads.
I'm no apologist for Facebook, none of whose services I use. But get your facts straight. They are not 'inserting ads' in your chats, as you imply. AFAIK they are adding adds to the never-used 'Updates' tab.
Annoying from an ad perspective, no doubt. Vastly different from a are-they-MITMing-your-messages perspective.
"WE don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging..."
"We don't KEEP logs of everyone who is messaging..."
"We don't keep logs of EVERYONE who is messaging..."
Etc.
Though I must say, the regime itself seems to really believe this, for example there was some news that high-ranking officials are now banned from using electronic devices that connect to the internet like mobile phones.
I take my chances for a probable dysfunctional government rather than a definitely dysfunctional one.
You don't need to guess as to what happens; there are examples.
I agree with others here that regime really needs to go but I of course share your fear of what could happen to Iran once the central government is weakened. Currently there are multiple tiers of special forces keeepinf various groups in check, however once this is gone, things could get ugly.
I worry about my family living there, we have been having a hard time time reaching there since the attacks started and there is no way of telling what is going to happen next.
I do not think it would be to the benefit of people who live in Iran, even if they were Christian, to live through the bombings and mass destruction of the proposed war in exchange for life under US territorial administration, which has not been very good historically.
But an American occupation isn't even on the table. Nobody is interested in that. The most anyone wants at the moment is for the US to drop a MOAB on fordo and mop up the rest of Irans military from the air.
What's your take on it ?
It's true that new soldiers are not conscripts, but I'd assume there's still some survivors from the earlier mobilisation and as far as I know once you're in, you're in, until death, incapacity or the war ending.
but what happens, it's that conscripts are convinced/forced to sign contracts to serve in army, and in this they are sent to face ukrainian drones.
those that were mobilized, iirc not released.
To me, the most interesting thing about this conflict is the side-choosing of the other nations, because that reveals what kind of games they're playing.
Could you elaborate on that? Is anyone behaving out of the totally expected?
"It banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government over the death of a woman held by the country’s morality police. That ban was lifted late last year. ( https://apnews.com/article/iran-social-media-whatsapp-google... ) "
So more than fearing Israel, they actually fear the public that has an encrypted communication channel that can't be tapped by their police. Explains a lot.
Could be some other mechanism (e.g. Google Drive or some other kind of malware), hard to be sure in the world, where since 2011 Snowden's revelations, bugs are placed my NSA and CIA everywhere, starting from hardware and firmware.
if it was it would be true for telegram as well.
Russian soldiers participating in the invasion of Ukraine. FTFY.
Also car tech and cameras. Literally a wet dream if I worked at a three letter agency, real time surveillance of streets which is actually extremely difficult normally. Can't think of how many times I've wanted a recent picture of a street or house miles away, with 360 car cameras you can track people, see changes maybe from just minutes ago.
I don't know why these countries don't block or mandate these features are completely turned off.
A common sentiment in this thread. My gut and practical experience both tell me this is true on some level, but how do folks distinguish tinfoil hat conspiracy from legitimate speculation?
The UK now has laws to gag domestic companies and force them to implement backdoors.
Plausibility and evidence, for which there's plenty in this case.
Although it seems less likely to me that Western apps have backdoors and more likely that Western law enforcement and intelligence have free access to the data, but it's probably both.
This I have firsthand experience with and agree. Why invest effort when agencies can simply take what they want?
The NSA, and it's partners, capabilities and the lengths it is willing to go to are staggering.
The IDF's Unit 8200[1] can probably hack most phones in Iran. And if not any of the private companies selling spyware software like the NSO Group[2 and 3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group
[3] https://mepc.org/commentaries/israeli-cyber-companies-overvi...
I recommend the documentary Zero Days from 2016 to anyone remotely interested on this.
While the PCs used to program the PLCs were running XP, the 0-day that Stuxnet exploited affected all versions of Windows, at least from 2000 onwards, including 2008 and Vista.
EDIT: to clarify, the PCs "programmed" the PLCs indirectly, in that while they ran the Siemans STEP 7 IDE to design the centrifuges' control process, the resulting PLC programs were manually transported to the PLCs via USB devices, so there were two airgaps: the XP-running PCs airgapped from the outside world, and then another airgap between the PCs and the PLCs they programmed.
I wish this meme that "whatsapp is secure because it uses e2e encryption" would die.
Why does it matter if the messages are e2e encrypted if the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what.
The whatsapp app itself sees the clear text message. What it does with that information... or what "metadata" it extracts to send to their servers.. who knows.
Right into my veins
Would you prefer your dissident messages be read by Meta Corporation or the Islamic Republic of Iran? That's the difference.
No, there's no technical difference in the sense that neither solution can be verified to be probably secure vs. third party inspection. But in the real world the specifics of who the actors are are and the tactics they are known to employ are absolutely part of the threat model.
Neither please! Corpos can obviously sell out or be pressured into giving out info to all sorts of agencies
Repression in Iran is real, not abstract. It happens, the state wants to monitor internet use to enable it, and the linked article is very specific about them wanting to disallow Meta's product.
I'd prefer my messages to not be available to an actor shown to be using AI to select targets for bombing campaigns.
Because WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, any backdoor must necessarily be on the client side, and all client-side code can ultimately be reverse-engineered. This makes such backdoors very tricky to implement.
With that said, while I think a "general backdoor" (one that weakens the crypto algorithms so much that all messages can ultimately be read by Meta) is super unlikely, a "vulnerability" in some image parsing library, designed and implemented by the NSA, and only used on the most interesting targets... now that's a different story.
True, but it might be a part of an update that only hits a white-list of users, so you won't find the actual code that steals your private keys if you're on that list.
The meme/trope is that you can't possibly know what such an app does without the source. It just isn't true. There'd be no meaningful phone vulnerability research if it was.
The classic approach, airlifting the Ayatollah to a dacha in Moscow while the IRGC saves face and plots a forever path to new elections, falls apart when you consider how Iran’s internal security and geopolitical alignment would need to be sculpted in a way that would satisfy the great powers. (Iranian crude fuels China’s refineries.)
Mainly because they don’t have one and never had one. Hard to dismantle something you don’t have. Even harder to do so credibly.
They had programs to obtain a nuclear deterrent. They can dismantle those programs. But they never had the actual nuclear deterrent itself.
Honestly, I don’t think the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war, and Israel has shown in the past that if you recognize their right to exist in some form, they’ll leave you the hell alone - see Egypt, Jordan, etc.
So if he pulled back from those two rivalries, I doubt that hurts him much. I’d see it as riskier because of internal power struggles and possibly from regional rivals, but who knows.
Guy’s in his mid 80s and there’s a decent chance Mossad knows exactly where he is. He’s got one foot on a banana peel and the other foot in the grave regardless.
It’s likely that any two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis would roughly look like how things were before the Six-Day War.
However, I’m getting more at the fact that Iran is unwilling to accept a two-state solution because necessarily, one of those two states would be Israel.
WhatsApp heavily nudges users into backing up their chats to iCloud or Google Drive. These backups are, by default, unencrypted (or at least encrypted using a key known to Meta). And most users just use the defaults.
It's exactly the same story with iMessage: If "iCloud Backup" and "iMessage in the cloud" are activated (again, Apple nudges users into these by default), all received messages get uploaded to Apple using a key available to Apple, unless "Advanced Data Protection" is also enabled (decidedly not the default).
Users can deviate from these defaults (and both parties to a conversation need to, for the conversation to actually be private!), but they can already also just use Signal if sufficiently motivated.
For the population in general though and in special those who don't like the people in charge of the country, WhatsApp is a great tool. I have to worry about WhatsApp and Meta as I'm in the "west", but there's no chance in hell Meta's going to provide data on any user to the Iranian government... it's a good option for Iranians.
ranger_danger•5h ago
geor9e•5h ago