I am surprised because google review team rejects half of my extensions and apps.
Sometimes things don't make sense to me, like how "Uber Driver app access background location and there is no way to change that from settings" - https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/783227
If Google would care at all for their users, they'd tell WhatsApp to not require the use of the Contacts permission only to add names to numbers when you don't share the Contacts with the App.
Or they'd tell WhatsApp to allow granting microphone permissions for one single call, instead of requesting permanent microphone permissions. All apps that I know of respect the flow of "Ask every time", all but Meta's app.
That's all opinionated, and the latter is part of the OS, not WhatsApp. Not liking how an app works does not compare to an app exfiltrating data without your consent.
Let me explain: my WhatsApp has no privileges granted. So when a call comes in, which is a very rare thing, I get asked to grant the microphone permission. So I grant it, but only for one time, and when Android hands back focus to WhatsApp, it won't just make use of the microphone, but re-ask for microphone access, so you go into the permissions intent but there it is already set to "only this time". Only if i change it to "when I am using the app", then it works, but that is not acceptable for me, because that background use is a passive use, which can access the microphone. This means that WhatsApp can enable the mic whenever it likes, which it cannot do if "only this time" is selected. But the app is against that. I do not know how they do this, but that is what happens.
I wish there was another button on those contact permission boxes which would tell the app you've granted permissions. But when they try to read your contacts, send them randomly generated junk. Fake phone numbers. Fake names.
Or even better, mix in some real names and phone numbers but change all the other details. I want data brokers to think I live in 8 different countries. I want my email address to show up for 50 different identities. Good luck sorting that out.
I think what's going on there is that "While using" includes when a navigation app is running in the background, which is visible to the user (via e.g. a blue status bar pill). "Always" allows access even when it's not clear to the user that an app is running.
This might be a case of app permissions just being poorly delineated. E.g. I've seen Android apps require "location data" access just because they want to connect over bluetooth or manage WiFi or something (not entirely sure which one it was specifically) because that is actually the same permission and the wording in the permission modal is misleading.
I don't think it's being looked at by the UK government through the lens of "right" or "wrong" but simply as a matter of the rule of law. If a course of action is illegal, they have to avoid it.
The concept of "law" becomes foggy when you're dealing with state-backed criminals. I'm confident that the US intelligence apparatus has properly identified the perps, what they were transporting, and the cooperation they got from their "government."
Just like the IC story about Iraqi uranium refining was a "slam dunk"?
That's not actually to impugn the US IC, exactly. It's more to call out that the IC can do their job thoroughly and correctly and the powers that be will misuse or misrepresent their work product for their own purposes. Unless you know otherwise, we have to consider (among other things) that the US IC has nothing showing these boats are implicated, but the admin proceeded anyway.
You're assuming a level of adherence to norms, best practices, and laws that the current administration has demonstrated they do not do. They're not even bothering to present weak evidence.
Remember that Saddam was not cooperating with UNMOVIC, and not denying that he was building nukes. It seems crazy that he would do this until you recognize that his power depended upon being seen as strong and defiant of "The Great Satan."
Yeah, it turned out that he wasn't building nukes, but he provably did have WMD (chemical weapons), and had used them.
I don't doubt that GWB wanted "to finish the job" that his father started, and may have influenced the IC into producing "evidence" to support his goals. Obama did the same thing with the "Russia Collusion" hoax.
Most civil servants are stand up people who would never go along with anything illegal or unethical. The politicians are a different breed.
I will agree with this from personal experience. I've worked with several gov'ts on various projects and found almost everyone to be simply interested in doing their job well.
The story of the Iraq War and how faulty intelligence played into it is very different from that view. You have George Tenet, head of the CIA, telling GWB that the intel was a slam dunk for Iraqi attempts to build nukes when there was no such intel. Colin Powell, the day before his presentation to the UN on the Iraqi nuke program, went to Langley and demanded to review the evidence himself. When shown the paltry shreds they'd collected, he blew up at Tenet, saying "this is all you've got?"
Cheney set up his own mini-intel operation in the White House, headed by Douglas Feith, to look at the "raw" intel and construct their own case because the CIA analysts were unwilling to produce a National Security Assessment saying the same. It was 100% a case of the admin claiming that the US IC supported their policies when they did not (and the IC wasn't free to publicly dispute it).
The integrity of the IC is not a reason to believe that any admin has their work product to justify their actions... especially when they won't reveal that evidence.
The problem with revealing the evidence is the risk it poses to the "methods and sources." For this reason, it's highly unusual for CIA to release "raw" intel to anybody. They always want to "process" it. This feature can be exploited by politicians, as it was by President Obama and John Brennan against their political adversaries.
South American governments that refuse to stop the cartels are in effect supporting them. The cartels are powerful, and use any and every means to get what they want. The US recently offered to help Claudia Sheinbaum, and that offer was rejected. Nicolás Maduro is most likely supportive of the cartels because they pay him, and their actions are destructive to his enemies (namely us).
If they have the cooperation/encouragement of their government, how is this any different from a military attack? How should we respond to a military attack? Should we try to arrest and prosecute the attackers? If we adopt that attitude, we may just as well eliminate our entire military. What do you suppose would happen then?
This exactly what was happening with me and I recently started a project called Postbase to setup my own cloud infrastructure. There is so much free OSS software out there which is 100x better than what Google, Amazon and other offer. github.com/umrashrf/postbase (this is in alpha and work in progress).
