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Thread: United Arab Emirates: ToTok Affair

  1. #1

    Default United Arab Emirates: ToTok Affair

    ToTok is a smartphone application, which is rather popular especially among the citizens of the United Arab Emirates, due to a professional marketing campaign and the fact that it's essentially the only free message application in an illiberal confederation of monarchies, where more globally famous applications, like Viber or Whatsapp are banned. However, an article of the New York Times has recently revealed that the main goal of ToTok basically consists of spying on its own users. Apart from the suspiciously fragile privacy of the sent messages, ToTok also gains access to personal data theoretically irrelevant to its services, like the list of contacts or your geographic location (under the pretext of improved meteorological forecasts).



    The background of the application seems quite international, as, despite the fact that it is based on a similar Chinese application and that the firm Huawei promoted it persistently, American and Israeli contractors were heavily involved in its construction. However, as the investigation discovered, behind the superficially innocuous application lies Dark Matter, a company that represents the Emirati government and plays a major role in enforcing its domestic and foreign policy. There's little doubt that the main objective of ToTok was the acquisition of intelligence information about the internal opposition and potential dissidents, as the maintenance of the undemocratic regime crucially relies on censoring, imprisoning or even hacking any form of discontent.

    However, the United Arab Emirates also endorse cyber warfare, in order to strengthen their geopolitical interests. Considering their cordial alliance with Saudi Arabia, their principal victim is the Republic of Iran, but their attacks have also expanded on Qatar or even distant countries, like Turkey. It should be noted that the UAE are very active on their immediate periphery and a couple of years ago they almost annexed the nominally Yemeni archipelago of Sokotra, by taking advantage of the ongoing civil war.



    The ToTok affair concerns the authoritarian practices of a royal administration with zero scruples over curtailing the human rights of her subjects, but, in my opinion, it also raises some serious questions about privacy in the era of social media. We're lucky that the conspiracy came to public attention, probably thanks to international competition against the UAE or the companies profiting from it, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Platforms like Facebook or Twitter provide some excellent opportunities for massive surveillance to companies and, secondarily, ruthless state actors that Orwell and his notorious 1984 could have never dreamt of. The crux of the matter is that millions of users willingly surrender their rights, influenced by advertisement campaigns, the incomprehensible content of Terms of Service agreements and the desperate need for exhibitionism. As ToTok shows, malware attacks are not even necessary anymore, as the application itself was designed to violate its users' privacy, without demanding the contribution of hackers.

    Taking into consideration the digital illiteracy of the affected audience, as well as the disproportionately huge power of those profitting from surveillance, in comparison to the disorganised group of the losers, I believe that the future is a bit dark, in spite of the good news the revelation of the ToTok or NSA scandals may have generated.

  2. #2
    Ἀπολλόδοτος Α΄ ὁ Σωτήρ's Avatar Yeah science!
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    Default Re: United Arab Emirates: ToTok Affair

    Interesting, but hardly surprising. The UAE are somewhat of a watered down KSA, and depending on individual emirates some, like Sharjah, are even almost as repressive as KSA in terms of cultural issues.
    "First get your facts straight, then distort them at your leisure." - Mark Twain

    οὐκ ἦν μὲν ἐγώ, νῦν δ' εἰμί· τότε δ' ούκ ἔσομαι, ούδέ μοι μελήσει

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