Turkey's Sabah newspaper first reported the story saying the audio was recorded on the watch but then discovered on Khashoggi's iphone -- that his finance was holding outside the walls of the embassy.
It has been noted that the LTE feature in Apple Watch 4 is not supported by any carriers in Turkey.
AppleInsider has the most uptodate coverage I could find in print:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/12/saudi-journalist-used-apple-watch-to-record-own-interrogation-and-execution-report-says
If he was using Watch 4 with LTE and if he bought it, activated it, and paired it to a sim in a European country with LTE support.. the LTE would still work when he left that country to go to Turkey. No?
Khashoggi lived in Virginia so this is still unlikely but I think it is more possible than you make it sound.
I could also see it being obfuscation as OP mentioned since it seems those reporting officially on the story from Turkey have been quick to cite evidence without showing any proof. It's very interesting all around and I've got my eyes peeled on this story.
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"While Apple does not currently explicitly list Turkey as a supported country, many users report being able to use their watch while roaming in non-supported countries.
Turkey’s carriers use the 900, 1800 and 2600 MHz LTE bands and the 2100 MHz UTMS band. All of these bands work with the Apple Watch 3 models A1889 and A1891. If roaming works on their iPhone, it would likely work on their watch unless Apple has explicitly disabled the watch itself from doing so (I’ve seen no indication they do this, and user reports to the contrary in fact). LTE is LTE after all and doesn’t care what your device is provided it conforms with the standard.
Another possibility is that Khashoggi simply made a phone call from the watch which was recorded by the other party. This removes the dependency on a data connection altogether.
What makes more sense here? That Turkey has decided to effectively admit to widespread bugging of the SA embassy (and likely all embassies for that matter)? Or that they were provided a copy of audio by Khashoggi’s fiancée? It’s far from certain, but ruling out the most likely scenario based on a support article alone seems hasty."
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Food for thought.
I’m on EE (T-Mobile and Orange consortium in the UK) which means when I roam in the EU it connects to T-Mobile and Orange which support the watch in their local countries but the roaming doesn’t work.
Also with LTE there is no sync with the phone the sync won’t work unless you are connected to WiFi it doesn’t use BT afaik it uses airdrop.
The airdrop is also anecdotally supported by the fact that my company has disabled airdrop recently when they rolled out DEP to all work issued phones since then I can’t sync the watch with my company phone.
WRT claims that they used his fingerprint to unlock the watch, that isn’t supported, but if it were within range of a paired phone and put on a wrist, it would unlock when the phone is unlocked, potentially via Touch ID.
Edit: If I were to speculate (which is all any of us can do) I would guess that the latter is how they got access to the watch, and he and his fiancé had a family iCloud account, which the files automatically uploaded to via his phone.
Also, are you suggesting WiFi from the hotel covered not only the front of but the depths of the embassy?
And I’m not really suggesting anything about the WiFi. I know remarkably little about the network infrastructure in foreign hotels and embassies. Just that there are mechanism in iOS that could feasibly make this possible, rather than immediately jumping to a Turkish surveillance cover up.
You know, Occam’s razor and all that jazz.
also do they even need cloud, can't be content of watch synced over Bluetooth? if she had access to his phone (which would make sense to not keep phone locked from her) it would make this theory plausible
though of course bugging embassy it's much more realistic and simpler
Or maybe there were listening devices in the embassy that captured the evidence and Turkey is seeking a plausible explanation for how the audio evidence was captured.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17936722/fitbit-data-murd...
I do however find it easy to believe the place was bugged and Turkish authorities may be averse to distributing such recordings demonstrating it as fact.
The time is now for everyone to see the incontrovertible evidence while it still has the world's attention.
That we still haven't seen it is rather suspect.
Rather I would say that when power is in the hands of select few individuals who are supported militarily and financially (aka politically) by other rich and powerful entities (e,g the USA), those individuals just behave like despots.
It seems to be human nature more often than not to behave like this, under these specific circumstances.
A lot of things in life boil down to "pleasing the person above you so you get support". At work, many employees will spend more time scoring points with the manager, rather than thinking of new and innovative ways to grow revenue and profit.
I think you can see this manifest itself in the ways the humans behave politically. "How do I say the right things so that I can get elected/get paid" seems to be the relevant question here rather than "What is the ethical, rational, and equitable thing to do?"
Relevant anecdote: literally yesterday I was at my local Lebanese corner store and the patron was watching a video his friend had sent. It was of young guys shooting off AKs and RPGs in 'celebratory mourning' (if you can call it that) of the local 'regional fiefdom leader' who controls an area of Lebanon. I asked the shop owner what would happen if the police tried to stop them, he indicated that they'd just shoot the cops. Or at them. This is not some 'mafia' head that died, not the best way to put it, rather, just a 'family' that controls that region. Not political, not really religious either. Just kind of a fiefdom. These people had very powerful weapons including vehicle mounted weapons. To my Lebanese friend it was 'just stuff that happens there'. Obviously, this is probably specific to Lebanon, but it's barely the tip of the iceberg of culturally ingrained phenom that happens over there in the ME.
The ME has a totally different set of rules for everything, including what constitutes the 'truth' what is socially acceptable etc. etc. etc.. Good example is authority: if everyone you ever meet who wears a uniform, or represents the state is trying to control you, stop you, kidnap you, if you know dozens of people brought in abused by authorities ... then there is no 'legitimacy' in institutions or authority. Despite our problems, in the West, government representatives like police, fire, ambulance etc. have overwhelming respect and real legitimacy - they are (more or less) enacting the law - not arresting you because some guy on city council wants you roughed up. So imagine living in a world absent any real role models of legitimate authority, it would be basically impossible not to be cynical on a very deep level, and very difficult to try to be 'the good man' among absolute corruption.
I was going to say 'there is no social contract' but more fairly I would say ... 'they have a different social contract' than we do. One that we would deem problematic.
This is partly why the Saudi Government can just go in and kill someone willy nilly and face almost nothing in terms of repercussions.
Obviously, we have our own problems, and sub-Saharan Africa has their problems, in E. Asia it's a different set of problems, but they are different in nature.
Obviously, a point about 'resource based economies' is valid to some extent, but I think it's very secondary. Canada, Norway and Australia to name a few are also 'resource based', i.e. "Whoever sits at the top of an oil economy only needs to keep its population out of the way of drilling operations." ... well Alberta is an Oil economy and they don't have that problem.
The ME is really different and my experience there is that most of the dynamics are cultural, obviously driven in part by 'resources' and past interventions etc., but really, it's mostly comparing Apples to Oranges to Pomegranates.
You mean Funny that all these Middle Eastern rulers are propped up by the West and only replaced when its politically expedient.
