The author is incorrect. While Signal Protocol is used to communicate an SRTP master secret and a session id, the clients still need to do an ICE handshake in order to establish communication with each other before the responder can even ring. It is very straightforward for SA to block that traffic, and it is established fact that they do.
It seems as if WhatsApp is short circuiting this frustrating series of timeouts to improve a flaky seeming UX. That strategy does negatively effect people on the internet who register for WhatsApp with Saudi VoIP numbers when they're in France, but it is a much clearer UX for almost everyone who is actually a Saudi WhatsApp user or calling actual Saudi users. What the author is demanding is a worse UX for the same outcome.
It sounds like there might be room for improvement, but I have a feeling that if WhatsApp were recording their users' locations in order to provide a more advanced location-aware version of the same strategy, people would not be very happy about that.
> I have a feeling that if WhatsApp were recording their users' locations in order to provide a more advanced location-aware version of the same strategy, people would not be very happy about that.
They don't need to record your location. WhatsApp client can just query your IP address and silence the call-prohibiting UX if it finds out you're outside Saudi address space. This is an exceedingly obvious solution with no effect on user privacy.
Seems like a lot of effort for an edge case. Now you've added a dependency on some network service you need to access (and from WhatsApp's POV: maintain) before placing outgoing calls. If you use GPS instead, you're dependent on having the location permission (which is not needed to run WhatsApp in general), and you're draining everyone's battery and adding latency to get a sufficiently accurate location lock. Doesn't seem like it would be worth the trouble to me.
There would also be a number of people complaining loudly, demanding to know "why does WhatsApp look up my exact location [using the GPS] at the precise time I make a call!?".
Good luck convincing them that the location is not being logged permanently by WhatsApp servers -- or even sent to them in the first place.
I've never been to Saudi Arabia, but in the UAE and Oman if you were to receive a WhatsApp call using a foreign number from a free country, lets say France, the handshake for the call would still be dropped with the attempted call failing.
On iOS, you would get an error saying "Call couldn't connect. X's mobile carrier or WiFi doesn't support WhatsApp calls".
I feel like I'm missing something; in what case does any data being communicated to a Saudi Arabian number, whose user is not in Saudi Arabia, pass over any Saudi Arabian territory?
You're probably missing the "That strategy does negatively effect people on the internet who register for WhatsApp with Saudi VoIP numbers when they're in France" bit. It's a reasonable trade-off in light of the complexities the alternatives carry with them, IMO.
It seems as if WhatsApp is short circuiting this frustrating series of timeouts to improve a flaky seeming UX. That strategy does negatively effect people on the internet who register for WhatsApp with Saudi VoIP numbers when they're in France, but it is a much clearer UX for almost everyone who is actually a Saudi WhatsApp user or calling actual Saudi users. What the author is demanding is a worse UX for the same outcome.
It sounds like there might be room for improvement, but I have a feeling that if WhatsApp were recording their users' locations in order to provide a more advanced location-aware version of the same strategy, people would not be very happy about that.