I’m going to wait a while and see how many more fake news articles come out about this before I describe exactly why these reports are fake. In the mean while you’re welcome to try to locate I/Q recordings of the incident. Trust me, none will be offered.
B sounds the most logical but even that is a stretch. Whoever hoaxed this forgot one essential thing about radio which I won’t say, because I suspect we haven’t seen the end of these hoaxes. All in due time though.
He didn’t make any transmission. If you’re a radio person you’ll see instantly how and why this is fake. Since you’re not, and neither is your purported pirate, I won’t tell you the critical error which was made. You should be careful that you don’t get rused, or worse - spread misinformation intentionally.
I never leave it enabled any more. When I was a beginner it was helpful but as time goes on you learn more of the system and better ways of finding commands.
One thing I suggest is building emacs without dbus and using only Athena widgets. Both contribute to overall emacs stability.