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Saudi Arabian Telecom Pitches to Moxie Marlinspike
An anonymous reader sent in this excerpt from Moxie Marlinspike's weblog:
"Last week I was contacted by an agent of Mobily, one of two telecoms operating in Saudi Arabia, about a surveillance project that they're working on in that country. Having published two reasonably popular MITM tools, it's not uncommon for me to get emails requesting that I help people with their interception projects. I typically don't respond, but this one (an email titled 'Solution for monitoring encrypted data on telecom') caught my eye. ... The requirements are the ability to both monitor and block mobile data communication, and apparently they already have blocking setup. ... When they eventually asked me for a price quote, and I indicated that I wasn't interested in the job for privacy reasons, they responded with this: ' I know that already and I have same thoughts like you freedom and respecting privacy, actually Saudi has a big terrorist problem and they are misusing these services for spreading terrorism and contacting and spreading their cause that's why I took this and I seek your help. If you are not interested than maybe you are on indirectly helping those who curb the freedom with their brutal activities.'"
our officials here have snooped on us in every way possible for years. When they can't figure out how to snoop (old Skype) they simply hire Microsoft to buy the company and add a back-door.
The Saudi's could learn a lot from us.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
If you don't spy on your own people, the terrorists win. Heard it all before.
The ruling al-Saud family will soon have to come with a follow-up for the current king. In the same time, a complete army of foreign experts & technicians is required to keep the entire Saudi infrastructure ( telco, roads, water supply, power generation ) running. Moreover, the Saudi government is continuously spying upon its citizens, as a habit. Women are slowly beginning to protest against the enormous discrimination and contempt they live under.
All of this taken together mixes up quite explosively. Mark my words: 25 years from now, Saudi Arabia as we know it will have gone down
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I think the western governments would be a bit more clever than that. They have the resources to develop their own home grown spying tools. They don't need an outside consultant, which is what this guy would have been. Otherwise you'd be hearing about this kind of stuff all the time.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Actually, let me reverse my own comment... (having read up on Saudi Arabia's human right's record).
The issue is the Saudi's can target terror with these MITM tools -- true. But they also have a track record targeting basic human rights (free press, faith).
Moxie is well within his rights turning down the job. However, its best he did not reveal the name of the Saudi gent (who still seems sincere).
Well I guess that's your view then. I specifically didn't mention any nation, only "the job".
It's about high fucking time people in the western world realise that freedom cannot be passive. You can't just sit back in your armchair and blab. Be offensive, do a number on these scumbags. If he really, really cared about privacy he would have fought for the millions of people who are going to be spied on anyway, just not with his tool. This applies equally to the UK as it does to Saudi Arabia, this story just happens to be set in a country most people around here don't like.
People like the guy in the story makes me fucking sick. You realise that where you are born and the freedoms you enjoy are all PURE LUCK, and one of the few things in your life you have no control over. Why should freedom be restrained to people lucky enough to be born under a constitution? Spread the wealth.
... whatever
I bet if it was the US or UK government or some such that came a-knockin this person wouldn't have blabbed that fact all over the internets. But it's the Saudis and they're evil. Ok, I have no proof whatsoever of any potential double-standards and I'm no saint myself but just sayin.
Then you clearly don't know who Moxie Marlinspike is (which seems kind of odd, as he's an extremely well known security researcher).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike
Aside fromt he fact that he's been championing against the certificate authority sytem because it gives the US too much power, there's also the fact that he's an anarchist (he's written anarchist pieces completely unrelated to technology, and founded the Anarchist Yacht Club). That the Saudis contacted him speaks volumes to their incompetence, imho.
"If you're not with us, you're against us."
That's really the best line they can come up with? I just got a faint ping on my dubiousonar.
Wait... so your conditions for a government being able to intercept all communications consist solely of their "human rights record"? And you see nothing wrong with this?
Far be it from me to make fun of a bad situation, but I wonder if the spin doctors who come up with these labels for their legitimate opponents have a BOFH-style excuse calendar to pick who they're blaming everything on this month?
Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship, they rule by an army inducing terror on a populace, not because the populace chose the leadership.
The problem is that in Muslim countries the political system they chose is invariably worse. Libya is worse than it was under Gaddafi, Egypt is worse now than under Mubarak, Iraq is worse than under Saddam Husain, and Afghanistan is infinitely worse off than it was under Soviet rule.
Yes, Saudi Arabia is bad, but anything that keeps the Muslims under control is better than letting them have their way .... which is not giving them freedom but allowing them to murder, kill, and rape others as well as killing eachother and removing freedoms under sectarian Sharia militias.
instead of doing real work that helps real people.
Are we talking about the same Moxie Marlinspike?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike
Who wrote things like:
http://convergence.io/details.html
https://github.com/WhisperSystems/RedPhone
https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/
(aguably the most used encrypted communications apps for Android)
http://tack.io/
http://www.audioanarchy.org/
http://www.blueanarchy.org/
https://www.cloudcracker.com/
I could go on. Hell, I haven't even gotten to the talks he's done and the vulnerabilities he's disclosed.
Seriously, if you're that dismissive of Moxie Marlinspike, you MUST have cured a major disease or something. Please, do tell.
He didn't come running to slash dot he posted it to his blog! Someone else posted it to slash dot so take your foot out of your mouth and shove it back up your arse.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
the participants in the "arab spring" used a variety of tools to facilitate and coordinate their activities - including twitter.
The saudis have since bought a major stake in twitter. I wonder why..
So this article is no doubt just a part of what they are doing to stop being overthrown.
If you don't do it, somebody will. If the price is right, why not that somebody be me ? We are living the biggest capitalist economy of the world. And money makes the world go round, despite what some nut-jobs believe...
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Why does everyone assume it really was a Saudi agent? Could just as well have been a western agent testing him.
From Ars Technica:
Clearly there is something wrong with the public key infrastructure on the web.
Actually, let me reverse my own comment... (having read up on Saudi Arabia's human right's record).
The issue is the Saudi's can target terror with these MITM tools -- true. But they also have a track record targeting basic human rights (free press, faith).
Moxie is well within his rights turning down the job. However, its best he did not reveal the name of the Saudi gent (who still seems sincere).
I'm sure the Saudis would be interested in people seeking to free slaves as well.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
No, they'd be something akin to a wiretap warrant issued by (mostly) just judges following (mostly) just laws.
They do have significant terror issues and want to be able to do these intercepts...
The problem is their track record on human rights. Being ruled by just laws is a human right. It's upto Moxie. But have you considered the implications of moxie revealing this man's name. Think about it Mr. ..? Mr. Anonymous Coward.
And btw, your govt. is *able* to intercept communications. Including this. But I think you mean intercept all comms
' I know that already and I have same thoughts like you freedom and respecting privacy, actually Saudi has a big terrorist problem and they are misusing these services for spreading terrorism and contacting and spreading their cause that's why I took this and I seek your help. If you are not interested than maybe you are on indirectly helping those who curb the freedom with their brutal activities.'"
Is this a quote from the Saudi government? Sounds like something Canada's Vic Toews would say. Or maybe somebody from Washington D.C.....
I'm confused.....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
No, it is not luck. You got to pick your parents carefully.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Are people modding this down because they don't like the facts? Chrisq has given references from reliable sources showing that where there has been a popular uprising in an Islamic country things have got worse. Do you dispute this or do you just not like the truth?
I think the western governments would be a bit more clever than that. They have the resources to develop their own home grown spying tools. They don't need an outside consultant, which is what this guy would have been. Otherwise you'd be hearing about this kind of stuff all the time.
Western governments employ a more than a few outside contractors for 'electronic operations'(and quite a few others for other purposes). They just aren't generally foolish enough to contact known, high-profile, security researchers with a history of publicity for sensitive work...
Messing with national governments can be a very dangerous game. If they found out he was planting a backdoor halfway through the project things could go south in a real hurry, and they'd have to be very incompetent not to have some sort of double blind checks in place. Even if he never entered the country he'd have to avoid it and everywhere it has an extradition treaty with (like India) forever. And what gain? Evidence that they are suppressing dissent, persecuting women? We already know that.
There are less risky ways to bring the fight to them.
Do tell me more about how he could have fought to bring freedom to the suffering Saudi masses...
Was he supposed to take the job, then use his access to covertly haxx0r the mainframe and destroy the Master Control Computer?
(For those who didn't want to read the linked article, the tl;dr version is that Wahhabism is the Saudi-founded brand of Islam that Al-Qaeda et al espouse; if you've ever heard the term "Islamo-fascism", Wahhabism is the interpretation of Islam it's most likely referring to).
In other words, the Saudi regime is in the position of having to be blatantly two-faced about this; claiming to be cracking down on terrorism to their Western allies, while at the same time being one of the largest supporters of it.
Of course, the West knows this, but likes to pretend otherwise, because there's the inconvenient fact that they have lots of oil which we want. Regarding Western attitudes towards extremist Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia isn't merely the elephant in the room in the sense that it's a major factor- as the home and the heart of Wahhabism, it's arguably *the* central factor. Modern Saudi Arabia was *founded* on an agreement between Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism) and the house of Saud to spread his teachings while the latter retained power. From Wikipedia:-
Upon arriving in Diriyya, a pact was made between Ibn Saud and Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, by which Ibn Saud pledged to implement and enforce Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab's teachings, while Ibn Saud and his family would remain the temporal "leaders" of the movement.
Many of the alleged grievances of terrorists supporting Wahhabist organisations such as Al-Qaeda revolve around the supposed US "occupation" of Saudi Arabia. Yet, despite all this, you'll rarely hear Western politicians attack the Saudi regime for their covert tolerance of extremist elements. Why? See the start of this paragraph.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
That sounds like an excellent way to get assassinated.
You're the dumb one. He didn't post it to /., someone who reads his blog has.
In their twisted for of reality they could arrest you for "aiding the enemy".
In other news: Don't go to the States, you could get arrested for downloading a song.
Cisco, Bluecoat, or on of the other big firms will "help" them.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Aside from the fact that he's been championing against the certificate authority system...
Yes! I was wondering when someone would mention this! Anyone who's curious can glance at Moxie's repositories on Github. It is exactly as you described, about his efforts to make a better certificate authority system. I don't know if it was because it gave the U.S. too much power, or because it was not especially reliable (I think DigiNotar or Digi something cert auth break happened around then), many other issues.
I have mixed feelings about Moxie. He's very much the Anarchist, rebel hax00r. But he isn't insufferably arrogant like some of his peers are. He's a good sailor (not yachts!); sometimes I like what he has to say. And he looks sweet, handsome in the one photo I've seen of him, not overstated or hipster-odious. Anyway, the last time I checked, Moxie was a Twitter employee.
Good point too about the oddity that "agents of a foreign power", whether Saudi Arabia or any other, would approach Moxie for such work. It is unlikely that Saudi Arabia would be less informed than you and I. Moxie has a hefty entry in Wikipedia. I even wrote a post on my hobby blog about one of his projects a few years ago! I have no doubt that retaining Moxie's services would be worthwhile. But there are many less visible, less vocal alternatives.
I wish I could say "thank you" to whomever submitted the original post here. Good find!
tempus fugit
I'm really surprised that Moxie isn't more well-known around here. I just commented earlier about Moxie's Github repositories. I'm not a sycophant, and realize that Moxie has a lot of fans. He has done good work, regardless of politics or advocacy.
tempus fugit
he already knows the saudis sent emails to him. no need to worry about that.
I'd be worried about just traveling to saudi arabia even if they have no beef with me. fuck 'em and their politics - and especially fuck their police.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In next weeks slashdot I expect to see something about Moxie Marlinspike being asked to deliver a nice shiny yacht to Saudi Arabia and it going horribly wrong when he gets arrested for piracy :)
I dont read
Yes, because there is certainly no pattern there. It's not like these were all moderate Muslim countries whose dictators were overthrown and whose populace elected radical Muslims into power the second they got democracy.
Oh, wait....
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
That would have been akin to suicide. Not only is that a serious contract violation, this is a security breach in a country with both significant funds and extreme interests from several Western and Eastern intelligence agencies.
Pulling off shit like that is a sure ticket to one day being added to list of people who vanished without trace or getting found dead from overdose of drugs in a hotel room. People in intelligence have decades of experience in tracking people like OP when they work for them and finding their backdoors.
(Final line) Why? See the start of this paragraph.
That's what I get for over-editing; this was originally part of the paragraph that started:-
Of course, the West knows this, but likes to pretend otherwise, because there's the inconvenient fact that they have lots of oil which we want.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Dunno, seems to me that the world's democracies have outlasted any Islamic nation's form of government, and are still doing pretty well -- and better and better relative to those Islamic nations over the course of time.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
You're expecting too much. I've yet to find a business anywhere that didn't send out personal communications with poor spelling and grammar and punctuation, and I've yet to find out that hasn't posted signage on their premises somewhere that is void of typos.
If I see one more " thank's! " in my life.. it won't matter, because one is already too many. how do you even fucking make a mistake like that good fucking.....
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
No, just no.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
Your ethics won't be the only thing in danger.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Was he supposed to take the job, then use his access to covertly haxx0r the mainframe and destroy the Master Control Computer?
Program. Master Control Program, duh.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Dunno, seems to me that the world's democracies have outlasted any Islamic nation's form of government, and are still doing pretty well -- and better and better relative to those Islamic nations over the course of time.
Thats because the foundational principle of the modern democracy is to keep the mass of people believing that they have some say in things and to preserve this illusion by presenting the face of a chaotic, randomly changing elected government. Democratically 'elected' government is about as organised as Brownian motion.
The reality, which is where the extreme stability comes in, is that the elections are a sham and the real power is wielded well behind the scenes by powers that can make or break any elected politician at a whim.
Ie its not amazingly stable and successful because Joe Public is allowed to have a say in how the country is run. Its amazingly stable and successful because Joe Public is kept well the fuck away from running the country.
Good thing, bad thing, I don't know. Not going to make a value judgement on that yet.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Shhh... Most people don't remember that.
Cheap storage VM.
This is perfectly right. The reason al Qaeda exists is Wahabism, and the Wahabis came to power in the first place as a part of the partnership with the Sauds. At any rate, the root cause of terrorism is Islam, which at its heart preaches all the things that the Wahabis practice. Sure, implementations vary across the Muslim empire, but the bottom line - encourage terror against Infidels until they accept Islamic supremacy - is pretty much common from Morocco to Mindanao.
If one visits Saudi Arabia, one notes how rigid that country is about being Islamic. During Ramadan, non-Muslims have to eat privately, and similarly, any non-Muslim religious activities have to be clandestine. In Saudi offices, during the Muezzin (call to prayer, which is 5 times a day), it is mandatory for all Muslims (practicing or nominal) to take prayer breaks. It's illegal to build churches, synagogues or any temples of other religions in KSA. But before atheists here get all excited about that, note that Atheism is not the official religion of KSA - Islam is, and it's NEVER illegal to build mosques anywhere. And of course, as is well known, Mecca & Medina are off-limits to non-Muslims - something unparalleled today in other religions: non-Catholics can very much visit the Vatican, non-Jews can visit Jerusalem, non-Hindus can visit Varanasi and so on. Not so in Islam.
Not just that - in Saudi Arabia, any material that has nothing about religion but is judged by their equivalent of the KGB as being 'un-Islamic' has a good chance of being impounded. I've heard horror stories of people on ships that were just in transit in Saudi ports who got their books impounded for that very reason. If al Qaeda ever did take over in Riyadh and establish their Caliphate, how much worse could they conceivably be? There is already no religious freedom in that country, and those troglodytes are just offering more Islam.
In short, just like in Syria, there is no right side to pick in Saudi Arabia - they are all Islamic fanatics who want to perfect a theocracy and export Jihad worldwide. The Saudis actively do it - Aramco, which is wholly owned by the Saudi government, funds dawa (Islamic proselytization) worldwide, and also funds Jihadi groups, like the Sunni rebels in Syria. Those Sunni rebels are directly allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda, so it would make no difference who runs Riyadh. (Of course, with the US itself supporting al Qaeda in Syria, it loses any rationale to speak against terror, especially when it steadfastly refuses to recognize the link between jihad terror and Islam)
Suite yourself. I'd say tyrants deserve all the exposure and humiliation we can pile on them.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
well if you wont fix "our " problem ... you are the problem
No, Saudi Arabia is very westernized in terms of dress and hygiene, as well as technology. People usually go there to strike it rich, because westerners get paid a ton of money to work on projects there. Still though, in the end they follow islamic traditions, many of which have horrible consequences if you violate.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
How many Christian or Jewish groups are throwing acid on womens faces, beheading people for heresy, or suicide bombing crowded markets because someone in the crowd had a minor deviation in religious observance?
The head of Saudi Arabia's religious police has warned citizens against using Twitter, which is rising in popularity among Saudis.
Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said anyone using social media sites - and especially Twitter - "has lost this world and his afterlife".
Twitter was the platform for those who did not have any platform, he said.
BBC News Middle East
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!