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Saudi Arabian Telecom Pitches to Moxie Marlinspike

Posted by Unknown on from the indirect-terrorism dept.

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.'"

2 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Saudi Arabia won''t last by vikingpower · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  2. Re:Dumbass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.