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Saudi Arabia Set To Ban WhatsApp, Skype

Posted by timothy on from the and-clear-envelopes-only-please dept.

Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia's government, after banning Viber within the kingdom, is poised to prohibit at least two other such communication apps: Skype and WhatsApp. Says the article: "Conventional international calls and texts are a lucrative earner for telecom operators in Saudi Arabia, which hosts around nine million expatriates. These foreign workers are increasingly using Internet-based applications such as Viber to communicate with relatives in other countries, analysts say." With fewer legal options, a wide-scale Internet censorship regime would be easier to implement, too.

4 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Cat & mouse game will continue... by Bearhouse · · Score: 5, Informative

    This has been going on for a long time - Skype was banned or crippled in the UAE for a long time, but recently unblocked:

    http://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/technology/2013/04/08/Etisalat-unblocks-Skype-website-in-the-UAE.html

    At the time, it was more about securing revenue from the lucrative expat market than locking-down protest movements.
    Of course, these latter do exist, but less so in Saudi & UAE than, say, Egypt.

    I guess this latest move will just drive more interest in alternatives, which are often 'open' and perhaps more secure...

    http://www.pidgin.im/

    http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fed-up-with-skype-here-are-6-of-the-best-free-alternatives/

  2. Free and open source messaging alternatives by trawg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apropos of absolutely nothing, here's some open source alternatives that also offer encryption (YMMV on how robust the encryption is).

    - Jitsi (formerly SIP Communicator) is an audio/video and chat communicator that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber as well as a bunch of other protocols. Set up an XMPP server wherever you want and you're done. (I tried to set up Jabber to use with it on a Linux box on the weekend though and hit a few roadblocks, but more tech savvy people can probably power through them.)

    - Mumble - voice communications, intended primarily for gaming but will work with anything. Run your own voice servers and clients connect in, a la TeamSpeak/Ventrilo.

    - RetroShare - decentralised p2p file sharing and messaging system.

  3. Re:kill them all by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Informative
    Well from Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings:

    Although Sikhs and Hindus do sometimes commit such murders, honor killings, both worldwide and in the West, are mainly Muslim-on-Muslim crimes. In this study, worldwide, 91 percent of perpetrators were Muslims.

    So, yes there are some evil Hindu and Sikhs, but it is not entrenched as a specific commandment in the religion like in Islam

  4. Re:kill them all by Chrisq · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'd say a good number of the Islamic, Hindu and Sihk honor killings are due to the practitioners living in hugely patriarchal countries, the religion came second.. it would be like looking at the southern US and saying that all Christians are obviously end of times gun nuts.

    You'd be wrong, check the linked article it is frequently carried out second and third generation Islamic immigrants in Western countries.