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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.

5 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Popularity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My roomate is from Saudi and he has mentioned to me on several occasions that WhatsApp is incredibly popular there. Everyone he knows uses it, including older family members. Banning something so popular would upset a lot of people...

    1. Re:Popularity by Camembert · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not exactly a comment on the original story, just saying that Whatsapp is also tremendously popular here in South-East Asia. I use it very often, It is a popular and easy solution to set up group discussions, transfer pictures etc. I had already read in newspapers that telcos here are not so happy about its popularity but luckily there is little that they can do about it.

  2. completely ineffective by stenvar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You can chat over any TCP connection. You can chat through HTTP on a web page. Short of banning all Internet connections and all web access, they can't even come up with a legal definition that kills online chatting, let alone police it.

  3. They are not worried about by purnima · · Score: 5, Interesting

    western expats or the Saudi nationals. They are worried about the millions of Asian workers, maids, drivers, cleaners who are treated like slaves. You don't have effective control over slaves if you let them communicate with their family whenever they want. Saudi Arabia is a hell hole for millions of people who have sold themselves into effective slavery, and the US government treats the place like its main ally in the region. Something about American history tells me it's a natural alliance.

  4. Skype has point and click NSA surveillance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We now know that Skype is accessible from PRISM, and thanks to the Senator we know that they don't need a warrant, every analyst can spy on any phone the country on a whim. The same classification for voice intercepts is for VOIP content, and we also know that Skype surveillance is point and click from the PRISM leak.

    So NO COUNTRY SHOULD PERMIT SKYPE, any NSA analyst can intercept it simply on a whim with a point and click.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story_3.html

    There has been “continued exponential growth in tasking to Facebook and Skype,” according to the PRISM slides. With a few clicks and an affirmation that the subject is believed to be engaged in terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, an analyst obtains full access to Facebook’s “extensive search and surveillance capabilities against the variety of online social networking services.”

    According to a separate “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection,” that service can be monitored for audio when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of “audio, video, chat, and file transfers” when Skype users connect by computer alone. Google’s offerings include Gmail, voice and video chat, Google Drive files, photo libraries, and live surveillance of search terms.