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Saudi Arabia Set To Ban WhatsApp, Skype
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.
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...
When a regime begins using such methods as these in order to keep sitting in the saddle, its days are counted. After the demise of Saudi Arabia's current regime, within a foreseeable time now, the ensuing chaos will be unimaginable.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I don't see you yanks spreading freedom in the saudi?
What is this land you speak of?
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Finland.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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/
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.
There's a very old joke.
Hijacker: take this plane to a free country.
Pilot: this is a airliner, not a fucking spaceship.
Q: Why would Saudi Arabia ban communication tools such as Viber, Whatsapp and Skype?
A: Because they have no control or access to the messages passed with these apps.
According to TFA, Viber was blocked for non-compliance, and that WhatsApp and Skype may be next on the list. What is most interesting is that the regulator issued a directive in March saying tools such as Viber, WhatsApp and Skype broke local laws, without specifying which laws.
What we do know is that in 2010, Blackberry was also banned by Saudi Arabia. The reason behind the ban was because BBM did not allow their customers' exchanges to be monitored by government. The ban was lifted after BB made a deal with the government to share user data.
Skype, Viber and WhatsApp AFAIK do not share their user data (for now).
Why has Saudi Arabia become emboldened to act now? Because the disclosure of the PRISM program makes them immune from international criticism. They can rightly point out that the US government already has access to the data. It shouldn't take long for other countries to follow suit with similar demands.
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.
Privacy, by the way, is the right to keep a lawful secret between you and the government.
No, it is not. Privacy is the right to decide what to expose and to whom to expose it. Governments should find proof of unlawful behavior without having to break into an individual privacy sphere. I'm sure that with 24/7 surveillance we could find a lot of illegal behaviors such as . This does not mean that a gov of a free country should do it.
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.
So, yes there are some evil Hindu and Sikhs, but it is not entrenched as a specific commandment in the religion like in Islam
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.
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.
I am shocked that a country that forbids women to drive, kills young girls for fear they may be dressed immodestly, bans Barbie dolls and amputates the hands of thieves would stoop to such barbaric behaviour!