A Saudi Arabia Telecom's Surveillance Pitch

[melodie]

http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/saudi-surveillance

Moxie Marlinspike blog:

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.

I was interested to know more about what they were up to, so I wrote back and asked. After a week of correspondence, I learned that they are organizing a program to intercept mobile application data, with specific interest in monitoring:

    Mobile Twitter
    Viber
    Line
    WhatsApp

(Read more…)

[djohnston]

I’m being rude by publishing this correspondence with Mobily, not only because it’s substantially more rude of them to be engaged in massive-scale eavesdropping of private communication, but because I think it’s part of a narrative that we need to consider.

Rude of them? No, the correct word is oppressive.