Originally Posted by Waynesawa
Guys,
1st of all this is a public forum, and even though we may not like the guys in Eti*****, they are not dumb. They may be reading all the threads in this forum for all we know. Thus why all related sites posted in this forum are slowly but surely getting blocked, eventually when this forum doesn't serve them any purpose in info gathering anymore, it too will be blocked/banned. I would suggest we revert to our private online mailing groups, but then again we still pass the info thru their wires thus making it possible for interception.
Let us not forget guys got in trouble just by discussing banned ideas thru the phone. I'm not trying to be paranoid, just a word of caution, best circulate our info by word of mouth face to face.
In times of desperation, remember that we are still on their land. There are more stuff best left unsaid here, if anybody needs any help, my handle name is clear, don't know much but will try and help where I can. Cheers and happy brainstorming.
The above post brings up a very good point. When I was based in Saudi my wife became friends with some other expats there. As she was German she met several German families.
One of them worked for Siemans, the German electronics firm that had a contract with Saudi Telecom. After we got to know each other a bit, the husband pulled me aside and volunteered some very interesting information.
He told me to be very careful when talking on the telephone in-country. It seems that he was brought in on a special project in the country. EVERY phone call in the country was scheduled to be monitored by a new computerized system. At this time it was in the early 90s and just starting up from what he said. By the time I headed out for good in 1997 he said that the program was totally operational in the major cities and they were working on the outlying towns.
What they would do is to develop a voice recognition program that hit on certain words, like "bomb, church, whiskey" and so on that the Saudi's specified. For a short duration every call would be recorded and if the computer pegged a certain call as containing something on the list, then a person would listen to the recording of the call. If the callers were indeed talking about something that was suspicious, then it was given to the local police and Mutawa. They then went to the house where the call came from and paid the occupants a visit. The outcome could be very difficult.
If the Saudi's can do it in the 90's, then the other countries in the area probably have it by now. That may be why some people have been busted after talking on the telephone. You are not being paranoid, as this is probably a reality in many ME countries these days. Watch what you say on a phone!
Skype, for those of you who do not know this, is digitally encoded so that no one can listen to your conversations. This is my gut feeling why the locals are blocking Skype as they are paranoid and want to listen to your calls.
As a funny aside, a friend of mine emailed me recently a link to several websites. I looked at them and had to chuckle. Seems that the "houses of ill repute" so to speak, are now using Skype to contact "prospective customers" instead of the normal telephone. Seems that they have figured out that the police cannot tap a Skype call and thus they can talk all they want without worrying about being busted.