Saudi Arabia Restrictions:
Earl
This is an email that was submitted to other airlines that may operate into KSA.
All Electronic devices will be submitted for check up before immigration section.
Devices includes Cellular phones with camera and memory card, flash disks, external hard drive, Laptops / notebooks / pc, iPods, itouch, mp3 players with memory cards.
A special USB device will be inserted to the electronic devices that you are carrying. This special device can scan all videos and pictures, jpg, bmp, avi, etc, contents of your laptop / cell phones, and will be recorded to their main computer.
All devices with nude pictures in it will be confiscated immediately. There will be no fines, and refusal will send you to jail and deportation.
Laptops with pirated software’s will also be confiscated.
This rule has been applied already and is being practice in Riyadh, Damman and Jeddah Airports. This is excluding Bahrain airport.
Kindly include this in your orientation and tell them not to bring any pirated software’s, movies, or nude pictures. Even data’s that are hidden can be found by this device, so tell them not to bring any at all. The laptop of a colleague, a Sony Viao, which cost around 8.000 SR, was confiscated a few days ago, because of 1 semi nude picture that he forgot to erase.
Earl:
Maybe a good warning, but most porn or pictures come from the Hotbird satellite.
Maybe they should shut down the sale of pirated movies and software in the souks, but I am sure someone is getting kick backs on this one.
Scare tactic, the Saudis are not that good, any computer literate person would know that it would be impossible to determine a nude pic from a normal one, without actually viewing the file, just another game like the cell phones with cameras a few years ago.
So they will have access to any file you have saved on your laptop, banking etc, they are not that trustworthy!
Pirated software Microsoft cannot even figure this out with some of the office software, many mistakes made by them, yet the Saudis have the magic answer?
Last edited by Earl; 27th Jul 2009 at 13:03.