{"id":63448,"date":"2022-09-04T08:38:39","date_gmt":"2022-09-04T13:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63448"},"modified":"2022-09-04T08:38:39","modified_gmt":"2022-09-04T13:38:39","slug":"saudis-use-orwellian-app-to-identify-dissidents-imprisoning-some-for-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63448","title":{"rendered":"Saudis Use Orwellian App to Identify Dissidents, Imprisoning Some for Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Saudis Use Orwellian App to Identify Dissidents, Imprisoning Some for Decades<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n

FILE PHOTOS. (Credit: Facebook \/ @kamnapp; Saudi Media Ministry)<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabians are using a mobile app sold by both Apple and Google to snitch on their fellow citizens for dissenting against government authorities. As a result, activists and others are going to prison for more than 30 years in some cases, Business Insider\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0on Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

On August 16, Saudi national Salma el-Shabab, a PhD student at Leeds University, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for tweets \u201cin support of activists and members of the kingdom\u2019s political opposition in exile,\u201d the report said. Though the posts were made while she was in the UK, el-Shabab was nonetheless reported through the \u201cKollona Amn\u201d app and immediately arrested upon returning home.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day we wake up to hear news, somebody has been arrested, or somebody has been taken,\u201d Real, a Saudi women\u2019s-rights activist using an alias, told Insider.<\/p>\n

Kollona Amn \u2013 which roughly translates to \u201cWe Are All Security\u201d in Arabic \u2013 was launched by the Saudi Interior Ministry in 2017, but the last few years have seen a \u201cdramatic\u201d surge in court cases referencing the app, according to legal-rights activists.<\/p>\n

The app \u201cencourages everyday citizens to play the role of police and become active participants in their own repression. Putting the state\u2019s eyes everywhere also creates a pervasive sense of uncertainty \u2013 there is always a potential informant in the room or following your social media accounts,\u201d said Noura Aljizawi, a researcher at Citizen Lab, which focuses on threats to free speech online.<\/p>\n

The Orwellian nature of the app is such that users often report on people \u201cdefensively,\u201d fearing they could face punishment themselves for merely overhearing speech deemed offensive to the regime. In some cases, the app has also been used for \u201cblackmail\u201d and to \u201csettle scores,\u201d Insider noted.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saudis Use Orwellian App to Identify Dissidents, Imprisoning Some for Decades FILE PHOTOS. (Credit: Facebook \/ @kamnapp; Saudi Media Ministry) Saudi Arabians are using a mobile app sold by both Apple and Google to snitch on their fellow citizens for dissenting against government authorities. As a result, activists and others are going to prison for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[33138,29,33137,378,1235,701,765,20898,19863],"class_list":["post-63448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-app","tag-apple","tag-business-insiderconnor-freeman","tag-google","tag-orwell","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-surveillance","tag-the-libertarian-institute","tag-will-porter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63449,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63448\/revisions\/63449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}