Human rights circles are concerned about the increase in Al Saud’s spying on the opposition.
Human rights circles have warned of the dangers of using electronic systems set up by Saudi authorities, including Beem, as tools to spy on dissidents and critics in Saudi Arabia.
According to Saudi Leaks, since the beginning of crown prince “Mohammed bin Salman” in 2017, the situation of human rights in Saudi Arabia has become very serious and repression has increased unprecedentedly. The prisons are full of Saudi activists and critics who have been severely tortured. Saudi authorities harass activists and critics at home and abroad.
To spy on activists and critics, Mohammed bin Salman resorts to a variety of spying tools, which include identifying informants, using spy programs and software, and using electronic flies.
Bin Salman’s policy of spying on activists was further exposed when Saudi Arabia’s communications minister announced in Ramadan last year that companies that did not cooperate with them on security would be suspended. This means that Saudi security authorities want telecommunications companies to share information about activists and users with them.
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Bin Salman’s regime used the “Pegasus” spying malware of the Zionist company NSO in 2017 for 55 million dollars to suppress opponents and critics as well as to kill competitors. After the disclosure of spying scandals that also affected senior and western figures, the Zionist regime prevented the sale of spying tools and software to some countries, including Saudi Arabia.
Another espionage scandal of Al Saud was the arrest of “Ahmad Abu Amu”, a Twitter employee who spied on 6,000 user accounts, including those of the Saudi opposition. Representatives of the US Attorney’s Office announced that Ahmed Abu Amu has received bribes from Saudi officials since 2014, including a watch worth $42,000 and two money transfers worth $100,000.
While working at Twitter, Ahmed Abu Amu helped oversee relations with journalists and public figures in the Middle East and North Africa. He was also convicted of transferring sensitive information from the company’s systems to help Saudi authorities identify and locate users of interest to the Saudi government.
As Saudi Arabia and China develop relations, the Al Saud regime is looking to Chinese software and technology, which generally has positive views on privacy and security.
The media announced the launch of Saudi Arabia’s first communication application called Beem. However, human rights circles believe that Saudi Arabia wants to use this communication application to spy on the opposition and infiltrate audience information.
Abdul Rahman Al-Kanani, the CEO of Saudi Cyber Company, claimed on the day of the launch of this application that users have a lot of trust in this program and what is important is that it is available for domestic users.
Once installed, this program not only invades the user’s privacy such as photos, contacts, call logs and more; It will also have other features such as the location of the user and the internal and external memory of the phone.
All this information will be directly available to the officials affiliated with the Bin Salman regime, and this will enable them to monitor citizens and activists and invade their privacy. This program will also allow the Saudi authorities to prosecute and unfairly prosecute anyone who criticizes the state of Saudi Arabia and the government’s plans.
Using spyware, autocrats, and dictators can suppress civil society networks outside their borders, even as they consolidate authoritarianism at home.
