34C3 - Catch me if you can: Internet Activism in Saudi Arabia

34c3 intro

Herald: All right, so the next talk is

"Catch me if you can: Internet Activism in
Saudi Arabia." Now I have one question for

you. Who has ever been in Saudi Arabia?
Like, actually in the country. And no,

Dubai is not Saudi Arabia. I see a couple
of hands, like three or something. That's

actually more than I thought. I'm
surprised, because you cannot just get a

tourist visa for Saudi Arabia, even if you
would like to go there. But our next

speaker, she has been in Saudi Arabia and
actually lived and worked there for two

years. So Miriam, also known to you maybe
as Noujoum, has quite some knowledge about

the culture, people, and politics of this
country that seems quite foreign to us

all. So we're all excited to hear Miriam
now. Give her a nice applause, thanks.

applause

Noujoum: Thank you very much for the kind

introduction, and welcome everyone. I'm
super excited to talk to you today about

internet activism in Saudi Arabia. It's
one of my favorite subjects. I could go on

and on for hours, but we just have half an
hour. So let's dive right into it. First I

want to show you what
I want to tell you today about. First I

want to give you some basic information
about Saudi Arabia. Then we are going to

look at Saudi Arabia's cybercrime law and
see how it has affected activists in

recent years, and then I want to talk
about internet censorship and how we can

actually measure it by running an OONI
probe. And then finally, because I don't

want to leave you depressed I also want to
spend some minutes on talking about

positive things. The modern state of Saudi
Arabia was founded in 1932 by the Al Saud

family, who is still ruling to this very
day and it's an absolute monarchy and the

culture is dominated by an
ultraconservative branch of Islam that is

called Wahhabism and due to its riches
from the oil industry, the country is

actually quite modern when it comes to
commodities and technology. And I'm going

to throw some statistics at you. The total
population of Saudi Arabia is around 33

million people and 75% of them are younger
than the age of 30. And you can see here

the population pyramids of Saudi Arabia
compared with the population pyramid of

Germany, and you get a very good idea what
a country with a younger population looks

like versus a country with an older
population. And the young population of

Saudi Arabia is one of the factors why so
many Saudis are active on social media

compared to other countries. Around 75% of
the population are owning a smartphone and

35% are really active on social media, and
active in this case means that they log in

to their social media accounts at least
once every month. 25% of the population

are active users on Facebook and 20% of
the population are active on Twitter, and

Saudi Twitter users account for 40% of all
Twitter users and the whole Arab world,

and that's a lot of people. And if you
can't remember any of these statistics

right now, never mind. The important thing
to take away from this is the population

of Saudi Arabia is
very young and most of them are active on

social media and on the Internet. And now
that we are all excited about the

widespread use of social media in Saudi
Arabia, let's have a look at Saudi

Arabia's cybercrime law. Saudi Arabia
cybercrime law was instated in 2007 and

the law specifies what is seen as a
cybercrime and which crimes are met with

which punishments. And most of the
articles are just what you would expect

from the cybercrime law, but have a look
at article 6 at paragraph 1 that you can

see here. It says there at the end that a
cyber crime is, like... actions on the

Internet are considered a cyber crime if
they are a threat to public order,

religious values, public morals, or
privacy, and then article 7 focuses on

cyber crimes in relation to terrorism, or
being active on the Internet in regards to

terrorism. And as you can probably
imagine, the problem here is that these

are super vague terms that are not really
defined, which means that any judge can

give his own interpretation of what he
thinks qualifies as a cyber crime, what he

thinks is a threat to public safety or to
public morals. In 2011 the cybercrime law

was overhauled and the Saudi government
introduced

new rules and regulations, so that now
internet newspapers and also bloggers had

to obtain a license from the Ministry of
Culture and Information. And in 2014 the

cybercrime law was overhauled once again,
so that now the Saudi authorities could

also take legal action against social
networking sites like Twitter, because

they would allow accounts to be active
that would supposedly promote adultery,

homosexuality, and atheism. And Saudi
authorities are also trying to regulate

the content of YouTube channels. And now
you would think that something that is

called cybercrime law is used to actually
chase and catch and convict the bad guys,

and the cybercrime law actually does that.
In July this year a Saudi man was

sentenced to seven years in prison and a
ten years travel ban because he was

supporting the terror organization Daesh,
also called ISIS, and he had tried to

travel to Syria and also support the
fighting there. But he was also convicted

of other charges. He was also convicted
of charges saying that he was preparing,

storing, and sending material that would
harm the public through his tweets. And

also his tweets were supposedly insulting
the Saudi rulers. His cell phone was

confiscated, his Twitter account was
closed, and he is forbidden to tweet for

up to five years after his release from
prison. Now this is just one case, but up

until 2014 the Saudi religious police
claimed that they had closed over 10,000

Twitter accounts and they had arrested
plenty of users because of religious and

ethical violations. But some of the people
who are prosecuted under the Saudi

cybercrime law are actually just liberal
activists. They are young people who try

to form a movement. They want to be
outspoken on the Internet. They want to

campaign and push for change. And now
we're going to meet some of them. First up

is Ashraf Fayadh. He is an artist and a
poet and he was arrested and sentenced

because of apostasy, because of things
that he supposedly said on Twitter and in

one of his books. And when police failed
to bring proof of his apostasy or atheism

they said that he was arrested because he
was smoking and wearing long hair. And it

is actually suspected that he was arrested
because previously he had made a video of

Saudi religious police lashing a young man
in public, in his home town Abha, and he

had then posted that video online. And a
lot of people think that this is the real

reason why he was arrested. And his
sentence has changed many times in

different appeal courts, from four years
in prison and eight hundred lashes, to a

death sentence because of the supposed
apostasy, and then back to eight years in

prison and eight hundred lashes. And
Amnesty International classifies Fayadh as

a prisoner of conscience. As far as I
know, he is still in prison today. Hamza

Kashgari is also young poet and a writer.
He was arrested because of three tweets

that he had written about a fictive
meeting with the

Prophet Mohammed. He was accused of
blasphemy or apostasy as well, to which

the penalty is usually death under sharia
law. He tried to leave the country and

claim asylum in New Zealand, but he was
caught at Kuala Lumpur Airport and he was

brought back to Saudi Arabia and arrested,
and he was held in prison for two years

without trial. And similar to the case of
Ashraf Fayadh, the accusation of apostasy

is actually highly suspicious to be an
excuse, because Kashkari was very publicly

outspoken on the internet and social
media. He had supported the Arab Spring.

He was supporting pro-democracy movements
in Saudi Arabia. He had criticized

authorities about mishandling the Jeddah
flat disaster and other issues. And he was

released in October 2013. Mariam Al Otaibi
is a young Saudi woman who was arrested

because she was very active in the
movement against the male guardianship

system. And she was very active in the
movement to abolish the system. As you

see, in Saudi Arabia,
every woman has to have a male guardian.

And even when they are a grown ups, when
they are adults. And why is that a

problem? Without the permission, or the
consent, of their male legal guardians,

women cannot go to university, they cannot
take up jobs, they can't go see the

doctor, they can't leave the country and a
lot of other things. And the Guardian can

be their father, husband, uncle, brother,
or even their son. And activist in Saudi

Arabia have fought for a very long time to
abolish this male guardianship system. And

here you can see the Twitter account of
Mariam Al Otaibi. You can see that she has

almost 50,000 followers. And here, in her
Twitter bio, you see one of the core

hashtags of the movement in which she is
active, and it's an Arabic hashtag and it

translates to "Saudi women want the
abolishment of the guardianship system."

Mariam actually herself tried to flee her
abusive brothers and her father, and she

moved to a different city to live her own
life. And then

she was arrested at her workplace because
her father had filed a runaway report. But

very soon, the charges against her changed
from being a runaway to disruption of

public order because of her activism on
Twitter. And her house was searched and

her cellphone and her laptop were
confiscated. And after 104 days in

detention without trial, she was released
in July this year. And her release was

actually deemed a very big success and a
victory by Saudi feminists because she was

released from prison without the presence
or the permission of a male guardian,

because usually how it works is if a woman
is released from prison, her male guardian

has to pick her up. If he doesn't do that
she just stays in detention. But she was

released just like that. And here you can
see two designs of the Saudi artist

MsSaffaa. On the left you see a poster
that she designed to support the release

of Mariam Al Otaibi from prison.
The hashtag says "We are all Miriam Al

Otaibi." And on the right you see another
design that she did, that is very famous

for the movement to
abolish the mayor guardianship system,

and this hashtag says "I am my own
guardian." Loujain AlHathloul is another

young Saudi woman who was arrested in
December 2014 when she was trying to drive

her car over the border from the United
Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia. Shortly

before, she had tweeted "follow me on
Twitter to find out what will happen at

the border." And she had for a very long
time been active in the woman to drive

movement. That means that she had already
posted videos of herself driving in Saudi

Arabia online, showing how she was defying
the ban on women driving. She live-tweeted

this whole experience of being detained at
the border. Her passport was confiscated.

Her friend and lawyer, who came to her
support, was also arrested, and ultimately

she was released after 73 days without
trial. Raif Badawi is probably the

activists that most of you have heard of,
because Amnesty International did a huge

campaign to support his release, and also
his wife is very active, publicly, to

work for his release. He is a writer and
an activist, and he was arrested in 2012.

He was charged of insulting Islam through
electronic channels and he was brought to

court on several charges, including
apostasy, and as you already know by now,

the death penalty is included when you are
charged of apostasy. And similar to Ashraf

Fayadh, his sentence was changed multiple
times in different appeal courts and

eventually
he was sentenced to 10 years in prison

and a fine and thousand lashes, of which
only the first 50 were administered,

probably because of international
attention and outrage. And what got Raif

Badawi in trouble in the first place was
setting up a website that was called Free

Saudi Liberals. In court he was accused of
setting up a website that undermines

general security, ridiculing Islamic
religious figures, and going beyond the

realm of obedience. And he was told that
his website would violate Islamic values

and propagates liberal thought. And the
court ordered his website to be closed and

he is still in prison today.
The last activist that

we are going to look at is Muhammad Salih
Al Bajadi. He was, prior to his arrest,

also very politically active. In 2009, for
example, he managed a website that was

called "monitor of human rights in Saudi
Arabia." And he is also the co-founder of

a Saudi Arabian human rights organization
called "the Saudi Civil and Political

Rights Association." He was also arrested.
His office was searched. And Amnesty

International labeled him a prisoner of
conscience as well. And they said that he

was held solely for the peaceful exercise
of his rights to freedom of expression,

assembly, and association. But in court,
however, he was charged with insurrection

against the ruler, instigating
demonstrations, and speaking with foreign

media channels. And
he was sentenced to four years in prison

and a five-year ban on foreign travels.
Now, even if you don't see yourself as an

activist, if you are active on social
media in Saudi Arabia you can find

yourself the center of unwanted attention
in just a second. There are some

conservatives who would flat-out think
that being on Twitter is a sin in and of

itself, as you can see here. And just
three month ago, actually, Saudi

authorities urged citizens to monitor each
other and to report posts on social media

that would harm the state's reputation. So
as you can imagine, that leads to a huge

level of self-censorship. When I was
living and working in Saudi Arabia, I once

talked to a work contact and I asked him
why he wasn't more active on Twitter, and

he said the first day that he had signed
up on Twitter, he had received a direct

message by a person he didn't know, and
the message just said "welcome. We are

watching you." And when you live in Saudi
Arabia and you don't use a VPN or TOR all

the time you inevitably run across a
website that is blocked at some point. For

me, for example, that was the search
engine StartPage. When I was trying to

access that page, I would land on a site
that would look like this. And Saudi

authorities are hosting
a firewall which blocks access to

thousands of websites. Actually the Saudi
authorities, they openly acknowledge that

widespread filtering takes place, and they
would say that it targets pornographic,

Islam related, human rights, and political
sites. And as you can imagine, criticism

of the royal family and of Islamic
teachings is generally not tolerated. Now,

rewind three years. Three years ago at
Congress I ran into a guy named Arturo,

and he told me how he and his friends were
working on this OONI project, and they

were running probes all over the world to
measure the extent of filtering and

Internet censorship in different
countries. And so we teamed up and we did

some measuring in Saudi Arabia. And OONI
stands for Open Observatory of Network

Interference. And I would very much like
Arturo to come on stage for a few minutes

and to tell you himself what OONI is all
about, and how running that probe in Saudi

Arabia worked.

Arturo: Thank you Miriam

applause

Arturo: So, yeah. As
??? three years ago we met and

I was already working at the time on this
project ??????????? for the Open

Observatory of Network Interference. What
we do is we're a community mass project

I guess that does network
measurements with

??? of what we
call "network interference" or "network

?????????." That can be a sign of internet
censorship or surveillance

And we do this for a variety of different
????????? look into the blocking of

websites such as the one we saw in the
previous slide in Saudi Arabia. But also

whether or not circumvention tools like
tor, VPNs work or do not work or whether

or not and how instant messaging apps are
blocked or not blocked around the world

and we do this through some apps that can
be installed either on your mobile phone

or on your computer and these are run by
tens of thousands of volunteers around the

world to gather evidence of internet
censorship around the world.

I guess I will not go too much into what
OONI does because we actually have an

assembly on the third floor where you--
called the OONIverse and you are welcome

to come by and we can tell you all about
it but also we have a longer presentation

on the third day at 2:30 in borg room and
there I can go more into what OONI is

about and how we have been working with
people like Miriam to collect sort of

undeniable evidence that internet
censorship is happening but also how.

Miriam: Perfect thank you very much. I
would very much suggest that you go and

see that talk as well.

applause

So apart from the
websites that you would expect to be

blocked in Saudi Arabia like porn and
gambling websites or the website of the

Israeli Secret Service there are plenty of
other websites that are blocked and OONI

has compiled a very huge and comprehensive
list of different websites that are

blocked in Saudi Arabia that you can find
on their website and I brought you three

short examples just to show you what kind
of websites could be blocked.

On the left you always see the information
that is provided on the OONI web page and

on the right side you see a screenshot of
the actual web site that is blocked in

Saudi Arabia. So first up we have Al-
Manar, Al-Manar is a news media web site

with ties to Hezbollah. Second we have
bahai.org, the Bahai are a religious

group, they are a religious minority and
they are oppressed in pretty much all of

the Arab countries. You can see that
actually their website is also blocked in

the United Kingdom and in Italy for
whatever reason. And thirdly we have

proxify.com, it's just one of many
examples of different websites that offer

services of anonymity and of
circumvention. And now because I don't

want to leave you too depressed when you
leave this talk I also want to look at

some positive things that have happened as
well because despite all this persecution

that I have talked about up until now
activists in Saudi Arabia have been able to

secure some very important victories in
the past years and if you have followed

the news lately a little bit then maybe
you have noticed that a lot of things are

happening in Saudi Arabia, a lot of laws
and traditions are changing and because of

time restraints I'm only focusing on two
issues here right now that I personally

find especially important.
So the first example are the Saudi

municipal elections in 2015 these were the
very first elections when women in Saudi

Arabia were allowed to actively and
passively participate in the elections and

in the end 20 women were elected to
municipal councils out of 2,000 seats that

were open in these elections and women had
to overcome incredible hurdles to

participate or to be candidates. For
example, organizations that were set up to

educate women about the elections to help
them to run as candidates and to tell them

how to register these organizations were
forbidden. Female candidates weren't

allowed to hold public rallies, they were
not allowed to give speeches online, in

TV, in public.
They were not allowed to post pictures of

their faces put them on posters or post
them anywhere really. So women were

basically confined to campaigning online
really and especially registering as

candidates but also as voters was super
hard some women were flat-out denied being

registered without being given any reason
but one problem that also the men actually

had one problem was that voters in order
to be registered they had to bring proof

of their residency and they would usually
prove that by showing a rental contract.

Now the problem is that women cannot
produce a rental contract because their

names are not on these contracts but the
names of their fathers or their husbands.

That's just one of the many problems they
had and this is one example from YouTube

because up until now I have talked a lot
about Twitter but there's also a huge and

thriving and very important YouTube scene
in Saudi Arabia and the following video is

by a famous Saudi YouTube group and they
are called Telfaz11 and they have a

regular show that is called ??? and
this clip is actually part from one of

their shows and they produced this video
mocking how women were organizing and how

women had to work so hard to just
participate in these elections while men

were just lazy and enjoying their
privileges and now let's see if this

works.

So that's just one example. I like them
very much because they have a very fine

sense of where the red lines are and how
much fun they can actually make of the

government and of actual problems that
persevere in Saudi Arabia. And then we

have another example, three months ago the
Saudi King announced that he would lift

the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia
and starting from May next year women

would be for the first time ever be-- oh
not for first time ever, for the first

time in a long time they would be allowed
to drive cars in Saudi Arabia, and

activists had campaigned for this change
they had campaigned for the lift of the

ban on women driving for a long time for
many years that's a long story I don't

have that much time as I want to to talk
to you about it but we have one example

here one out of many and this is a music
video from 2013 and this went viral in

Saudi Arabia and they were supporting the
campaign by the women to drive movement

who were trying to get the ban lifted and
in their music video they are making fun

of the baseless arguments that were used
to justify the driving ban, why women were

not allowed to drive cars and the context
for the fall of 2013 is that at this time,

a lot of women were defying the ban on
women driving, they were driving around,

they were filming themselves while doing
it, they were posting all these videos

online a lot of women were arrested yet
more women were driving around and yeah

that was just one of the videos that came
out at that time, I also want to show it

to you.

All right just wanted to show you this short
short part but the whole video is really

ridiculous you have to look it up you're
gonna find it on YouTube. And so you know

the story eventually after many years of
activism the ban on women driving was

lifted just now. The work, the really hard
work of all the activists is just one of

many aspects why it was lifted but we have
to appreciate this and here you see some

of the reactions of women in Saudi Arabia
being super happy about this development.

And so final thoughts, what can we learn
from all of this? I would say one thing

that we can learn from it is the
government is not your friend. Whatever

technology is at their disposal they will
use and they will not only use it to catch

terrorists and put them in prison but they
will also use that technology or these

laws to also persecute activists for
example or anybody whom they label as

terrorists because of this really vague
terms and the cybercrime law. And that is

also why it's really important
that we don't let the government put

backdoors in our safety-- like in our
software anywhere because the wisdom the

government is not your friend applies to
pretty much every government really if you

think about it.

applause

And also you have heard
how the Saudi government changes laws and

seemingly becomes more modern and more
liberal and tries to appease the young

population but you have to keep in mind
that they are still super autocratic, it's

still an absolute monarchy and I don't
think that this will change anytime soon

no matter how many news we get next year
about like women-- the first woman becomes

Minister of Foreign Affairs or Saudi Crown
Prince gives a speech about the importance

of freedom of religion for the economy or
something like this. But still, the

government is trying to appease the
younger generation and the younger folks

and that is at least something and I think
one of the important aspects here is, how

do they know with what they can appease
the young generation? Well they know it

because the young people keep telling them
on social media all the time and they go

to jail over and over for speaking their
minds for pushing for change and we have

to acknowledge this as the victory and the
sacrifice that it is and it also shows us

that it makes sense to keep speaking up
and to tell the government what it is that

they want and what it is that they want to
change and to keep up the pressure because

the rule of the royal family rests on a
rather unstable religious legitimation so

they have to make an effort to stay in the
good graces of the population because they

certainly don't want to see another Arab
Spring in their country.

And now I'm hoping that you can take away
something from this talk and that it has

helped to-- helped you to see the Saudis
in a different light so that next time

when someone talks to you about Saudi
Arabia and how they are all rich beheading

bigots you can tell them well, not all
Saudis and then you think of the activists

and that you appreciate the hard work that
Saudi activists are doing on the ground

all the time. There's a lot more I would
like to tell you but time is up. If you

are interested in this kind of subject
check out some of these talks I saw the

talk "Tightening the net in Iran", it was
superb, go and watch it online, see the

video, go and see the OONI talk also and
lastly I would say thank you very much for

your time and your attention.

applause

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