Saudi Arabia may end anonymity for Twitter users

PanARMENIAN.Net - Saudi Arabia may try to end anonymity for Twitter users in the country by limiting access to the site to people who register their identification documents, Reuters reported citing the Arab News daily.

Last week, local media reported the government had asked telecom companies to look at ways they could monitor, or block, free internet phone services such as Skype.

Twitter is highly popular with Saudis and has stirred broad debate on subjects ranging from religion to politics in a country where such public discussion had been considered at best unseemly and sometimes illegal.

Early this month, the security spokesman for Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry described social networking, particularly Twitter, as a tool used by militants to stir social unrest.

The country's Grand Mufti, Saudi Arabia's top cleric, last week described users of the microblogging site as "clowns" wasting time with frivolous and even harmful discussions, local newspapers reported.

"A source at (the regulator) described the move as a natural result of the successful implementation of (its) decision to add a user's identification numbers while topping up mobile phone credit," Arab News reported.

That would not necessarily make a user's identity visible to other users of the site, but it would mean the Saudi government could monitor the tweets of individual Saudis.

Two weeks ago one of Saudi Arabia's most prominent clerics, Salman al-Awdah, who has 2.4 million followers on the site, used Twitter to attack the government's security policy as too harsh and call for better services. He warned it might otherwise face "the spark of violence".

Two leading Saudi human rights activists were sentenced to long prison terms this month for a variety of offences including "internet crimes" because they had used Twitter and other sites to attack the government.

Some top princes in the monarchy now use Twitter themselves and Crown Prince Salman, King Abdullah's designated heir and also Defense Minister, recently opened an official account.