It's reported that the Saudi Arabian government is investigating ways to remove user anonymity on sites like Twitter, which has become increasingly popular in the country. Without necessarily exposing a users identity to the public, they would like to be able to see such information internally.
The Grand Mufti has described users of Twitter as "clowns" who are wasting time discussing purposeless and dangerous things. The government representatives go on to argue that people misuse social networking by "sending false information and false evaluation of the situation in the kingdom and the way the policemen in the kingdom are dealing with these situations."
It sounds to me that the government is flexing their powers to remove another route of free speech for the public. Once the government can identify who is "spreading slander", what will the consequence be?
There is also a Tweet posted by Salman al-Awdah, one of the country's most prominent clerics with 2.4M followers, that openly criticizes the Saudi Arabian security policy as being too harsh.
So, it appears that the issue is still on the table for debate at this point. Hopefully the Big Brother mentality doesn't take the win.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/03/201333103422235646.html
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