Pretty easy to assume they’re going to do the same for other countries involved.

Watching this fiasco unfold it seemed that the UAE were the first to make such demands, quickly followed by Saudi Arabia. Ensuing requests seemed kind of secondary and just following suit. I was left, then, following two separate strains back to their origins to figure out the reasoning behind all this hubbub.

The United Arab Emirates

The cause here is pretty clear. The UAE exerts incredible force on any kind of reporting from inside the country. Dubai’s economy is failing on multiple levels, leaving huge half-finished skyscrapers dominating the skyline. The UAE has arrested correspondents and fined their agencies, fines that have to be paid if the agency doesn’t want to be wholly ousted from the country. Thus, information being relayed about the state of the country is necessarily spied upon, including messenger-type communications.

There’s also the little matter of the killing of a Hamas leader in Dubai recently. I imagine that kind of pissed the UAE off. Previously, Dubai’s been a bit of a free action zone, where operatives could move and meet in relative peace. That seems, like everything, to be changing.

Saudi Arabia

I actually draw Saudi Arabia’s ban roots even further back in history. While their economy doesn’t seem as dire right now, the royal family sits on a knife’s edge between western influence and domestic unrest and extremism. It made me think, almost instantly, about the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. Saudi authorities physically severed all communication lines out of the country to control any news getting out. The one thing they missed was a US State Department secure line. Naturally, the US State Department received an inordinate number of calls from other countries and other agencies trying to figure out what the hell was going on in the blackout. Finally, they issued a public statement; the first about the seizure, causing incredible embarrassment in Saudi Arabia that the Americans announced it.

That being the case, I find Saudi Arabia’s pressure on RIM to be part of a larger effort to control what information gets out in the event of unrest or attacks in addition to simple surveillance protocol.

I’d say “it will be interesting to watch this unfold” but it looks like RIM is going to fold to all requests. It’ll be more interesting to see if there’s a chilling effect on dissidence in the area, or arrests stemming from morals offenses that would elsewhere be part of normal culture.

Yahoo’s cooperation with China versus RIM’s concessions to Saudi Arabia? Think they’ll catch as much hell?

Doubtful.