Technology companies, particularly those that facilitate communication or social media sharing, are no strangers to political turmoil. While many nations simply can’t get enough sharing, for politically closed and authoritarian regimes, too much sharing is a threat and the inevitable result is censorship. Social media companies saw this in many Middle Eastern nations during the “Arab Spring” revolutions, when governments sought to limit what citizens in opposition could communicate with the outside world via social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (News - Alert). In 2010, a number of nations ordered BlackBerry to turn over encryption keys so they could better monitor citizens’ encrypted communications.

This time, it’s Skype’s (News - Alert) turn, though it’s got company in other Internet messaging apps such as Viber and What’sApp. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is threatening all three companies with a total ban in that nation unless they allow government authorities to censor certain messages, AFP new is reporting today. All three services have been told by an official of the kingdom's Communications and Information Technology Commission that they must surrender some means of control of messages to the government agency.

An AFP source at the telecom operator Saudi Telecommunications Co. (STC) said the commission gave service providers one week ending on Saturday to respond, warning it would "take measures to ban them" if they failed to comply. Another source noted that telecom operators have asked the commission to impose the censorship due to the "damage" caused by the free-of-charge applications.

This was confirmed by Ahmed Omran, a Saudi blogger who runs the Riyadh Bureau site. Omran told the BBC that Saudi telecom companies may be tempted to go along with the request from the regulator - even though it will upset their customers because of the loss of revenue they suffer from the free apps, which are hugely popular in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom also has some of the highest Twitter (News - Alert) use in the world.