DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The militants who carried out the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India, used mobile phones and other handheld gadgets to coordinate an assault that left 166 dead.
Cell phones with video cameras helped bring the world the iconic footage of a young Iranian woman dying of a gunshot wound in the midst of the country's 2009 "Green Revolution" — images spread rapidly on websites the government tried feverishly to block.
Now the use of new, sophisticated technologies is raising alarm in the Arab world's two biggest economies. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have threatened to cut off popular BlackBerry services unless they wring out concessions that would almost certainly give them greater access to user information.
Both countries cite security threats. The U.S. says those concerns are legitimate. But critics say the governments' fears also provide a convenient justification to further tighten controls on the flow of information they believe could stir opposition or morally corrupt their societies.
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