Saudis leading Internet censors

[Carl Brennan]

http://216.26.163.62/2002/me_saudis_10_23.html

Saudi Arabia denies its citizens access to thousands of selected religious, human rights and politically objectional web pages and to most gambling and pornographic Internet sites, a study has found

A report by Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society recognized the Riyadh government as a leading Internet censor. Forbidden sites include entertainment, humor, religions other than Islam, human rights and pornography, Middle East Newsline reported.

The Saudi government uses software called SmartFilter, created by Secure Computing in San Jose, Calif., to block most of the pornographic, gambling and drug-related sites. But the SmartFilter software is also customized with blacklists provided by Saudi security agencies, the Saudi Internet administrators said.

[GHOSTDANCER]

1. No Google for you!!!!!!!!

<>

[blm]

2. Saudis also own a big chunk of AOL-TIME/Warner/CNN.

House of Saud and House of Bush, life partners.

[devilgrrl]

3. Gotta love those freedom loving Saudis!!!!

With friends like the Saudis who needs enemies?

[CottonBear]

4. Can Suaidis access DU?

Probably not but it would be interesting to find out. Are there any DUers living over there?

[blm]

6. Cone to think of it, there were a couple years ago....but, I don't think

there have been any postings in a very long time.

[TR Fan]

5. Simply continuing the pattern...

of previous years and other media. When I lived in Saudi in the early 90s, all magazines were censored. Therefore, when you bought a Time, for example, and you were reading a purely non-political article that happened to, unfortunately, be continued to a page which had a bra ad on the opposite side. Well, lo and behold, that page had been torn out. Not good for free circulation of ideas, but good for employment as every copy of every magazine imported into the country was scrutinized and cleansed.

Other Tidbits:

The Economist was banned from the Kingdom for a year because of a mildly-unfavorable article it did regarding the Saudi royal family. Satellite dishes were illegal for some years and the MoI enforced that ban by flying helicopters in search of illegal dishes. However, when one of the royal princes, Naif's or Sultan's eldest, if I remember, got the exclusive concession, they quickly became legal. There were no ISPs in Saudi at the time (95), but one did exist in Bahrain. However, you faced severe penalties if Saudi Telecom reported that you were accessing it.

edit: spelling