Saudi Arabia's 'Great Firewall'

securitas writes: "We've all heard about The Great Firewall of China (see this Wired feature) but many don't know about Saudi Arabia's version of the same. The New York Times reports on the challenges and problems of filtering the Internet for an entire nation. San Jose's Secure Computing has the contract but may lose it when it comes up for renewal next year."

keep your heads up; this is where the US is going

[Frothy Walrus]

watch and watch closely. if we don't learn how to circumvent any and every restriction placed upon us, we'll have a hell of a time doing it when the restrictions are placed.

America is not there yet -- not by a long shot. but i think most of us here see the writing on the wall: the US may not stay the greatest country on earth for long, if the corps have their way.

fight back!

Can't get there from here...

[Ocelot Wreak]

I hear that, as a way of dodging spam and other salacious web-based material, this firewall will operate from a "dark class" IP range. The IP class will "appear and disappear" under the control of some fancy router that will make the whole country appear momentarily to send/receive from the Internet, but then hide them again so that the outside world can't "see" them. Sounds weird, maybe just a bad story, but maybe some truth if you also read the story about the way spammers hide, from www.securityfocus.com.

From the looks of their site,

[trilucid]

the folks over at Secure Computing aren't really offering anything truly novel. Maybe I just skimmed their site too quickly, but what exactly do they do that couldn't be implemented via open source software?

*NIX operating systems have always been designed from the ground up to have fine grained access control features. This has been extended to all sorts of network environments spawned from that model. Perhaps they're playing up the "one box total solution" angle, but if that's the case they're on shaky ground.

Of course, I don't support government use of any sort of access controls to limit citizens' access to information, with the exception of info that is *truly* sensitive with respect to national security (sorry, info on water treatment plants found in libraries doesn't count IMO).

Then again, it's not my country. I don't agree with the extremist policies with respect to global data access enforced by many nations, but I also don't believe those policies can last forever. Sooner or later, the people will get fed up. This might mean rapid revolution, or gradual internal change, who knows?

Besides, recently (here in the U.S.) the apple hasn't fallen too far from the proverbial world tree in this respect. We're creeping toward a similar government view on what we can and can't access on the net. To all U.S. citizens: don't waste too many mental cycles worrying about the problems of other nations right now. The most pressing concerns and threats to our freedoms are right here at home.

Web hosting by geeks, for geeks. Now starting at $4/month (USD)! [trilucid.com]
Yes, this is my protest to the sig char limit :).

P2P Internet Access

[titaniafq]

Now if the whole countries Internet access is coming down on pipe that passes via this "great firewall" then why not set up some kind of peer-to-peer network that attaches itself to the Internet in a different country.

Having paid no attention when I was at school to geography I don't know if any "friendly" countries are near SA, but this must be possible.

I am thinking along the lines of a scheme I heard about to provide broadband access to rural areas via a series of aerials and RF.

Just thinking

Re:Should / Can

[radja]

Do you know what warcrimes were done in Afghanistan by US troops, if any? I don't, since this information is held from me. Number of innocent casualties? same. Proof of Bin Laden's guilt? withheld too. The US is just as guilty as China or Saudi-Arabia in this one.. all do censorship, all present their government's opinion as authoritive.

//rdj

Re:keep your heads up; this is where the US is goi

[shepd]

Don't worry -- if you're posting to slashdot you'll be able to circumvent the thing.

Here's a couple of ways (provided you know someone outside the country on a server the gov't doesn't mind you viewing):

httptunnel [freshmeat.net]
corkscrew [freshmeat.net]
NSTX [freshmeat.net]

Fortunately, I've already had experience with this. I went to school in the WCBE of Ontario, Canada, where it's against the rules to view nintendo.com when you're doing an essay on which console is the best (this was in high school too...). IIRC, I used a different solution then though (can't remember what now).

Goodie.

Re:Should / Can

[Zocalo]

Actually, since the Taliban is not allowing independent validation of casualties and atrocities (if any) due to US action, there is probably a reason for that. Here in the UK though we are getting to hear the Taliban's claims, with the rider "not independantly verified" which is as it should be, I feel. In situations like this it's best to take all data with a pinch of salt, but I don't feel the lack of statistics is down to the US; it's a bit difficult counting bodies in a cave you've just tossed a bomb into, unless you are on the ground.

However, I understand that there *is* a very good reason for your "Proof of Bin Laden's guilt" point (IANAL). The US wants Bin Laden to stand trial for the events of Septemeber 11th, presumably at the Hague for crimes against humanity. If they release their evidence to the global population then there is a serious chance of a mistrial being declared on the grounds of a prejudiced jury (or what ever the correct term is). This is common practice in conventional legal cases, and I don't see why Bin Laden's is any different. Nor do I recollect much of the prosecution's evidence being made public prior to the trial of Slobodan Milosovich for that matter.

Do THEY care?

[Slayback]

We're forgetting one thing here when we make a big deal about this. Do they care that much? Saudi Arabia is a religious country, and this firewall is to filter out things that go against their religious views. While this may be just unthinkable for us, they may have little or no problem with this.

I've talked to my suitemate that is from Saudi Arabia and he's told me some things about it. It seems that it there are people that watch the sites go through. They go to each site manually and check it out. This means that you may get through once, but after then, don't count on it being there. Also, they aren't dumb. They have filtered out sites like Yahoo! groups, anonymizer, and Safeweb (RIP) because they were used in large for pornography. Another interesting tidbit was that the first thing he did when he got on the net in the US was go to www.sex.com and was blown away. He knew it existed, but has never been able to go there.

I know there is other material that is being filtered besides pornography, but porn makes up the majority. Is that SO bad? Think about how any religion may feel about pornography, and if they were running the government, wouldn't censorship be expected? I'm not talking about religious people running the government, I'm talking about the government and the religion being one.

Re:Should / Can

[Fnkmaster]

See my other post. The US doesn't think the Saudis are nice. They are better than the Taliban but not by much. However, the regime does not support terrorism and is cooperative with the international community in general. Furthermore the regime is far more progressive than the regime that would result if the Al Saud family were thrown out of power. I would be terribly inclined to see a democracy in Saudi Arabia, but like many people whose education consists primarily of fundamentalist religious indoctrination, I don't know if the people would naturally form a democracy when the government fell. Much more likely an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship like the Taliban. I.e. substantially worse than the current Saudi government, openly supportive of anti-western terrorist organizations, etc.

Saudi's buy hackers time to bypass censorship

[MousePotato]

A few weeks ago I submitted an article about this (with links to good sources of info, too bad you can pull up what you have submitted to repost)... Anyway, enough bitching.

It would seem that the Saudi's have found relatively easy work arounds for their 'great firewall'. In most cases, Saudi's have been making phone calls to the US to connect to AOL or other ISP's to surf/chat/email without censorship. They even have cyber cafe's that have "Hacker's" on hand (at USD $50-150/hr) to help their fellow Saudi's get access to all the pr0n they want. Additionally, with a US ip address they can access sites that bypass US crypto restrictions and download all the software they like. They then encrypt it and store their data locally decrypting it when needed and then encrypting again when finished(seems the average Saudi understands how to use these apps better than the average USian). The hackers make house calls and sell cdroms full of pr0n.

The filtering software mentioned in the article is basically moot as long as a Saudi citizen can make a call outside of Saudi.

Satellite internet access is popular over there as well.

My guess is the same work arounds hold true for a lot of other countries where information is illegal. The big difference is that the Saudi's have soooo much money that is makes it all a non issue.

A good example of 'the golden rule'; He who has the gold shall make his own rules.

Trying to stop the tidal wave

[hoofie]

I lived in Saudi Arabia for three years in the early 90s'. Satellite dishes were illegal even then but so many were springing up illegally that eventually the government started turning a blind eye to them. Living there, I used to buy my of the Sunday Times from london. Any dodgy articles were removed completely and sometimes the whole issue didnt arrive because of some large article about the Royal Family or similar. They used to put black marker pens through boozer adverts (someone had to do this by hand for every copy) but for some reason they always missed the really cryptic adverts for Guiness. You could buy videos, but they were heavily edited (no sex, violence or Christian content) although if you knew who to ask, you could get 1st generation laser disk copies that were un-censored. Even then, with the strong repression of political rights, religious rights (preaching of christianity was punishable by death) and strong racism against filipinos, pakistanis etc., you could feel that people were very eager to have some more freedom of choice and action. All they are doing is trying to control that freedom. The Government cannot stop the internet as people will just dial abroad, so they are trying to control it bit by bit. As a last comment, I felt a lot of antipathy and even hostility from young saudis (the older generation were the most hospitable people I have ever met) and I am told its a lot worse now, but it doesn't get reported.

Re:Should / Can

[metis]

The US doesn't think the Saudis are nice. They are better than the Taliban but not by much. However, the regime does not support terrorism and is cooperative with the international community in general.

How nice. The US supports with money and weapons a disgusting regime because it provides a steady supply of oil and generally cooperates with the US. Then you are surprised that people want to kill you? And now, in a nice revarsal, you justify supporting this ugly regime by the necessity of protecting yourself from those that want to kill you because you are fucking their lives. How about you stop fucking their lives?

Yes, if the Saud fall the resulting regime will be very Anti American for a while, but the real cause for hatred will have disappeared, so that eventually , there will be possibility for real cooperation between the people. This is what happened in Iran. But people in the US still miss the Shah. which is really obscene because nobody in Iran misses the Shah.

Re:Don't be a hypocrite

[metis]

I am not a hypocrit because

• as you said, we can reduce our need for oil.
• Anti American and even fundamentalist countries will still sell us as much oil as they have. Show me an oil exporting country that wouldn't sell oil.

The problem with a revolution in Saudia is not the suuply of oil itself, which will be probably unchanged or even increased ( if the new regime leaves OPEC). The problem is twofold: price stability and ownership.

price stability

The uncertainty of civil war will create price spikes that will damage economic forcasting in the West and thus cause some economic pain. In addition there is the potential for physical damage to the oil rigs, which will temporarily reduce supply and cause economic pain in the West.

Ownership
Oil is not sold by Saudis to Americans directly. It is sold to Oil companies, some of which are also partners in the production. An anti American revolution will probably switch the favors of the government to non-US companies. That will hurt these companies but will have negligble effect on oil prices.

To sum, there will be pain, but nothing unmenageable. The real losers will be a few US corporations. And it is their interest, not yours and mine, that effectively keep all Saudis hostages.