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."

Censorship isn't practical on the net

On the net there is just too much content, and too many ways of accessing it to just put one big filter on an entire nation. I say they should make the ISPs responsible for it.

Re:Censorship isn't practical on the net

If what they're saying is true, that a US company is participating in limiting free speech in other countries, I've thought of some ad slogans for them:

"San Jose Secure Computing -- Participating In The Oppression Of People For Over Eight Years"

"Need To Oppress Your People? -- Call San Jose Secure Computing"

"Indiginous Population Learning Too Much? -- Call San Jose Secure Computing"

"What Is 'Truth', Anyway? Call San Jose Secure Computing, Now With New Under Your Thumb(TM) Technology!"

Should / Can

Should the Saudi government be allowed to do this? Absolutely, there is no inalienable right to Internet access. On the other hand, I think it about as dumb an idea as there is to do it. Denying anyone free access to other peoples ideas is not beneficial to your citizens. At least if you are hoping they develop into thinking people. Of course, both the Saudi and Chinese governments seem not to have that in mind.

Re:Should / Can

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:Should / Can

Wow, I've never seen that document before. It's quite interesting.

One thing to notice is that the connection between Bin Laden and Sept. 11 is entirely by association. Some of the Sept. 11 hijackers are known to be associated with Al Qaida, and Bin Laden clearly shares the same beliefs as the hijackers. It doesn't follow that Bin Laden is responsible.

Other commentary I've read (sorry, no link handy) indicates that Al Qaida, like a lot of other subversive organizations, isn't really very centralized. It's possible, and even probable, that a group of people with loose ties to a certain part of the network got some assistance from other people associated with Al Quaida. It's unlikely that Bin Laden or anybody else 'ordered' the attack.

It's also equally possible that some other party with a beef against the U.S. set things in motion and some of the people recruited to do the dirty work also had ties with Al Qaida.

The bottom line is that nobody really knows, and nobody will ever know unless somebody involved with the attack steps forward. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter. Bin Laden is known to support terrorism, even if his connection to this particular attack is unclear, so he's a useful target for Bush. Bin Laden might even help Bush get re-elected if this thing drags out long enough.

Re:Should / Can

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.

Ah, but in the U.S., I can look at contraversial religious websites [clambake.org], websites that criticize Islam (and my own religion) [chick.com], porn [do you really need a link?], and pretty much anything I want. Even when someone says I can't look at some information, I can look at it, and they can take me to court, and see if a judge thinks their concerns are more important then free speech.

I'm getting sick of these sophmoric statements of "the U.S. is just as bad as [x]", where x is the criminal of the day. Part of my discomfort is because I recently had the same frame of mind, and I hate seeing others make the same mistakes.

Why would we know of U.S. warcrimes in Afghanistan? The Taliban kicked all the foriegn journalists out. Sure, we don't see all the evidence against Bin Laden, but few dispute that his organization trained Islamic radicals, and was probably behind other terrorist acts as well as Sep. 11. I would be angry if we were putting him on trial without enumerating evidence, but first we need to imprison him based on the evidence we have.

Yeah, the U.S. government used propaganda and spin control and even lies, just like every other government on earth. But we also have a free and active press, which is always trying to catch the government lying. Sure, the big media is all corporate controlled and puts the rich white man spin on everything, but there's plenty of other news outlets, and almost every large city I've been in has a newspaper whose sole reason for existance seems to be to criticize the big media paper in town. Afghanistan? No free press. Saudi Arabia? No real free press.

This is a country where three little letters seperate propaganda [whitehouse.gov] from porn [whitehouse.com] from anti-propaganda [whitehouse.org], and there's nothing George W., Time Warner/AOL, or Microsoft can do to stop it. And when they try, we can eventually beat 'em in court.

Re:Should / Can

I'm sorry, but you're making a critical error. People are ALWAYS trying to chip away at those rights. The excuses vary to whatever sounds good in the political climate of the time, but the fight is constant. We haven't got this far by waiting for the courts.

If an individual is unjustly violating my rights, then I can either report him to the authorities, or sue him in court.

If a corporation is violating my rights, I pretty much have to go to court.

If a law is violating my constitional rights, then I get arrested or fined, and the higher courts eventually strike down the law

If the government is violating my natural rights, then I have to change the government, or possibly take up arms and overthrow the government.

I see all these as "fighting for my rights", in the context of our constitutional government. If AOL/Time Warner is threating to put me in jail for trying to tell someone else how a DVD is encoded, I don't call up the militia to march on the state capitol. I let them arrest me or fine me or whatever, then take the issue to court. And, if I can't really make that personal sacrifice, I support those who can [eff.org].

Re:Should / Can

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.

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

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!

my 2nd attempt at humour tonight

Why don't they just use AOL?
</joke>

Can't get there from here...

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,

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 :).

NYTimes Registration

God, I hate that registration crap.

November 19, 2001
Companies Compete to Provide Saudi Internet Veil
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

Saudi men chat and browse a censored Internet in a hotel in Riyadh. Other Muslim nations, including Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, are considering adding software filters on domestic Web use, and Western companies are eager to provide them.

Nearly a dozen software companies, most of them American, are competing for a contract to help Saudi Arabia block access to Web sites the Saudi government deems inappropriate for that nation's half- million Internet users.

For the companies, the Saudi account would be important not only for the direct revenue -- which analysts say could be worth several million dollars -- but also for its value as a flagship that could help win similar contracts from other governments.

Pornographic sites, the biggest Internet business in other countries, make up the overwhelming majority of the sites blocked in Saudi Arabia, distantly followed by sites that may be sensitive for political or religious reasons.

To critics of the sale of content filters, software company executives say that they are only providing politically neutral tools. "Once we sell them the product, we can't enforce how they use it," said Matthew Holt, a sales executive for Secure Computing (news/quote ), of San Jose, Calif., that currently provides Internet-filtering software to the Saudi government under a contract that expires in 2003.

Secure Computing hopes to renew that contract but has competition from at least 10 other companies from the United States, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.

"This would be a terrific deal to win -- an important deal to win," said Geoff Haggart, a vice president at Websense (news/quote ), a San Diego company that has begun a software trial with the Saudi government and is considered a top contender for its contact.

Websense's current clients include more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, the United States Army and Saudi Aramco, the large Saudi oil company. Other software that Saudi Arabia has considered includes products from Surf Control, a London company; N2H2, of Seattle; and Symantec, a Cupertino, Calif., company.

Within the Islamic world, religious sensitivities and security-conscious regimes can combine to create a technophobic atmosphere. Governments in Muslim nations, among them Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, have made overtures to Internet filtering companies. But no Muslim nation has been as active a user of the software as has Saudi Arabia. By royal decree, virtually all public Internet traffic to and from Saudi Arabia has been funneled through a single control center outside Riyadh since the Internet was introduced in the kingdom nearly three years ago.

If the Riyadh center blocks a site, a warning screen pops up warning the user, in English and Arabic, "Access to the requested URL is not allowed!"

"The Internet is a frightening place to some people," said Mr. Holt, who oversees sales operations in the Middle East for Secure Computing. "The government feels the need to intervene."

In Saudi Arabia, the government spent two years designing a centralized control system before gingerly opening the spigot to the Internet in February 1999. At the time, the government selected Secure Computing's SmartFilter software from four competing products from the United States, in part because the company offered a discount. The company and Saudi officials declined to disclose the contract terms.

SmartFilter came with ready-made categories like pornography and gambling and was customized to include specific sites the Saudis perceived as defaming Islam or the royal family.

With the Secure Computing contract set to expire in little more than a year, rivals are actively courting Saudi technology officials. The companies are promoting their expanded Arabic-language capabilities. They are selling their ease of customization for sites considered anti-Islam or anti-royal family. They are donating engineers to support trials, while steeply discounting their list prices. One German company even offered the service for free, according to an executive involved in the competition.

Corporate customers and the United States Army generally use filtering software to prevent their users from viewing pornography, gambling or otherwise frittering away time on the job. But Saudi Arabia is one of the countries with the most centralized control of Internet content of various types, according to a report by the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Another country highlighted in the report is China, whose government blocks various foreign media and human rights Web sites by using domestic software. The United States government recently introduced a plan to establish a computer network to help Chinese residents circumvent their government's fire wall. But so far, Washington has not taken similar steps in Saudi Arabia, which brooks little political dissent but is one of the United States' closest allies among Middle Eastern Muslim nations.

"We have a really serious problem in terms of the American free speech idea," said Jack Balkin, a professor at the Yale Law School who studies the politics of Internet filtering. "But it is very American to make money. Between anticensorship and the desire to make money, the desire to make money will win out."

Saudi security agencies identify the political Web sites that are considered for inclusion on the blacklist. Among the banned sites are the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in the Arabian Peninsula (www.cdrhap.com) and the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (www.islah.org). Even some less politically charged sites, including ones that recount the history of Saudi Arabia, are blocked.

In response to Internet filtering, many Saudis either dial up foreign Internet service providers, use Web sites that protect the user's identity or engage in a cat-and-mouse game with Web sites that frequently change their addresses to elude filters. (For such sites, like the one operated by Islah.org, would-be visitors send e-mail to a fixed address and receive the new Web address.)

It is because filtering for an entire country is a logistically tricky task that the Saudi government is looking for new software. "It's not that we are unhappy with the product, we're just looking for a better solution," said Eyas S. al-Hajery, who plays a major role in the selection process and has evaluated various software filters.

The competition is up in the air, said Dr. Hajery, who directs the Information Security Center at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, the institution that serves as Saudi Arabia's Internet control valve. "We are very open to try other choices," he said.

The marketing pitches pour in weekly through e-mails, phone calls and in-person presentations. But the decision will have less to do with marketing than customer service after the sale, Dr. Hajery said.

Customer service is important because Saudi Arabia's filtering effort is so large in scope and so highly customized. The Saudi Internet staff says it tries to be reasonable within the guidelines, and it provides Web forms for users to request additions or removals from the blacklists.

Dr. Hajery says his staff of a dozen employees receives more than 500 suggestions a day from the public to block sites that the authorities have missed. The requests are reviewed by the staff and about half of them are ultimately added to the blacklist -- up to 7,000 URL's monthly. Many of the sites forbidden on religious grounds are gleaned through this process, since the staff members are primarily focused on ferreting out pornography sites, Dr. Hajery said. The center also receives more than 100 requests a day to remove specific sites from the blacklist -- many because they have been wrongfully characterized by the SmartFilter software, he said.

Secure Computing disputes this, saying that all of its sites are reviewed by people after being screened by the software.

Some sites become incidental victims to the government's broad snare. In August 2000, the Saudi government decided to block access to all Yahoo (news/quote ) online clubs because many clubs were popular for pornography. After the move elicited protest from people who use various Yahoo clubs to communicate about everything from engineering to cooking, the center began selectively unblocking nonpornographic Yahoo sites at users' requests.

Many Saudis support the government's ban on pornography. But sites banned for political reasons incite protests. A 28-year- old claims assistant at Royal and SunAlliance Insurance, who is a member of the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia, where the majority of Muslims are Sunni, said in an e- mail interview that a Web site containing basic information about his village near the town of Qatif had been blocked.

He compared Internet filtering to the Saudi national emblem, two crossed swords below a date palm.

"You can look straight and eat from that palm tree as much as you want," he said, "but if you ever try to look to your right or left side, there'll be a sword waiting to chop off your head."

IN THE UAE too

Hey..this is not the only country where the net in blocked, in the UAE, the internet is completely blocked, ( or proxied is the term that is used) bcos, we have to go through a proxy server of the isp and the isp employs several people full time, just for blocking sites. and of course, there is a government monoipoly which means the isp is government owned, and there can be nothing done about it.

The American Way

"Between anticensorship and the desire to make money, the desire to make money will win out."

There seems to be some sort of shock factor the NYT is trying to get across. Personally I'm not surprised at all: I'd have assumed that *any* word could be substituted for "anticensorship" and it would still be true in the US, possibly several other countries too.

(NB: Not a troll, cf tobacco companies investing in companies that R&D cancer cures...)

Civil Rights & Fire Walls

For this to occur in a country where civil rights are minimal is expected. This is not the case with the new laws in the US.

In Saudi Arabia, the system is monarchy. If you think of it, it is not any worse from the UK where you are not allowed to have high grade crypto without giving a copy of your private key to the Gov.

I am not saying that they are doing the right thing, but at least they don't lie about it and they don't claim to be the fathers of democracy!

Enduring Freedom

To critics of the sale of content filters, software company executives say that they are only providing politically neutral tools. "Once we sell them the product, we can't enforce how they use it," said Matthew Holt, a sales executive for Secure Computing (news/quote), of San Jose, Calif., that currently provides Internet-filtering software to the Saudi government under a contract that expires in 2003.

What a fine way to salve the conscience: "Once we sell them the product, we can't enforce how they use it." They're happy enough to take the money, just as IBM was happy to take the money from the Nazis for Jew-tracking systems, since no IBMers were actually involved in killing anyone.

US corporate and government support for this brutal dicatorship [guardian.co.uk] is a disgrace. Both GOP and Dem administrations are happy to allow trade with this vile regime to thrive as long as it pays, just as they were happy to arm and support Iraq as long as it paid, and just as they continue to profit handsomely from deals with China.

It still amazes me how Bush and pals can talk without a trace of irony about how they are fighting one gov't or another in defense of Freedom and Justice, then turn around and support the Saudis. Will Laura Bush be arguing passionately for the rights of Saudi women [cornell.edu] anytime soon? Of course she will, as soon as the pro-Western govt gets thrown out, and they transform overnight into America's Eternal Foe.

Re:Enduring Freedom

If you could operate a nation under purely idealist moral principles, then you would be right. We shouldn't deal with the Saudis because they don't adhere to our code of moral conduct. The going theory for a long time is that we HAVE to support the Saudis because all of the alternatives possible in Saudi Arabia are so much worse than the Al Saud family that it would be a terrible event for 1) America 2) Western Civilization as a whole if they were to fall from power.

While I'd like to see a nice democratic government in Saudi Arabia too, the reality is that a large minority in their country is made up of radical Wahabi muslims who are fomenting rebellion in Saudi Arabia (and it's not a nice democratic government they want to form, I assure you). These people are partially responsible for the spread of fundamentalist Wahabi-style Islam around the Islamic world. Watch the PBS Frontline documentary that aired on Friday if you can find it showing again - it gave some fabulous insights into this process.

The moral is that it's not just black and white. It's hard to run around playing favorites in the world and figuring out who is good and who is bad for their own people. It's substantially easier to figure out who is good and bad for your own nation-state, and that's how most countries conduct foreign policy. Honestly, in a lot of ways, I feel bad for the Al Saud family. They can't really modernize the country any more which needs to be done before democratization is an option, because so many of the people seem to be rabidly against modernization. On the other hand, they have fundamentalist clerics and radicals who desperately oppose all attempts at modernization. They have handed greater power to these groups as part of their attempt to broker a peaceful "middle-ground". They have in turn alienated all the liberal academics and others. They look at what happened to Iran under the Shah, and I don't think they want to be the Shah.

Just my 2 cents. I have no good solution to the Saudi problem, it's actually substantially harder to solve than the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which in the end is motivated mostly by economic concerns and nationalism and can be easily solved via some redistricting, establishment of a Palestinian nation, and economic aid to the Palestinians (well, it can be easily solved if you get the two sides to stop shooting for long enough, and you throw out the radicals on both sides who oppose any middle ground solutions).

You can't really do much to fight fundamentalism other than start with young children and make sure they get a proper secular education. This doesn't eliminate fundamentalism, but it greatly reduces its hold. We should make be funding public education programs in Pakistan and other countries dominated by fundamentalist madrassahs as the only option for education, not to mention food and clothing for young children whose parent can't afford to raise them. And as for the Saudis themselves, maybe we should let the Al Saud family fall, but there better be contingency plans and a UN peacekeeping force ready to go in and force democracy at gunpoint because it won't just happen magically.

all the more reason

for more logical TLD's. Although they wouldn't be able to filter out all of .relig(ion), as this would block out sites that Saudis would want available, but it sure would cut down on the manual entries (7000 URLs/month, is that all!?!) if they could just block .xxx

What a gargantuan effort! And it would never end. All it takes is for me to decide one day that instead of running a radio station, I'm going to peddle porn, or document human rights abuses, or the snakey Saudi relations with the Bush government [salon.com]. How long would it take for them to notice? The length of time it takes for them to spider me?

Really, proper TLD's would help along censorship, but everything has a double-edge anyways. At least .xxx and .kids would help organise content according to purpose, which is what it's all about anyway. You certainly wouldn't have to worry about Disney and MS squatting on .xxx domains.

Getting past a country wide fire wall

This can only work if you can guarantee that you have a filter on all of the telco's in your country. This is simple if the govt. happens to own the telco in question. However it only takes 1 person with a satalite phone or an ISP outside the country to break this.

Of cause the country in question can counter this by making external calls prohibativly expencive or by prossicuting any one with a sat phone.

However if speed isn't a question then you could allways use an e-mail to HTML gateway.

I have just spent 10 minits trying to find one. Their used to be lots but I can't fine one now. Perhaps someone could post a list of addresses.

Impossible.

The 'bad site' is always one step ahead of you.
They can hide content in so many ways or find other ways to get it to you. If people want to see 'bad sites' it's always possible. Think about anonymizers and ssl. You wouldn't know whish site is visited.

Ofcourse you could turn around the whole process and ALLOW sites you trust and block everything else. It would make internet very small. But it should work.

And IF someone comes up with a good filter, PLEASE use it for anti-spam aswell :)
(which is also practically impossible to block)

The only way to block 'bad sites' is to have no internet.

Non-reg-req version of article is at Yahoo

If you don't have a New York Times account, this article can be found at Yahoo, at http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nyt/20011119/bs/com panies_compete_to_provide_saudi_internet_veil_1.ht ml [yahoo.com]

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

Saudi Arabia is pretty oppressive anyway

Saudi Arabia is a pretty nasty country in general, so this isn't a surprise. One only need read the articles that appear at the BBC's website. They're probably more oppressive than China, but since they're strong allies with the U.S., this is not a message you hear often. Also, U.S. magazines sell significantly less when they focus on world issues (if the talking heads on TV are to be believed).

An interesting problem with Saudi Arabia is that they hear of Western media trashing their country, so they make the "logical" conclusion that this is how the governments feel about them. Why? Because the press is 100% controlled by the Saudi Goverment, so this is what they expect.

China...

Did you know that Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, and many other free hosting sites are blocked in China (at least with China Telecom).

Thankfully, the amount of interesting/usefull information on most pages hosted on those sites is uhhhh... minimal.

Real.com == blocked.
Real.com.au not blocked.

cbc.ca and cnn.com blocked sometimes.

reuters blocked.

Boycott!

Whether "right" or "wrong", the Saudi government is free to do what it likes to it's citizens, no matter what we think.

On the other hand, contracting a publically-quoted American company to engineer the repression of a people could have some interesting consequences.

How about everyone buy a share in them, go to the next AGM and demand a vote of "no confidence" in the board for bidding for the contract?

Open to other choices

From the article: "We are very open to try other choices," he said.

Well, at least someone is.

It's perception, not reality...

I was the Engineering Manager of the third (two others beat us by a few days!) ISP to operate in the Kingdom.

Yes, the filtering is more or less as described. They used to have, maybe still do, an option on the "blocking" page where you could ask that a blocked URL be unblocked, since it was actually something innocuous (of course whether your view that Cindy's Sin Palace etc was innocuous might be disputed by those in charge... :-))

The article also points out that Saudi's can (and do) simply dial up ISPs in neighboring countries to get the access they desire. Equally, rich individuals (they've got a few...) and companies can also make use of satellite access (illegal, but very common).

So, if a Saudi really wants to access porn or political stuff he/she can do so very easily. And therein lies the key to much about Saudi laws: it's not the reality that matters, but appearances.

The Saudi government plays a precarious balancing act, and needs to keep the religious extremists content ("Look we've blocked all the porn") while trying to drag their society into the modern world (where, so I'm told, the Internet is mandatory). Of course balancing acts never work for ever, and one day you fall off, but that's going offtopic.

is slashdot blocked?

hmmmmm..... any saudis there? is slashdot blocked? just wondering.... :P

Do THEY care?

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.

Either it's bullshit, or it doesn't work...

... because Saudi Arabia is #5 in countries with the most number of visitors that visit NineNine [ninenine.com]. It's not a lot, but there definately is traffic from Saudi Arabia (surfers using .sa).

Could Free Software be used to oppress people?

Now, I admit I'm not nearly as much of a networking geek as most of you /.'ers, so maybe I'm totaly off base here, but how would you freedom fighting, long haired hippies feel about the Saudi Govn't using free software to make this firewall?

I think the benefits would be enough to make them switch. They could drop their dependence on non-Saudi organizations (like American businesses) and depend only on technically minded Saudi nationals. I could here the Microsoft commercials now, trying to show how bad Linux or *BSD is for making oil prices go up.

When you get right down to it, setting up a firewall in Linux or OpenBSD is very easy. I've done it and I have only a basic knowledge of networking and by reading the documentation. Would you guys be able to sleep at night if Linux was used to keep the common man down?

Censorship - personal experience

In this country (Czech Republic), communists censored everything. Many books were banned, all photocopiers were registered, Radio Free Europe was jammed etc. It did not work. People who wanted to get the books got the books. People who wanted to listen to RFE hacked sophisticated antenas and filters. We copied books using typewritters and Sinclair computers. During the WWII this country was occupied by Nazi Germany. Germans removed SW band from all receivers. People who were caught listening BBC or radio Moscow were executed. Nevertheless many people listened. You cannot stop one's desire of freedom.

Saudi Internet Censorship

I was working in Saudi Arabia from 1993 to April of 2001 and all I can say about "The Great Saudi firewall" is that myself and the guys I worked with (as well as a number of Saudis that I knew) made a game out of trying to see how many sites we could get into before we were blocked out by the censors. At times, we found all sorts of sites that we were not able to get into and then lo and behold those sites would be reopened to us. Not an exciting way to surf the net, but it passed the time.

SmartFilter use in Germany

A large German educational ISP offers SmatFilter filters, a product from a cooperation between Siemens and Secure Computing (although Siemens claim they can only change the site list, and not categories and the general modus operandi). Schools routinely activate the filters because in Souther Germany, the secretary responsible for education and schools decided that if a commercial filter system is active, teachers are not sued by the state if something goes wrong.

SmartFilter adds blocking recommendations to their database without notifying the site owners. Our site was blocked in the Criminal Skills category for quite some time, and we still don't know why. Perhaps there is some need for such databases, but at least you have to tell people that you'll block their site at thousands of computers, with the next database update.

Unfortunately, in Germany, a number of elected politicians try to force providers to block Internet access to certain sites. However, nobody has any idea how this is going to work and how the blacklist is distributed (after all, it's an impressive bookmark list).

This happens everywhere using different techniques

censorship of somesort happens everywhere and in every country.

Luckily the BBC (in the UK) is normally impartial and shows what is really happening across the world. For example I am sure you didn't see pictures of Taliban fighters, who had surrendered and where unarmed, being beaten up by the USA supported Northern Alliance fighters, however I could be wrong or they may given some other impression.

I'm confused...

I thought Saudi Arabia were our friends, so what are they doing with a regime run by an hereditary leasder and a largely incumbent political class, monitoring their citizens and trying to route and filter all information through a few central sources?

What's that you say? No, I'm talking about Saudi Arabia, not the USA. Why would you think I was talking about... Huh? What? You say I could have been describing the USA? Now I'm really confused!

Oh, wait, I think that I see. It's OK to have a benevolent dictatorship, right, one that's enacting extreme measures in the short term for the good of its citizens? It is? I'm glad to hear that. Wait, is it OK for me to say that? It is? Phew! But hang on, don't all dictators view themselves as benevolent and as acting for the greater good of their peo- (ack, gaa)

Censorware authors

One can bitch and moan all one likes about how nasty Repressive Regime X is, and how we should write sternly-worded letters to the embassy, yada, yada, yada. If this makes a difference, great, but in my view it's unlikely.

The fact of the matter, however, is that the people who write censorware(*) -- the software itself, the software used to develop the "blacklist," and so on -- are generally members of the Western computing community. Some of them, and their friends, are Slashdot readers. They are members of user groups. They can be identified. They should be made persona non grata.

One might say that if person Z didn't work for the censorware companies, another would, so we can hardly fault person Z. Ridiculous. One might as well say that since there will always be people who write viruses, there is no fault in writing and distributing your own. Censorware aimed at choking off the free speech of an entire people is a damned sight more noxious than a virus. (I am reminded of Jack London's description of "scabs" [nucleus.com] (strikebreakers), which is perhaps extreme in the labor context in our day but may find some analogy here.)

(* Excepting people who write genuinely multipurpose software tools. And I'd except people who write software which is by its nature limited to filtering for a not-large number of machines -- i.e., for home or business use -- though perhaps not everyone would.)

Saudi's buy hackers time to bypass censorship

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.

Can't bypass filter using int'l dialup

The article mentions that some people just make an international call to a dialup ISP account to bypass the government filters. But the Saudi government has even this hole covered.

Fax and modem lines are registered and to be used only for that purpose. Conversely, regular voice lines may not be used for transmitting data -- violations are punishable law, and I'm sure most of you have heard of the kind of punishment meted out by the Saudi government, so that in itself is a serious deterrent.

Further, all phone calls are routed through central switching centers (just like anywhere else in the world) where they can be (and are) monitored. A data call can simply be tapped, demodulated and inspected for contraband traffic.

Any technology that bypasses these switching centers (such as satellite technology) undergoes very serious ministry scrutiny. I worked on satellite technology in Saudi, and all of the satellite equipment was squarely in the hands of the government or carefully proscribed private sector organizations (e.g Aramco).

Four years ago I remember a conversation with a friend about oppressive regimes, and East Timor and Saudi Arabia being two regions we were discussing. Indonesia's grip on East Timor was rapidly deteriorating at the time, and I remember my friend declaring that certainly the Saudi's would fall soon enough. But the Saudi's are "doing it right" -- they keep an extremely tight grip on all information flow into the country, and so the citizens don't get the information they need to organize themselves (or even know that they are missing out on information).

In this regard, <covers head> bin Laden actually has it right </covers head> -- the Saudi people are oppressed by their own government, and the only way out is a revolution. But as long as the Saudi's continue to play their "information security" cards right, it's not going to happen.

the usual hypocrits

challenges and problems of filtering the Internet for an entire nation.

Don't you love it when objective journalism means interviewing the naked king and pretending he wears a three piece suit?

what the hell does filtering the internet for the nation means? Isn't it more like filtering the internet against the nation?

bypassing the saudi firewall

I used to live in Saudi Arabia, and, during that time, I constantly found that I had to get around the firewall. Part of the problem isn't that they can't censor everything they concider inappropriate, but rather than perfectly acceptable content is also being censored (usually by accident). Furthermoe, certain elusive medium, such as USENET, are TOTALLY banned. The firewall is run by the ISU (internet serivce unit) at a university in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (www.isu.net.sa). I found the best way to get around the whole mess is to shell into a server outside the country, start a Squid proxy server on an obscure port (i.e. not 80 or 8080), and just tunnel through that. For other protocols, port-mapping also works.

Trying to stop the tidal wave

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.

This comes to show how oppresive saudi arabia is

Ever wonder how Bin Ladens mind works?

Well here is the answer. Most people do not know this but Saudi arabia is one of the world most oppressive governments. This firewalling technique just comes to prove it. Since they are rich and own computers they can not block it. They instead have to interact with the world so they attempt to filter things the government doesn't like. ITs not as bad as China or Afganistan but its right up there in the worlds most oppressive governments. Most of AL queada(I think thats how its spelled) is actually not really a fanatic terrorist organization per say more then its a freedom fighting political movement. Bin laden views the royal family as oppressors and he hoped iraq would liberate his country from the royal family. The king can't have a big army because they would rebel agaisnt him. So what does he do? He just pays for American soldiers to protect him for the price of oil. During pre-islamic revolution Iran, the government there was also very oppressive. Of all places they killed women and children in ancient and holy mosques. Guess who supported them? You guessed it. The good old freedom fighting USA. The arabs really want to join the rest of the world with freedom but Americans just keep gettng in there way. Yemen is also really bad as well. I would like to see more people educated in this and I hope this article helps. Arabs don't hate america but rather hate that an american company is firewalling there nation and our military is defending an oppressive power in the most holiest country in the arab world.

"challenges and problems..."

the challenges and problems of filtering for an entire nation...

Yeah, like sleeping at night.

Anyone who can work on such a system should go join their brethren in the taliban. Self-respecting (not to mention Constitution-respecting) Americans who don't feel quesy about such things are clearly lacking a moral compass.

Has Slasdot been InstaPundited yet? :)

This story has been mentioned on one of my favorite websites, Glenn Reynolds' InstaPundit.com [blogspot.com].

Glenn is a professor [utk.edu] at the University of Tennessee College of Law [utk.edu]. The majority of his writing is on the intersection between advanced technologies and individual liberty. One example is Environmental Regulation of Nanotechnology: Some Preliminary Observations [foresight.org], from the April, 2001 Environmental Law Reporter.

Banning a national proxy server

I've banned what I believe is the entire nation of Saudi Arabia from my web site [vees.net] for quite some time due to some past CGI script abuses. I'd rather just ban the host or hosts they are coming from, but since the national firewall/proxy server doesn't disclose that information, I have to just deny all requests from .isu.net.sa and isu.net.sa [isu.net.sa].

A whole kingdom has to suffer for the stupid actions of one asshole. Seems a little mean, but also strangely fitting. I doubt I'm the only one doing something like this, too.

Anything for a dollar

Monarchy was the prevailing form of government in Europe for 1500 years and was quite appropriate for the technology of the time. Today, mass communication makes democracy and consumerism both workable and appropriate but if some countries can make monarchy work (and they do need to censor mass communications to make it work) we shouldn't rush to condemn. However, monarchy isn't working in Saudi Arabia. The people don't like their rulers, and many turn to extremism as a way of protesting. This is in a country that already enforces barbaric laws more appropriate to the middle ages. And yet Saudi is the US's great ally in the Middle East. The US government is quite happy to accept a way of life they profess to despise if it suits their global policy. To the extent of stationing troops in the country. Considering that that move has given Islamists an excuse to declare Jihad against the US you've got to question, exactly why were the troops there? What peril was so great that the radical Wahahbism brought on by that perceived provocation and the attacks of September were the lesser evil than whatever would have happened if America had stayed the hell out? There is a prevailing strain of thought in the West that for management, it is Wrong to act on any motive than shareholder benefit. People like Secure Computing use this bizarre justification for mixing it with regimes they wouldn't like to live under. And the attitude extends to government. What is the Bush Admin doing but providing "shareholder value" by keeping oil prices low hand in hand with the Saudis and other dictatorships? This is their justification, through JFK, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton. Can't they see that it causes more trouble in the long term than just doing the right thing?

Foreign censorship, and we get to provide it

I used to work for a company whose star product was an AI-drive porn-filtering web proxy. Our biggest prospective clients were the governments of China and Saudi Arabia. They didn't want just a porn filter, though; they wanted to block plenty of religious and political sites, too. Fortunately, the filtering software never even worked in the first place.

Personal Experience...

My girlfriend and her family are from Saudi Arabia. While the mother and father are too strict and old to have much to do with the internet besides reading Al-Jazirah [al-jazirah.com]... the daughters are quite addicted to the open atmosphere of the net. They tell me that the blocking of sites isn't complete, effective, or even in place at times... the only real effect it has on their access is to sloooooooooooooooow thigns dowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOT. That is, the government controls the only real gateway to the outside world, and its machines are so overwhelmed that loading cnn.com sometimes works and always takes 10 minutes.

I'm going to Saudi soon, to finish Ramadan with my fiancee and her family, and to learn more Arabic. While I'm there, I'll do some research and exploration and bring back a detailed account from a western, freedom-loving perspective, and perhaps post it up here. The Saudi regime has to go - it violates Islamic law, specifically the 'there is no force in religion' item... a religiously-based government is ok, as long as the overwhelming majority are of that faith - and providing that it doesn't punish those who are not. But in Saudi, there is 3-days jail terms and/or public beatings for people who break fast before iftar during Ramadan, and 20-day jail times for boys caught with girls' phone numbers... sad.

(btw if you're wondering about me having a Saudi girlfriend.. her dad's my business partner, i'm almost like family to them, I already speak some arabic, and while atheist, I follow Islamic law/tradition to please her and to make her father accept me. such are the things we do for love :( )

Re:nytimes sucks

Yeah, funny how that is. I'm willing to go across the street for a paper, but *still* to lazy to sign up for free reg for a free paper every day. If it's more than one click away, it's obviously not worth it.

Re:Connect somewhere else

Nothing but price, I guess. What's the cost of calling long-distance from Riyadh?

Of course, not that it matters if you have a petroleum pump in your backyard...

Re:Connect somewhere else

of course, there is always phreaking...

Re:Connect somewhere else

Eight thousand dollars a minute plus no guarantee they aren't monitored, anyway.