Internet Censorship In Saudi Arabia

An Anonymous Coward writes: "It's good to see long-established cultures are fighting back against the global monoculture. It seems that censorship of the Internet is a practical proposition for governments that care sufficiently about the 'moral welfare' of their citizens. It is possible that Slashdot is censored due to the high levels of profanity encountered. Interestingly enough, they have hired Europeans to do the censoring for them. The BBC has this report, Saudi Arabian authorities succeed in censoring the Internet." The official government censor says: "the conservative and religious culture of the Saudi people means they want to be sure that if they log onto the net they will not be offended." I'm sure that's true for many people; the rest have been buying satellite dishes by the truckload to watch authorized TV.

More information

[kbahey]

I am a Muslim, an Arab, and a resident of Saudi Arabia for the last 11 years.

I have built an extensive web site that describes how the internet is setup, list of all the Saudi ISPs, comparison of prices, service issues, internet cafes, ...etc.

You can check the Saudi ISPs site [2bits.com] for all the details. The Internet Setup in Saudi Arabia page [2bits.com] will give you an idea on the setup.

Slashdot [slashdot.org] is not blocked in Saudi Arabia. However, some links (related to hacking and porn, specially when CmdrTaco does the Quickies) are blocked.

Prior to the internet becoming available to the public (January 1999), there have been rumors that Saudi Arabia will allow access to the internet thru a "White List", meaning that only those sites that are explicitly allowed can be accessed. This turned out to be just a rumor. Only those sites that are explicitly blocked are unaccessible.

I am told that sites are blocked not by an employee seeing that it is inappropriate, but there is an approval process in place (he has to go to higher levels of authority and get approval).

Anyone can recommend a site for blocking or request the unblocking of a site (the links are on the site mentioned above.

My main gripes about the internet in Saudi Arabia are:

• Price
  It is very expensive compared to neighboring countries, even those with a comparable (see the Arabs vs. West page [2bits.com] on the above site.
• Poor Service
  There is overload on the infrastructure. Proxies just make things slower than they should be. Compared to internet access in (say) Alexandria, Egypt, my home town. Access in Saudi Arabia is slow! Check Speed [2bits.com] and Service Watch [2bits.com] pages.

In reality, I have not found this censorship to be bothersome.

You should also consider that there are tons of backdoors available for those who are keen to access something that is blocked.

When an Automatic English to Arabic translation service (Tarjim [tarjim.com]) was made available two months ago, kiddies started to use it as a back door to access pron. The result: it was blocked! (Note to Arabs: The translation isn't any good. Just try it on your own site and sit back and laugh. Bablefish [altavista.com] is ages ahead of it!)

The growth of the internet in Saudi Arabia is explosive. Check the Middle East Internet Statistics [2bits.com] site for details.

You should also consider that The United Arab Emirates also blocks porn from the net. So does Singapore.

To its credit, Saudi Arabia doesn't block any Voice over IP services (Net2Phone, MediaRing, Dialpad, Yahoo Voice Chat, ...etc.), unlike most of the Gulf countries (Kuwait, Qatar, UAE) and even Lebanon, where the Telecom monopolies are afraid of loss of revenue.

This too shall pass

[gatebanger]

Wherever we go, whatever we do, there will always be groups who oppose any change in the status quo. Often, these groups comprise a majority of citizens. Think of it as inertia, or some societal equivalent of hysterisis.

In the case of the Saudis, the Chinese and others, censorship of information is how these governments maintain control of their populations. We do it here in the US by churning out smokescreens to distract the electorate from the real issues. Things like Monica's War and gun control.

This will pass. As information becomes freely available to anyone who cares to look for it, people will no longer be restricted to a single point of view. You can look forward to a certain amount of havoc and economic chaos as the Internet changes the way we work and live. Take advantage of it if you can. This is only the beginning.
--
Nobody asked - just my opinion.
-gatebanger

Gear Internet Content Management Software

[unique123]

At the company I work for we have the same sort of setup using Gear software. I am unable to view porn sites, and many sites determined to be "crime" sites. Has anyone heard of of a way around these systems. I know that http_port can get you over a firewall, but can it get you over Gear?

The company that made it possible

[shario]

A Finnish company Nixu Oy [www.nixu.fi] was hired to create the Saudi Internet infrastructure and censorware. Interestingly enough, Nixu was previously known as a "geeky" shop: They do Unix and DNS consultation and at least earlier they were well known as open source, open protocol and Linux advocates. They have also created the DNS management tool NameSurfer which was later separated into another company, NameSurfer Ltd [namesurfer.com].

For me this is a reminder that not all tree-hugging open-the-goddamn-source people are fanatically against censorship, and that might be good. I guess no Slashdotter actually believes that they can really censor the Internet, and I am sure that as the volume keeps increasing, more and more material critical to the Saudi religious dictatorship gets through.

But I still doubt if it was the primary intention of Nixu Oy people in the first place - Saudi Arabia is rich with oil money anyway...

Look, but don't look.

[ptbrown]

Well of course they're going to hire someone from outside the country to do the reviewing. The idea is to protect their citizens from being exposed to immoral ideas, and it's kind of tricky to determine if something is immoral without looking at it. So they hire a bunch of foreigners, who are heathens anyway and already going to hell, and have them pick out the smut, trash, and blasphemy.

Though I do find it slightly ironic that they're blocking sites with bomb-making information. Allah forbid that some radical Shiites would learn how to build bombs, imagine what they might do!

PS. Apologies to any Moslem /.ers

Hey wait a minute ..

[FooRat]

.. how is this different to the US?

Religion shouldn't be part of gov't

[mind21_98]

I'm Muslim, but I believe that the Koran should not be used as basis for laws. This goes for other religious books also from other religions (such as the Bible.)

I know the Koran is supposed to tell you how to live etc, but I barely go by some of the stricter portions of it. In other words, censorship is sure to come if the country has religious laws and religion as its base.

If people want to break their religions and go to hell, I think they should be allowed to. If they want to be an "honest, faithful" person, let them do that too. Just don't force it upon an entire population.

Religous B.S.

[Raghead]

The royal family in Saudi Arabia also makes sure that any sites that have any information in any way critical of the government are blocked. Funny, they don't mention how they're protecting the sensibilities of their people with this action. This is the biggest reason for censorship in Saudi Arabia; the majority of the royal family could give a rat's ass about their people. They look at them as a source of money only. They could care less if the whole country watches porn 24 hours a day, as long as the people don't see anything that gets them stirred up against the thousands of leeche/princes. The royals pay lip service to Sharia and "muslim sensibilities" in order to keep the real religous factions pacified and because they are terrified of a religous uprising ala Iran. Hence the porn filters.