Internet censorship in Arab countries
// December 29th, 2007 // 3 Comments » // The Future of the Web
According to a recent study by “Reporters Without Borders”, a group of journalists who fight against censorship practiced webs, indicates that five of the 13 biggest Internet censors, found in the Middle East.
Governments in the Middle East are developing campaigns for censorship and surveillance in an effort to prevent an estimated 33.5 million Internet users, can see a varied range of websites whose content ranging from human rights to pornography. For this reason, million users in the Middle East during the day are difficult to access news sites and popular like Facebook access, Flick, Yahoo o My Space.
In Iran, a large red icon appears on the computer screen. In Syria, appears a discreet note from content filtering. Other Arab nations make the text appear “Blocked” in bold letters and also the usual form with the answer “Page found in”.
But, censors messages clearly indicate the type: “You are not allowed to view this website”.
Only four Arab countries have little or no content filtering. These are: Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt — Although Egyptian politicians are considering some kind of law that criminalize certain activities on the network.
HOSTILE NATIONS
On the other side of the spectrum, Syria and Saudi Arabia, consistently identified by human rights groups as the countries most hostile to the internet. The remaining regions are somewhere in between, with governments importing the latest technology to narrow the number of sites available to the public and creating laws to reduce on-line dissidents.
As the logical, These bans have led to an explosion of inventions, proxy servers that allow Internet users, filters result in foreign government. In cyber cafes from Damascus to Dubai, heads furtively browse blocked sites or by exchange of the latest web addresses”proxies.” Some young Iranian Arabs, most technologically advantaged, use new proxies every day in order to stay one step ahead of government censorship.
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