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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."
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.
"I hate people, but i love Gatherings. Isn't it ironic?" -- Randall Graves, Clerks
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.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
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!
Why don't they just use AOL?
</joke>
"I figure you're here 'cause you need some whacko who's willing to stick his finger in the fan. So who are we helping?
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)!
Yes, this is my protest to the sig char limit
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."
Live to be Moderated
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
-- Do not bite the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.
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.
What's to stop a Saudi (or Chinese) citizen from dialing into another another country for internet acess?
"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...)
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
Please do your best to post links to pretty pr0n pictures. Direct links to sites, especially ones where if you go up a level you get an actual index directory listing. Please! No goatse either! It is your destiny!
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!
This is pretty funny, particularly for a Chinese dude like me who grew up learning all there is to learn about the PR of C (think "US of A").
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 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 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.
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
corkscrew
NSTX
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.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
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
.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.
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. 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
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.
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
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.
Privacy is terrorism.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
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.
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.
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?
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Well, at least someone is.
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.
-Why don't you post a non-reg mirror first. (somethin like archive.nyt....)
INFLICT SOME SELF-INFLICTED TERROR
-~5000 people got killed.(terrible bla bal bla...)
-~4 million people were fired because of self inflicted damage (=self imposed restrictions by US.). I hope you are one of them.....
-1000 afgans were killed yesterday in a bombing by.......No not bin laden.
hmmmmm..... any saudis there? is slashdot blocked? just wondering.... :P
Moslemen M. Macarambon Jr. http://www.junmacarambon.com/
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.
... because Saudi Arabia is #5 in countries with the most number of visitors that visit NineNine . It's not a lot, but there definately is traffic from Saudi Arabia (surfers using .sa).
Especially not when ignorant people still cling to the belief that it -is- the greatest country in the world. Had a look at any real statistics lately, Mr. Joe Q. Patriot? Norway has currently been rated by the UN as the best overall country to live in. You might want to consider flying your star-spangled banner at half-mast/
... if the corps have their way.
Dude, you'd better know your enemy before you stop spouting off. If it were up to business, the Net in the US would be wide open. The people looking to lock it down are people your favorite Nazi-like government official: John Ashcroft. Him and his Bible-thumping ilk are the ones calling for it, not the businesses. Get a clue.
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?
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.
Secret searches, Secret Trials, Secret EXECUTIONS.
Removal of information form Public Librarys, Removal of results from search engines.
All of these are America NOW. I havn't heard any details of secret trials or executions happening, but the authority has been granted.
I took an oath, as did every member of congress, and the president to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC.
How come our elected officials are not honoring that oath??
Back in the U.S.S.A
This also allows them to force content providers who want access to the arabic world to police the content.
The only reason this is even vaguely possible is because of the Saudie tendency to solve problems by throwing lots of money at them. Long distance phone calls to europe for dialup access get to be a pain.
But I do think they are fighting a loosing battle.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
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.
Last post!
You really think that the UN directly equates freedom and liberty with being "best"? Norway is a great country, sure, but you need to be thankful for what you got. We ain't been best by any standard except our own, for a long time. But that's still good enough for a whole big bad bunch of us.
The racist and facist Saudi 'ruling class' are
a bunch of whore mongering swine
as far as I can tell.
We should just shut off the internet all
together for these pigs.
Let them live in the stone age.
They want us all to die on our own flem.
Osama was given 300 million and he
could have spent his life as a philantropist.
Instead he will die like the swine that he is.
Too bad, because Arab culture isn't that
bad and Islam has a lot of good ideas.
When will we liberate the oppressed Saudi's
from their hate-mongering aristocracy?
They should be next.
CUT OFF THEIR INTERNET
and let them live in the stone age.
why? They are oppressors and
go against the tide of freedom.
The Saudi government is organized crime
put into power by foriegn interests.
They finance hate speech against America.
They play both sides against the middle.
They think that they are better than the rest
of us.
The Saudi government is illegitamate.
They the Arab equivalent of NAZIs
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).
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 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)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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" (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.)
"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."
I think what he was trying to say was, between the desire of corporations to stick it up your arz and that right to hollar "ouch", the penis will win.
We should not be allies with countries that ignore human rights like Saudi Arabia. They show a blatant disregard for human rights with their ban on Christianity, censorship, and torture. The Saudis are an Islamic Fundamentalist state just like the Iatollah. We shouldn't support them just because they have all that oil. This internet firewall is just another example of their disregard for free speech.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
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.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
What if you used a Beowulf clus... nevermind
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I mean, caching proxies are easily turned into filtering ones, and mail filters into censorship tools restricting the free exchange of mail. This will be a tricky one to nail!
The ones who oughta feel ashamed of themselves, I feel, are the system administrators working for these regimes. They really should commit little acts of sabotage from their positions of power and help smash the control apparatus.
Of course it's risky business, but it's the freedom of humanity we're talking about here. Speaking as someone who lives in Singapore, I have suffered from the effects of intense censorship and the one-party rule that has persisted for decades.
p.s. Oh yeah, you Internal Security Department creeps can kiss my ass. Come get me!
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.
One simple rule for its versus it's
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?
-- look, cheese ahoy!
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.
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.
Hopefully Secure Computing will lose the contract next year. Apprently the people at Secure Computing feel that the Saudi people do not deserve to have the same freedoms which afford Secure Computing the luxury to do business in the first place. Not only is secure computing not doing anything to promote freedom of information, but Secure Computing has actually agreed to help take the Saudi peoples access to information away. I hope everyone takes the time to let Secure Computing know how you feel about their drive to squelch the free exchange of ideas.
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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.
http://saveie6.com/
The ruling families have dealt with this by setting up a welfare state. Most of the people work for the government in make-work jobs, and everything from food to gasoline to housing to education is heavily subsidized with oil money.
So far, it's worked.
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.
Are you kidding? Porn makes the internet run! If you censor it, nobody will be able to afford bandwidth anymore.
The US supports with money and weapons a disgusting regime because it provides a steady supply of oil and generally cooperates with the US.
Without that oil, at this point in time, the West is *fucked*. Well, it would not be fucked should the US actually put taxes on gas and reduce its consumption, instead of wasting 3 times the amount per capita Europeans do.
In my book if you fund an act, then you are liable from the consequences of it. Bin laden paid for it and he actually formed the group who did it himself. He is therefor guility if he personally knew about it or not.
As in: the American taxpayers fund CIA, CIA funds the Pakistani ISI, ISI funds and trains "some" Afghan mujaheddins including Bin Laden?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Well, keep in mind that had the Taliban captured those guys, the reverse, including execution, would have been true. Don't feel too bad about a beating.
Urbis et orbi. Doh! :)
This story has been mentioned on one of my favorite websites, Glenn Reynolds' InstaPundit.com.
Glenn is a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law. 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, from the April, 2001 Environmental Law Reporter.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I've banned what I believe is the entire nation of Saudi Arabia from my web site 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.
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.
Rob Carlson
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?
the regime does not support terrorism
Well, maybe the Israelis don't agree. Anyway, if the government doesn't support terrorism, an important part of the population does.
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.
Fundamentalist religious indoctrination is supported by the Saudi government in and out of Arabia.
like the Taliban. I.e. substantially worse than the current Saudi government
It's very difficult to be worse that Taliban.
Saudi Arabia tries by death penalty, supression of free speech, unfair trials, torture, discrimination against women, mistreatment of refugees and inmigrants.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I know lots of Iranians who hate the current regime. They are the ones who left. Naturally the ones who stayed were largely opposed to the Shah.
What do they think of the Shah? Hating the Islamic republic doesn't mean longing for the Empire in every case. What would your Iranian acquaintances like for a government?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Many countries use a proxy to block access to some websites, but when I lived in Singapore, you could just use a public proxy instead of the government-ISP appointed one and could then visit every web site.
The quickest way to become an atheist is to study the Bible thoroughly.
The Saudi regime is trying desparately to hold onto power but their legitimisation comes through the Wahhabis who proclaim them as guardians of the two holy cities. The Wahhabis live in the 16th century and prefer it that way. The Saudis princes like their luxuries so many live a double life, but it only works for those with money
My implementing the firewalls, this guy is as much as an oppressor as those westerners who advise secret police forces in Saudi and elsewhere.
See my journal, I write things there
Anyone with an international telephone line (i.e. an awful lot of "ordinary" people") can bypass the system and dial an external ISP. That's all it takes.
FYI, I was not implemting this filtering system - I led the effort to build and operate a licensed ISP which offered ordinary Saudis and expatriates living there some level of Internet access (albeit degraded by filtering). The filtering is provided by the government at a central location: all ISPs have to connect to the Internet via the centrally controlled system. (Indeed all ISPs also had to use dial-up POPs provided by Saudi Telecom, although that was less do do with moral control and more to do with protecting a monopoly operator!)
Your point about Saudi princes (and don't forget the princesses!) leading a double life is true for many. They have a LOT of money, but the Saudi trick, to date, is to allow just enough of this huge wealth to trickle down to ordinary Saudis. Give'em some but not too much is the tactic.
Of course this too is a precarious balancing act...
Anyway, to answer your speciific question: I'm no troll, but for real (although that's not to say that I'm right!).
God forbid that any Saudi web surfers could see anything that could compete with forward-thinking fundamentalist islam.
I read Bin Laden's Declaration of War (his manifesto of sorts), and it explains his position very well. Basically, 400 Saudis (religious scholars, academicians and other prominent people) signed a diplomatically-worded letter sent to the Royal Family explaining what was happening to the country (growing debt), and how the Americans army was there for their own selfish needs,.... and before long, all 400 were victimized in some way -- kicked out of the country, ridiculed, imprisoned/tortured, or mysteriously disappeared.
It didn't take long for him to figure out the country's Royal Family was being held in power by the Americans (army and intelligence). So he had no other choice but to go after them. I mean, he tried playing fair, but didn't get far.
It's sad that close to 7000 innocent people had to die on 9/11, but to both sides (American govt. and Bin Laden), innocent lives are nothing more than obstructions on a battlefield.
The U.N. on the otherhand, is one big fat bloated organization that sits around and does nothing. I bet U.N. employees have typical civil-service-like cushy jobs where they sit around on their asses and just push paper all day. America is the true enforcer, but they're only motivated by their own needs. If the UN really had the power to enforce, the world would definitely be a safer place.
In times like this, it's quite understandable why people choose to ignore the news and other world events... There's very little they can do about it!
Just my 2 cents...
Bin laden views the royal family as oppressors and he hoped iraq would liberate his country from the royal family.
He was actually on the view that Saudis should defend their country against Iraqi invasion without involving the Americans.
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.
Mi klopodas varbi por Esperanto.
Information has a tendancy to break through whatever walls people try to put up. All it needs is one hole and it's in.
"A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea."
Victor Hugo,
The History of a Crime
Overview of technology, security, and life in general
It is illegal to connect to the internet in Australia without either
1) Having filtration software installed
or
2) Paying a monthly fee to the ISP to have your connection run through a filtration proxy.
I think Malaysia also has an internet proxy.
The issue is that most people are happy about filtering out the 10 year old being raped, the problem is at what point do the dissident viewpoints get hammered. This is actually, why I am not directly against pro-Nazi sites, the same rules can be used to supress other sources of info like the excrable Drudge Report. The bastard might be a right-wing lacky, but he was correct to reveal the Clinton approach to employer-employee relations. Could that kind of exposure happen in Saudi?
The other side of the Saudi question is that whilst the rich can drink/gamble/whore themselves away, it is more difficult for the poor - and this number is growing. I think you also allude to the fact that one day it may blow up in the faces of the ruling classes.
See my journal, I write things there
So as not to single out Secure Computing, none of the other commercial web filtering systems were any bloody good either.
Hats off to squidguard though, absolutely fantastic!!! Just you have to be (or at least, it's very much to be) a little 'gray' to seed your filter-list, mind you I'm sure that this small IP issue isn't such a problem for many of the countries who require filtered web access ;-)
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... 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