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."

Comments

Should / Can

[JJ]

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

[Zocalo]

Actually, I'd say that the approach taken by the Chinese, Saudi's and even the Taliban is more Internet friendly than the path taken by more industrialised nations to deal with their differences of opinion with the Internet. These countries' governments are basically accepting that the Internet is a global thing and are choosing to opt out on their own instead of, say, trying to get a foreign company to stop selling Nazi memorabilia to your citizens via the courts because it's against your local laws. The Internet is a global thing, and very few governments seem prepared to deal with this fact on a local level.

Of course, the big problem with the countries above is that their respective populaces have absolutely no say in the matter, for which they do deserve the derision of rest of the world. It's not so much an issue "what is being done", as "who decided it was a good thing".

Re:Should / Can

[JWhitlock]

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, websites that criticize Islam (and my own religion) , 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 from porn from anti-propaganda, 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

[Ami Ganguli]

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

[metis]

You really need to do a teeny tiny bit of thinking for yourself about this problem rather than just spewing out Euro-commie rhetoric.

There is no discussion in the world that cannot be avoided by an honest-to-god mixture of obsceneties and name-calling.

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. Or too moderate to care either way. So that's a fucking truism and an imbecilic metric for anything.

Ah logic!

• Lots of Iranians inside Iran hate the current regime, including, BTW, the Iranian President.
• Almost none of the Iranians who hate the current regime miss the Shah.
• Even those Iranians who do find the current regime worse than the Shah will probably point out that the current regime is the grand-child of the US 1956 toppling of Iranian democracy and putting the Shah in power.

Your comment about how Americans fuck peoples lives and therefore we should just bend over and let people commit acts on terrorism for us for a while until they've finished with their revenge is borderline retarded.

• That American foreign policy fucks people life is an established fact. Your former posts suggest that you agree and think that this is justified. You wouldn't have justified a policy if you thought there was nothing to justify.
• The therefore in the sentence above is your addition. I made no such implication. I only said that is in the long term interests of the US to stop fucking lives.

I have no idea how you can expect me to take you seriously.

I don't expect you to take me seriously. I am just pointing to you the uncomfortable fact that there are billions of people around the world who hate your guts with a blinding and consuming hatred. I am trying to tell you that it is in your best interest to take these billions seriously. Feel free to ignore this advice.

Fundamentalism in the Saudi regime is responsible for a lot of what some people find disgusting about them.

Very true, but fundamentalism is only dangerous when it enjoys popular support. And popular support of fundamentalism is a function of Western sponsored oppression. Compare Saudi Arabia and Egypt where fundamentalism is popular, to Iran, where fundamentalism is fighting a loosing war against the western friendly popular mood.

So it's not that they hate the west because the west supports the Saudis, it's that they hate the Saudi royal family because they are friendly with the west.

The objective truth is that the Arab world is in a mess. Islamic Fundamentalists believe that modernization is the source of this mess, and they are fifty percent right. From that perspective, the Saudi royal family and the Western support thereof is one and the same thing. Both stand in the way of saving the Arab world by turning the wheel back. Regular people, there as everywhere, are not really interested in theories of history. Once the fundamentalists take control, as they did in Iran, the people will judge them by their ability to show results. At that moment, the connection betwwen Western interference and oppression will have disappeared (as it had in Iran). The goverment may still be regressive, but recruiting suicide terrorist against America will be almost impossible.

Re:Should / Can

[JWhitlock]

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.

Enduring Freedom

[jdfox]

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.

Re:Enduring Freedom

[Fnkmaster]

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.

Saudi Arabia is pretty oppressive anyway

[Jormundgard]

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.

Could Free Software be used to oppress people?

[dopevector]

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?

Re:Censorship isn't practical on the net

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

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!"

Censorware authors

[alkali]

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" (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.)

Funding consequences

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

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?