Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Company Helps Saudi Arabia Censor The Net
John writes: "Saudi Arabia blocks its citizens' internet access to some sites on pornography, religious information (including some on the state religion: Islam) humor, music, movies, and homosexuality, and programs that translate web pages into Arabic, according to this Boston Globe article.
(Secure Computing Corp.) provides the Saudis with Smartfilter to block network of proxy servers.
The article does not describe the criteria used to block various cites. I wonder if Slashdot is one of them?" Update: 07/17 15:02 GMT by T : A brief mention ran yesterday at the Censorware Project as well, linking to the referenced report itself.
US companies make all sorts of things that other countries buy.
One could mention bombs, but that's probably a bit emotional for someone upset by a software company selling software.
Although it is ugly, this practice is hardly news...US companies have been helping countries censor their internet (and do other bad shit with our technology) for decades Cisco's Great Firewall of China is a perfect example...also, yahoo China is another great example of this type of censorship (I'm not gonna serach for the Cisco firewall link again -- but its out there in the Slashdot archives) .
Let's also not forget about IBM's assistance to Nazi Germany during WWII -- cataloging and tracking all of the people that the Nazi's wanted to do away with was a monumental task, and IBM was right there to assist.
Although assisting Nazi Germany does not necessarily equate to firewalling China, or censoring Saudi Arabia, what I'm saying is that US companies have always been willing to take on less-than-honorable causes in order to earn a buck...because if they don't do it, their competitor will. Didn't everyone already know this?
-Turkey
-Turkey