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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.
America has the greatest programmers on Earth. We've produced the MacOS, Solaris, Java, Windows (hey, like M$ or not, Win2k is pretty stable), and Linux.
We should accept that other countries will come to us when they need something written. If they abuse our products to oppress people, then that is not our fault.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
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
Credits: 70%
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our governme
- posted by poopbot: who doesn't like scat?
gmhjngNQtV
- Put down opposition parties
- Solidify military control
- Exploit their workforces through low-wage jobs
- Censor virtually everything else
And now we're all terrible shocked that American firms are being used in the development of censorware for a foreign government? I'm surprised the DOD isn't bankrolling the ENTIRE project.-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Isn't censorware michael's site o' insanity? Where he laments his own fascism?
And now I have this list of 2000+ potentially very interesting sites to explore, with the added pleasure that Saudians are denied access to them !
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Both Peekabooty and Triangle Boy promised a distributed solution to this kind of Net censorship, but Peekabooty doesn't look like it's ready for prime time and Safeweb appear to have shut down the project (dead link to "project with Voice of America"). Is there a viable project that I can install that will do the same anti-censorship job?
One of the most important goals of
our commercial sector is to generate
revenue. From prostitution to selling
of bunk software, they'll do it anyway
they can, so this story shouldn't surprise
anyone. In fact, it's really not even a story.
The only thing that makes this "slashdot worthy"
is the fact that it's our companies promoting
censorship, which red-blooded Americans view
as a tatic of the Reds.
Bear in mind, however, that not all countries,
or citizens of those countries, agree with this.
Morever, some countries can, literally, collapse
when a new and unfamiliar system is imposed.
For a good example of this, look at what happened
to Russia when they dabled briefly in capitalism.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this margin is too small to contain.
Gosh it's hard to imagine a company which works so hard to please the Christian Right here in the USA would be able to find similarities in the Islamic Right.
I know... I know... it's just crazy to think that the Christian Right and the Islamic Right hold very similar view points on opression.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Capitalist law can be pretty harsh.
Corporations are required by their bylaws to make as much money as possible. By any means possible.
If it were legal to mug people, they would. They would have to. If it were legal to sell child porn, they would. They would have to.
One exception.
They won't do it if they think that the public support that they would lose is greater than the profits that they would gain. Corporations do not wish to shoot themselves in the foot to make a buck.
Which is exactly why we should make a big stink about this.
If we let them get away with it, they'll keep doing it. They have to.
But if we bitch and moan and whine and complain and boycott, they'll consider these projects to be shooting themselves in the foot.
That is, if we have money.
By deposition, I am Mrs. Kathleen Fent fiance of homeless CmdrTaco, who until his unfortunate unemployment on the 17th of July 2002 was the Editor for the Slashdot.org weblog. My fiance was in charge of activities between Slashdot and VA Linux/Anover.Net. Most of his activities centered mainly around playing windows games, and selling out. The revenue from selling out was basically used for funding Slashdot's anti-troll bitch-slapping activities.
This Unfortunate incidence which has left me demoralized happened at a LUG near Detroit, which is near Holland, MI. It occurred when Jaime McCarthy checked in a n00b error in SLASH which allowed CLiT trolls to indiscriminately crapflood Slashdot, bringing down mod_perl and mysql. Slashdot died two days later after the incidence, and the entire staff was fired and replaced with ASP coders. Considering the ongoing intensified civil war between CLiT and ACs, I had to relocate to a homeless shelter, thanks to CmdrTaco being evicted from his apartment.
This morning, while searching for papers to start a fire with, I discovered LNUX stock options. A personal hand written memo by CmdrTaco indicated that they were once worth $3,200,000. With the situation I have found myself, I am asking your assistance in putting up a formidable claim for the redemption of these stock options. You will be expected to invest same in your name on my behalf while maintaining my anonymity in your propose business undertaking .My situation is very desperate
and I am incapacitated by the situation, as I do not
have the know-how to handle such amount of money.
I am soliciting your assistance in terms of logistics
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response to my alternative email address at
kathleen@fent.net as soon as possible.
Thanks for your anticipated understanding and co-operation in this respect.
Yours sincerely. Kathleen Fent
This is taken from the Saudi Internet Services Unit Content Filtering pages:
"Blocking the sites by ISU follows a specific policy, it had been stated by the government institutions responsible for introducing the service in Saudi Arabia.
"Pursuant to the Council of Ministers' decree concerning the regulation of use of the Internet in Saudi Arabia, all sites that contain content in violation of Islamic tradition or national regulations shall be blocked. A security committee chaired by the Ministry of Interior was formulated. One of the tasks assigned to this committee is the selection of sites to be blocked and the oversight of this process. However, due to the wide-spread and diverse nature of pornographic sites, KACST was commissioned to directly block these types of sites. Other non-pornographic sites are only blocked based upon direct requests from the security bodies within the government. KACST has no authority in the selection of such sites and it's role is limited to carrying out the directions of these security bodies."
The Berkman Ceter study was done with the cooperation of the Saudi ISU and reported nothing particularly surprising for anyone using commercial software: lots of pornographic sites were blocked, sites they no doubt added were blocked, some other sites that might be otherwise harmless (although not necessarily by Saudi standards) are blocked, and no particular conclusions can be drawn from the types of sites that are (possibly) inadvertantly blocked. [Slashdot is not one of them, according to the study.]
If nothing else, studies like this should help those of us in more permissive countries like the United States in demonstrating that depending on filtering as a technological cure-all has flaws.
I would like to think that the SISU is looking at the list of blocked sites and saying "hey--we didn't mean to block that" and contacting their vendor. Even their home page has an unblocking request form.
Is there something wrong here?
--- "It annoyed me, so I fixed it." -- Tom's First Principle of Engineering
The Saudi Arabian government controls and blocks it's own citizens access to the internet (they're the same people who committed 9/11 right?), yet this is still somehow the fault of the US? What incredible logic.
I spent 93 through 2000 working in Saudi and when we were finally able to get on the net, it quickly became a game with most of us to see just what sites we could get into. We also found that the blocking just wasn't consistant. One day we weren't able to get into a site and then the next week, we could get into just about any site that we wanted to. One thing that did surprise me was that Amnesty International's site was never blocked.
maybe all our internet access is censored....
America and a small group of the biggest assholes on the planet(they call themselves princes) are currently robbing Saudi Arabia blind. Keeping the citizens ignorant is part of the plan. There's a very good reason Saudi citizens hate your guts, American. You earned September 11th.
A company has to do business. Although it seems wrong to me that a country would want to censor the Internet, it is also not right for an American business to deny them service because the principles of the corporation differ from the principles of the country. They're simply doing what they do for a living, and they cannot be held responsible for the way in which their products are used.
Admittedly, however, this is a difficult distinction to make: when does it become wrong to supply one's products to another person, country, group, etc in the name of morals? IBM sold census machines to Nazi Germany, because IBM machines could provide the best means to Nazi ends. Was that wrong of them? Is this company then wrong as well? I think it's very difficult to say.