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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - March 31, 2011
Middle East Regimes Use US Technology to Block Internet
Access
by: Nadia Prupis
truthout.com
Regimes in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have been
using US products to censor anti-government protesters
voicing their dissent on the Internet.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that governments
in the Middle East are buying content-filtering software
from American companies that allows them to prevent access
to web sites that many protesters use to organize movements
for political reform. While the Qaddafi regime in Libya
resorted to a total Internet shutdown the first week of
March, other Middle East governments have turned to
products built by McAfee Inc., Networks Inc. and Blue
Coast Systems Inc., among other companies, in order to
block web sites that allow protesters to share videos and
congregate on Facebook.
As social media becomes a more useful tool in staging
revolutions, pro-democracy bloggers and online activists
have seen a growing backlash from governments who arrest
and beat them to stifle dissent. Now the regimes' oppress-
ive tactics have followed the protesters online.
Canada-based Netsweeper Inc. has also sold Internet-block-
ing technology to buyers in the United Arab Emirates,
Qatar and Yemen, while the Boeing-owned surveillance
company Narus helped Egyptian government forces filter
and track sources of communication.
Web-blocking technology is used in the US to prevent
users from surfing pornography sites in schools or public
libraries and protecting ISPs from viruses and other cyber
attacks. To tackle the problem of those technologies being
used to clamp down on political dissent, the State Depart-
ment has put $20 million into software that helps citizens
in the Middle East dodge Internet censorship. When foreign
governments utilize US products "to filter for political
purposes, we are involved in producing and distributing
software to get around those efforts," a senior State
Department official told The Wall Street Journal.
Likewise, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said
last year, "Censorship should not be in any way accepted
by any company from anywhere. And in America, American
companies need to take a principled stand."
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Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) wrote last month for
Politico, "The Internet has helped activists from Morocco
to Iran organize demonstrations and publicize human rights
abuses... With a few notable exceptions, the technology
industry is failing to address serious human rights
challenges."
"US technology companies allow millions around the world
to express themselves more fully and freely. But the
industry has a moral obligation to ensure that its
products and services do not help repressive governments,"
Durbin wrote.
But Ahmed Aldoseri, director of information and communi-
cation technologies at the Telecommunications Regulatory
Authority in Bahrain, told The Wall Street Journal, "[the]
culture that we have in the Middle East is much more
conservative than in the US," and that freedom of speech
is only guaranteed "as long as it remains within general
politeness."
A statement from McAfee Inc. said the company "has no
control over, or visibility into how an organization
implements its own filtering policy."
When pro-democracy demonstrations began in Tunisia in
January, a wave of anti-government revolutions rippled
across the Middle East. Prior to the uprisings, Tunisia
was ranked alongside China as the world's second-worst
online performer.
Prominent Chinese blogger and activist Ran Yufei was
arrested Monday for inciting subversion of state power.
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