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Fri. Aug 02, 2002

Saudi Surfers Censored

Saudi Surfers Censored – It somewhat defies good sense to continue to give any attention to John Bradley of Arab News, so as a way of waving bye-bye to his predictable yackety-yack, we offer one last example of hypocrisy: "...Taranto has been providing a link to a hate-mail oriented, extreme right-wing website that acts as a kind of magnet for Arab-haters. It is largely devoted these days to launching personal attacks on me, since I am what the posters seem unable to comprehend: A Westerner who lives in Saudi Arabia, has Saudi friends, and genuinely likes the life here. The posters appear particularly to loathe everything Saudi Arabian, although none of them have ever been here. Almost needless to say, the hate site itself has oh-so-conveniently blocked all access to those surfing the Net in Saudi Arabia."

You can get all the details from Charles Johnson, the target of the blather above. But, you know, if you’re in Saudi Arabia, and have trouble reaching sites ranging from RollingStone.com to iVillage.com, to any of the personal home pages at Geocities or AOL, there may be another reason: "These sites are among the 2,000 blocked by the Saudi Government, a Harvard Law School has found. Most of the blacklisted sites were sexually explicit or about religion. But also caught in the net were sites about women, health, drugs and pop culture. ’We found blockage of quite a bit of content beyond political content and pornography,’ said Ben Edelman, one of the researchers behind the report [...] Saudi Arabia filters all internet traffic through a central array of proxy servers maintained by the Internet Services Unit (ISU). The servers route and filter all internet traffic. ’Our internet service is unique in the way it preserves our Islamic values, filtering the internet content to prevent the materials that contradict with our beliefs or may influence our culture is one of ISU tasks,’ says the ISU site."

Because we all know the Saudi people are not capable of viewing various materials and viewpoints, then arriving at their own conclusions. At least, that appears to be the position of the Saudi government.