[Nettime-bold] Internet under burquah in Saudi Arabia - with the US help

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

As this war progressed, I was often wondering whether the US 
bombs the wrong country. Maybe the CIA had old maps again. I do 
not remember any Afghan among the terrorists identified so far.

While Taliban, short on resources, simply ban all modernity, their 
Wahabbist brothers in Saudi Arabia deal with the modernity, in, 
well, modern way: hiring American engineers to do the job for them.

ivo


------- Forwarded Message Follows -------

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/technology/19SAUD.html

November 19, 2001

Companies Compete to Provide Saudi Internet Veil

By JENNIFER 8. LEE

Nearly a dozen software companies, most of them American, are competing for 
a contract to help Saudi Arabia block access to Web sites the Saudi 
government deems inappropriate for that nation's half-million Internet users.

For the companies, the Saudi account would be important not only for the
direct revenue — which analysts say could be worth several million dollars
— but also for its value as a flagship that could help win similar contracts
from other governments.

Pornographic sites, the biggest Internet business in other countries, make
up the overwhelming majority of the sites blocked in Saudi Arabia,
distantly followed by sites that may be sensitive for political or religious
reasons.

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, of San Jose, Calif., that currently 
provides Internet-filtering software to the Saudi government under a 
contract that expires in 2003.

Secure Computing hopes to renew that contract but has competition from
at least 10 other companies from the United States, Britain, Germany and
the Netherlands.

"This would be a terrific deal to win — an important deal to win," said
Geoff Haggart, a vice president at Websense, a San Diego company that has 
begun a software trial with the Saudi government and is considered a top 
contender for its contact.

Websense's current clients include more than half of the Fortune 500
companies, the United States Army and Saudi Aramco, the large Saudi oil
company. Other software that Saudi Arabia has considered includes
products from Surf Control, a London company; N2H2, of Seattle; and
Symantec, a Cupertino, Calif., company.

Within the Islamic world, religious sensitivities and security-conscious
regimes can combine to create a technophobic atmosphere. Governments
in Muslim nations, among them Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates,
have made overtures to Internet filtering companies. But no Muslim nation
has been as active a user of the software as has Saudi Arabia. By royal
decree, virtually all public Internet traffic to and from Saudi Arabia has
been funneled through a single control center outside Riyadh since the
Internet was introduced in the kingdom nearly three years ago.

If the Riyadh center blocks a site, a warning screen pops up warning the
user, in English and Arabic, "Access to the requested URL is not allowed!"

"The Internet is a frightening place to some people," said Mr. Holt, who
oversees sales operations in the Middle East for Secure Computing. "The
government feels the need to intervene."

In Saudi Arabia, the government spent two years designing a centralized
control system before gingerly opening the spigot to the Internet in
February 1999. At the time, the government selected Secure Computing's
SmartFilter software from four competing products from the United States,
in part because the company offered a discount. The company and Saudi
officials declined to disclose the contract terms.

SmartFilter came with ready-made categories like pornography and
gambling and was customized to include specific sites the Saudis perceived
as defaming Islam or the royal family.

With the Secure Computing contract set to expire in little more than a year,
rivals are actively courting Saudi technology officials. The companies are
promoting their expanded Arabic-language capabilities. They are selling
their ease of customization for sites considered anti-Islam or anti-royal
family. They are donating engineers to support trials, while steeply
discounting their list prices. One German company even offered the service
for free, according to an executive involved in the competition.

Corporate customers and the United States Army generally use filtering
software to prevent their users from viewing pornography, gambling or
otherwise frittering away time on the job. But Saudi Arabia is one of the
countries with the most centralized control of Internet content of various
types, according to a report by the advocacy group Reporters Without
Borders.

Another country highlighted in the report is China, whose government
blocks various foreign media and human rights Web sites by using
domestic software. The United States government recently introduced a
plan to establish a computer network to help Chinese residents circumvent
their government's fire wall. But so far, Washington has not taken similar
steps in Saudi Arabia, which brooks little political dissent but is one of the
United States' closest allies among Middle Eastern Muslim nations.

"We have a really serious problem in terms of the American free speech
idea," said Jack Balkin, a professor at the Yale Law School who studies
the politics of Internet filtering. "But it is very American to make money.
Between anticensorship and the desire to make money, the desire to make
money will win out."

Saudi security agencies identify the political Web sites that are considered
for inclusion on the blacklist. Among the banned sites are the Committee
for the Defense of Human Rights in the Arabian Peninsula
(www.cdrhap.com) and the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia
(www.islah.org). Even some less politically charged sites, including ones
that recount the history of Saudi Arabia, are blocked.

In response to Internet filtering, many Saudis either dial up foreign Internet
service providers, use Web sites that protect the user's identity or engage
in a cat-and-mouse game with Web sites that frequently change their
addresses to elude filters. (For such sites, like the one operated by
Islah.org, would-be visitors send e-mail to a fixed address and receive the
new Web address.)

It is because filtering for an entire country is a logistically tricky task 
that
the Saudi government is looking for new software. "It's not that we are
unhappy with the product, we're just looking for a better solution," said
Eyas S. al-Hajery, who plays a major role in the selection process and has
evaluated various software filters.

The competition is up in the air, said Dr. Hajery, who directs the
Information Security Center at King Abdulaziz City for Science and
Technology, the institution that serves as Saudi Arabia's Internet control
valve. "We are very open to try other choices," he said.

The marketing pitches pour in weekly through e-mails, phone calls and
in-person presentations. But the decision will have less to do with
marketing than customer service after the sale, Dr. Hajery said.

Customer service is important because Saudi Arabia's filtering effort is so
large in scope and so highly customized. The Saudi Internet staff says it
tries to be reasonable within the guidelines, and it provides Web forms for
users to request additions or removals from the blacklists.

Dr. Hajery says his staff of a dozen employees receives more than 500
suggestions a day from the public to block sites that the authorities have
missed. The requests are reviewed by the staff and about half of them are
ultimately added to the blacklist — up to 7,000 URL's monthly. Many of
the sites forbidden on religious grounds are gleaned through this process,
since the staff members are primarily focused on ferreting out pornography
sites, Dr. Hajery said. The center also receives more than 100 requests a
day to remove specific sites from the blacklist — many because they have
been wrongfully characterized by the SmartFilter software, he said.

Secure Computing disputes this, saying that all of its sites are reviewed by
people after being screened by the software.

Some sites become incidental victims to the government's broad snare. In
August 2000, the Saudi government decided to block access to all Yahoo
online clubs because many clubs were popular for pornography. After the 
move elicited protest from people who use various Yahoo clubs to 
communicate about everything from engineering to cooking, the center began 
selectively unblocking nonpornographic Yahoo sites at users' requests.

Many Saudis support the government's ban on pornography. But sites
banned for political reasons incite protests. A 28-year- old claims assistant
at Royal and SunAlliance Insurance, who is a member of the Shiite
minority in Saudi Arabia, where the majority of Muslims are Sunni, said in
an e- mail interview that a Web site containing basic information about his
village near the town of Qatif had been blocked.

He compared Internet filtering to the Saudi national emblem, two crossed
swords below a date palm.

"You can look straight and eat from that palm tree as much as you want,"
he said, "but if you ever try to look to your right or left side, there'll be a
sword waiting to chop off your head."
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