Earlier this year, China announced that it didn’t like porn online, so by the year 2008 China would be pornography free thanks to their state-of-the-art web filters. Saudi Arabia took that mission on ages ago, and even if it’s not perfect, they have a system going. China blocks information about past rebellions, Saudi Arabia is known to block any ’suspicious’ political websites that crop up. China requests international cooperation, Saudi Arabia just works without it. China finds a bad page on a big site so it blocks access to the page, Saudi Arabia finds a page it doesn’t like on a big site the entire domain is blocked.
It’s not just the DSL or the dial-up, it’s the mobile communications and the SMS messages too. Calls to “problem territories” such as Gaza and the West Bank rarely go through, and SMS messages sent are all heavily moderated. TV Show-sponsored SMS messages are dumped without a thought, and the sender is never even informed.
If you’re interested in evading it you’re going to have to go really far out of your way. Access to all know proxy websites and IPs, alternate online gateways, or otherwise data channeling via a foreign source are all disabled. You can’t access even a private tunnel if it’s running a publicly available proxy script. Just not gonna happen. That and the fact that STC has it’s IP addresses blocked at a great number of online social sites such as Slashdot, digg, and Wikipedia (ast two are on and off, a mood thing) makes it kind of hard to keep in touch with others or really find out what’s going on.
We don’t have numbers because there are none to give. This thing is huge, it’s not just one country or two, it’s a way of life. It boils down to ethics, privacy, and freedom of choice. Do we need them, or are they just frivolous extras we’d simply like to have? Either way, there is one thing clear: a choice needs to be made, and rights have to be protected. Maybe they were right to block that one site, maybe even the next… But at some point we won’t agree, and someone’s going to be right while another is wrong. Yesterday it was the people of China, today it’s Saudi Arabia’s citizens, and tomorrow.. it just might be you.
Nice read, glad to see your still with us.
Thanks Kris, I’m personally still on the road, but I have some shreds of internet access to hold on to 🙂
The same thing happens EXACTLY in Iran. some regims just can’t understand freedom. And I hope all of them fade away soon.
People are free to leave the country.
I personally ENCOURAGE censhorship when it comes to pornographic material (which is what is mostly censored in the middle east)
In Egypt, The system is totally opposite.Pornography is totally uncensored ,while political sites are censored(including bulletins that talk about politics in the way that the gov. doesn’t like).
There isn’t much you can do… When the country you live and die in is blocking access to the sites and close proxies and loopholes even as they are found/created, there’s pretty much absoloutely nothing you can do about it.
China firewall is lame ? use Freedur.com to bypass it. You can bypass China Great Firewall and access youtube.com and all other sites which are blocked.
Oh! It’s weird alright in Saudi. I remember I would surf the US Cosmopolitan site regularly, and within 2-3 weeks half the articles in it were blocked. I still had access to the site but all other content was blocked. Weird… They not only block sites but even pages. So a lifestyle magazine will have all pages with “inappropriate content” blocked. One thing I’ve noticed is that the more you block content, the more weird people become. Saudi men are actually quite the playboys and the addiction to pornography is extreme here. It’s weird. And sometimes if you have a CD with you at the airport, they check it! They actually play the CD and fine you if the content is “inappropriate”… Even the online Saudi community groups which haven’t been blocked or now are, are filled with pornographic groups which just shows their obsession with it. lol… I reckon one needs freedom to avoid becoming a pervert. Maybe extreme content can be blocked, but they’ve even blocked science sites related to human reproduction and sex organs… =S
So you dont like it right? Get outta my country. Nobody is forcing you.
” If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. ”
” Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. ”
George Orwell
Fascinating story. Never heard of this previously. Makes sense though, a country so far behind in many areas, such as woman’s rights. Why not just add sensorship to their bag.
I approve the firewall ,to an extent.
Blocking a whole a domain based on a page is just sick,it’s like blaming a whole country based on one citizen action.(America did that too ,btw)
Torrents sites are now blocked,it’s not about porn it’s about making people hear only what they are meant to hear.
If there is one thing I know ,that would be “knowledge is power” and taking that right from us is crossing the red line.
But who cares ,we’re like cattle (ARABS as a whole),we’re on the bottom of the prymiad not wanting to fight the top and reach it.
This is enslavement people ,mass enslavement.
That was a good read, written 5 years ago by someone not arabic.:)
Questions for NS:
1.How did you obtain this information “All requests are invisibly handled by a proxy server on the ISP?s side?
2.If all DSL and dial-up connections are based on one ISP,how about satellite-broadband and ISP wireless connections?
Please reply ASAP,thanks!!!