The Federal Government has said it will introduce a new law requiring Internet service providers to filter all Internet connections – including yours – early this year. The stated goal of the filter is to protect children, however the filter will only serve to give parents a false sense of security. It will not block the vast majority of sites unsuitable for children, nor mitigate the other, more serious risks facing children online such as cyber-bullying.The list of sites to be blocked will be secret, and not open to public review. It comes with no guarantees about how it might be expanded later by this or future… governments. Concerned? There’s still time to make your voice heard. Contact your federal representative nocleanfeed.com Sign EFAs Senate petition www.efa.org.au Spread the word join the blackout! www.internetblackout.com.au Black out your online profile picture now www.internetblackout.com.au Black out your website during …Blackout www.internetblackout.com.au Don’t let those who came before us down. Say no to internet censorship.
The Role of the ISU and Saudi Censorship
You may not be surprised to learn that Saudi Arabia is amongst the leaders in filtering and censoring the internet. A rather strict political and religious regime combined with lots of cash to spend on filtering technology meant it was always on the cards.
The department who are in charge of ensuring that the citizens of Saudi Arabia don’t access anything their rulers don’t like is called the ISU ( Internet Services Unit). THeir official remit is quite benign – blocking anything that is against the Qu’ran and pornography. Unfortunately this scope seems now to have been extended to include lots of other topics – freedom of speech, womens rights, any non-muslim religions and loads of humanitarian websites. The other main category that keep the ISU busy is any web sites that says anything negative about the Saudi Royal.
The technology used by the ISU is based on quite an old technology called Smartfilter – recently bought by McAffee. It’s not actually that smart compared with some other products but it is quite effective against most users. The filter is just a large list of URLs from a central database, supplemented by all the urls added by the ISU including all the ‘free speech’ sites.
You can actually beat internet filtering like this fairly easily by using a VPN based function, or sometimes just a simple proxy will work. However remember Saudi Government take their spying quite seriously and have recently installed hidden cameras in many internet cafes. Alas the internet is not quite as free in some countries as others, who knows what will be accessible in Saudi in a few more years.