Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Western Sahara. Egypt is often celebrated for its relative lack of overt censorship,
reflective of a regime eager to encourage tourism and court foreign investors. Even
so, the Egyptian state created an agency in 2004, the Department to Combat
Crimes of Computers and Internet, to censor ''subversive'' internet sites, and has
arrested programmers, journalists and human rights activists for violating cen-
sorship standards. In 2001, Shuhdi Surour, the webmaster for al-Ahram Weekly
newspaper was arrested for posting a poem online critical of the state (Bahgat
2004
). Despite the government's attempts to halt the publication of several topics,
many authors found alternative outlets on the Web (Gauch
2001
). The Muslim
Brotherhood's cyberactivities were closely monitored by the Mubarak regime,
which closed the country's internet for several days during the Arab Spring, but to
no avail.
Oman and Yemen offer contrasting models of internet censorship. In Oman, the
government-owned OmanTel is the monopoly provider of fixed and mobile tele-
phony services, and facilitated the purchase of PCs through installment payments.
In contrast, Yemen's government ordered all internet cafes to remove physical
barriers between computers to ensure users lacked privacy when on-line (OpenNet
Initiative
2006
), leading to a decline in the number of such establishments. Almost
all Yemen's efforts, implemented through a product called Websense, are directed
against pornography, although some anti-Islamic sites are also blocked.
Israel's enduring confrontation with the Palestinians has also taken the form of
internet censorship. Before the Oslo Accord of 1995, the Israeli military's Order
1279 forbid Palestinians from using electronic transmissions for political purposes,
including leased telephone lines (Parry
1997
). In response, Palestinians in the West
Bank created a wireless network, PalNet, using microwave transmitters, which has
been subject to occasional disruptions by the Israeli army. In 2000, the Israeli
government attempted to shut down several Hezbollah websites, leading to
retaliation by Palestinian hackers against the Israeli Foreign Ministry's website,
flooding it with spam messages. The Palestinian Authority launched a Hebrew-
language version of its Wafa news agency website to circumvent what it called
Israel censorship of cyberinformation. The Israeli government has also actively
recruited bloggers to combat anti-Zionist websites, including those that deny the
Holocaust. Finally, it should be noted that the ultraorthodox community within
Israel has attempted to impose internet censorship as well, efforts directed pri-
marily at preventing access to adult material on-line.
One of the world's more repressive governments in terms of internet regulation,
Iran maintains strict control over cyberspace through its state-owned telecom-
munications monopoly, Telecommunication Company of Iran, run through the
Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, to which all Iranian
ISPs are connected. Like many countries, Iran manages its censorship at the level
of ISPs, which must agree to prohibit access to ''non-Islamic'' web sites. As the
internet has emerged as prominent domain in which political dissent, the gov-
ernment's restrictions have grown proportionately. In 2001, the government
assumed control over all international traffic entering or leaving the country, and
claims to have blocked access to five million websites. Roughly 20 official
