Censorship in Saudi Arabia

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[edit] Internet

Saudi Arabia directs all international Internet traffic through a proxy farm located in King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology. Content filter is implemented there, based on software by Secure Computing.^[1] Additionally, a number of sites are blocked according to two lists maintained by the Internet Services Unit (ISU) [1]: one containing "immoral" (mostly pornographic) sites, the other based on directions from a security committee run by the Ministry of Interior (including sites critical of the Saudi government). An interesting feature of this system is that citizens are encouraged to actively report "immoral" sites for blocking, using a provided Web form. The legal basis for contents filtering is the resolution by Council of Ministers dated 12 February 2001 ^[2]. According to a study carried out in 2004 by the OpenNet Initiative: The most aggressive censorship focused on pornography, drug use, gambling, religious conversion of Muslims, and filtering circumvention tools.^[1]

However, Saudi Arabia has been noted to also actively block and filter access to "politically astray" and other websites that the regime deems inappropriate.