Sell Out: Blocking an Open Net 515
Governments in Muslim nations, as well as China, have repeatedly made overtures to and done business with Net-filtering companies. But no nation has used blocking software as vigorously as Saudi Arabia, according to the New York Times. By royal decree, virtually all public Internet traffic to and from the kingdom has been funneled through a single control center outside Riyadh since the Net was first introduced there three years ago. If the Riyadh center blocks a site, a warning appears in both English and Arabic: "Access to the requested URL is not allowed!" Saudi Arabia blocks sex and pornography sites, as well as those relating to religion and human rights.
Now nearly a dozen software companies, most American, are competing for a hefty new contract to help block access to even more sites the Saudi government deems inappropriate for its country's half-million Net users. In fact, the Saudi government is helping to pioneer something once thought impossible -- a sanitized Net for an entire nation and culture.
American software companies are only too happy to help them do it. Software executives say they are only providing politically neutral tools. "Once we sell them the product, we can't enforce how they use it," Matthew Holt, a sales executive for San Jose's Secure Computing, told the Times earlier this week. Secure provides filtering software to the Saudi government under a contract that expires in 2003. The Saudi government is also reportedly talking with Websense, SurfControl and N2H2 of Seattle.
The Saudi government has already spent a fortune to design its centralized control system before permitting Net use a few years ago, selecting Secure Computing's Smart Filter software from four competing U.S. products. SmartFilter came with ready-made blocking categories like pornography and gambling and was also customized to exclude sites the Saudis perceived as bad for Islam, the royal family, or the country's political positions.
This is a radical assault on the spirit of the Net, of its open, point-to-point design, its great promise to democratize information. By allies, no less. And don't for a minute think there aren't plenty of fanatics and zealots in the United States who won't love the idea as well. Remember that the Harry Potter series is now the most banned book series in American libraries.
The Saudi government, along with other non-democratic countries, are notoriously technophobic. They are eager to participate in the emerging global economy, but desperate to stanch the free flow of information that might provide diverse information to their citizens. And they have no problem finding software companies, including American ones, that are happy to help extend censorship. The corporatist rule is simple -- maximize profits at all costs under virtually all circumstances.
Countries like Iraq, Saudi Arabia and China have been surprisingly successful at wiring up certain segments of their societies while controlling information deemed insensitive for political or religious reasons. The Net can, in fact, be used to make money and suppress freedom. These governments have undercut the great promise of globalism, prosperity, technology and democracy, allowing corrupt and anti-democratic governments to prosper, in part by censoring information -- something many of us thought the Net would make impossible.
This highlights the menacing way corporatism exploits technology, undermining the most basic American values.
"We have a really serious problem in terms of the American free speech idea," says Jack Balkin, a Yale Law School professor who specializes in the politics of Internet filtering. "But it is very American to make money. Between anti-censorship and the desire to make money, the desire to make money will win out." This is a profound blow to the whole idea of using technology -- especially the Net -- to force a more open society.
That's a bitter indictment of a nation that purports to be advancing democracy throughout the world, that's supposedly fighting a war to protect freedom. The reason money will always win out is corporatism, which subverts almost every other value in the name of profit, and which has made globalism a dirty word.
So what? (Score:3, Informative)
Not so what so much for the oppressed citizens of Saudi Arabia, but this is just the logical conclusion of the US's policy towards the country. This is just the corporate world getting their cut of the profits out of the situation.
After all the US has been happy to prop up a corrupt, undemocratic and brutal regime there just to ensure the free flow of oil to fuel SUVs and cheap fuel. Every time a USian moans about the price of fuel they're helping to keep the citizens of Saudi Arabia under oppression. And since our country is all about money, money, money at the expense of little things like decency and human rights, why shouldn't our corporations get involved in helping? It's not like they don't have enough practice at oppression themselves.
Sorry, but if you're getting upset about this I suggest you first take a long look at what our government has done in Saudi Arabia first. Whining about censoring the net when these people lack even a pretense at human rights just shows you're hopelessly naive.
China's Dot-Communism (Score:3, Informative)
and read about the restriction of innovation on the internet here: The Internet Under Seige by Lawrence Lessig [foreignpolicy.com]
tcd004
Re:I'd be willing to put up with almost -anything- (Score:2, Informative)
Re:encrypted? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oh, there's plenty of blame to go round (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not saying that the US is directly responsible for the treatment of Saudi Arabia's people, but I am saying that the US ensures that the status quo is maintained without being concerned about what this entails. Morality just doesn't come into it at all, it's all strictly business.
Given that it was mostly Saudi citizens who attacked NY, that bin Laden has much of his funding from Saudi princes, that the Saudi government funds the Wahabbi schools in Pakistan that teach hate-America fundamentalism, there's an argument that the US should take out the Saudi government. But considering how oil prices were conveniently manipulated so that gasoline went up just before the last US presidential election, Bush will remember his debt to the Sauds, as they remembered theirs to his father, so it's not gonna happen.
So, given that these are morally ugly people we're doing business with (Saudi princes routinely skip 10-15% off the top of all government contracts there, meanwhile religious police beat women in the street), what would a kinder, more moral US do with Saudi relations? We could stop buying oil; but most Saudi oil is sold to our European and Asian allies, not to us; so that wouldn't do much. We could try to arrange an international boycott of oil from non-democratic countries; yeah, right. We could support local forces which would like to replace the monarchy; those forces being mostly Muslim extremists. And who are we to force our model of government on the world?
So what would, like, the most beautiful thing the US could do vis-a-vis Saudi Arabi? A boycott like with Iraq doesn't look pretty either. Yet doing business with them necessarily "props them up." I suppose we could withdraw our troops and encourage Saddam to invade?
Please make a positive suggestion, don't just slime the US for living in the real world.