Internet Censorship in the Middle East

The Empire Strikes Back

The authoritarian regimes of the region have realized the potential of internet based communication and are making a great effort to limit the opposition's scope in the internet and to enforce the limitations to the freedom of speech, press and opinion in the digital space, too. Thereby a hide and seek situation evolves, since the internet activists are always in search of loopholes, often with the assistance of foreign hackers


By Jan Künzl
from Berlin, GERMANY


The development of the web 2.0 is opening up new opportunities for the opposition groups throughout the Middle Eastern autocracies. Recently Facebook and Twitter were an important factor during the uprisings after the controversial Iranian presidential elections. But the regimes in the region are striking back by heavily increasing their censorship of the internet.

During the past few years, the governments realized how substantial the opportunities of the web 2.0 are for gathering and distributing information, for exchanging ideas as well as organising and mobilising social groups. The Arab states became precursors of internet censorship. A paper published by Reporters Without Borders denounces twelve states worldwide as special enemies of the internet. With Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Tunisia, five of them are from the Middle East and North African region.

A rich toolbox of censorship and intimidation

In order to limit the mobility of internet activists, the authorities came up with various tools. Special laws and decrees prohibit information that is considered to be against either the Islam (Kuwait), national interests (Kuwait, Syria) or the respective head of state (Tunisia).

In 2008, Saudi Arabia passed a specific internet law against the distribution of pornography and other contents considered to harm the laws, religious values or social standards of the Saudi Kingdom, threatening with fees and sentences of up to five years of prison.

Egypt and Syria use their decade old state of emergency to crack down heavily on internet activists. Egypt is particularly infamous for its frequent arrest of bloggers. A recent prominent case was the detention of the German-Egyptian blogger Phillip Rizk by the Egyptian secret police after a pro-Gaza demonstration in February 2009. Rizk was set free shortly after, probably because of its German citizenship.

For Egyptian bloggers the expression of opinion is even more dangerous, as is demonstrated by the case of Amer Kareem. Kareem has been under arrest since 2006 for the alleged defamation of President Mubarak and the Islam.

In cooperation with the internet providers, the authorities of all of these countries installed special filter to block certain websites. The independent NGO OpenNet Initiative tested these technical filters between 2008 and 2009 and came to the conclusion that governments and providers block a broad spectrum of content, alleged to be politically sensitive, morally offensive or harmful to the public order and moral. Thereby Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, the UAE, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia censor websites which take a critic stance face to the ruling governments and leaders, decry violations of human rights or belong to opposition groups.

Furthermore, there is a general tendency to expand the filtering to a broader range of content. By now, Syria even blocked sites like YouTube, Facebook and Amazon. Also social software is being scanned for such content. Interestingly the techniques for searching English websites is much more sophisticated than those for sites in Arabic, due to the fact that most of the filter software is produced and distributed by American software companies.

The bargain with censorship

Iran has the most severe censorship. According to official statements, the authorities blocked five million Websites in 2008. Frequently bloggers are threatened, harassed or detained. The Iranian regime is using a content control software of the US company Secure Computing, which meanwhile was bought by McAffee. Secure Computing has stated repeatedly, that they did not sell any licenses of their software to Iran. But it is obvious, that such companies with a wide client base amongst autocracies make a serious contribution to the provision and development of the technical basics for censorship.

A second prominent example for such an opportunistic approach to business is a deal between Siemens Nokia Networks and the Iranian authorities closed in 2008. According to the Wall Street Journal, the German-Finnish joint venture provided Iran with a system that allows a so called deep packet inspection, which makes possible to monitor, control, record and manipulate the complete countrywide internet traffic. Siemens Nokia Networks defended itself against the allegation of unethical business practices with the remark, that the technique is designated only to filter "illegal" content.

In any case, the delivery of such systems to authoritarian regimes is at best naive, irrespective of the question whether the category legal/illegal has any value in a country without functioning rule of law.

According to the periodical Wired, it is very likely that these techniques have been adopted extensively against the reform movement during the uprisings after the presidential elections in summer 2009.

Digital cat and mouse game

The authoritarian regimes of the region have realized the potential of internet based communication and are making a great effort to limit the opposition's scope in the internet and to enforce the limitations to the freedom of speech, press and opinion in the digital space, too. Thereby a hide and seek situation evolves, since the internet activists are always in search of loopholes, often with the assistance of foreign hackers. Accordingly Facebook and Twitter came to rise this summer in Iran only due to the temporary shut-down of the Short Message Service enforced by the government.

At the meantime, internet activists are trying to preserve their anonymity in the internet and to bypass the instruments of the censors by using technical tricks like proxy server or virtual private networks.

Hopefully, in this digital arms race, the regimes will not prevail permanently. Western nations could help to prevent further damage by tightening their export regulations for products suitable for internet censorship.

And at least for companies with a strong concern for their image, some pressure from the civil society can make a difference. Siemens Nokia Networks already sold the branch Intelligence Solutions, which delivered the censor system, to an investment enterprise in March 2009.


(Published: 18.12.2009.)