M E D I A M O N I T O R PIA links Ras Al Khaimah to Karachi with a weekly flight More News Internet Under Surveillance Obstacles to the free flow of information online A call for vigilance The Internet has a bad reputation. With authoritarian regimes, that's no surprise. It's to be expected the enduring dictatorship in Beijing (and we must call it that, whatever the fans of the Chinese "economic miracle" think) has set up a big Internet police force. Dozens of Internet users languish in Chinese prisons for imaginary crimes - for looking at banned websites or, even "worse," daring to post news online about forbidden topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and repression in Tibet. China is unfortunately not the only country where dissident Internet messages are tracked down. In Vietnam and Tunisia, big shots (official or otherwise) are distinctly unenthusiastic about this vast discussion forum and information exchange they have so much trouble controlling. In this very long list of regimes opposed to freedom, we find habitual human rights violators such as Burma, Ukraine and Belarus but also countries that are places people dream about - tropical holiday destinations beloved of Western tourists. The Maldives, for example, where the other side of the picture postcard is shabby and two Internet users have been sentenced to life imprisonment for criticising a dictatorship in paradise that has been in power for the past 40 years. This is all very logical. No surprise that Fidel Castro gives orders about the Internet as he does about everything else in Cuba, except of course for those "useful idiots" (as Lenin used to say) - the package tourists with cigars and obliging local girls thrown in. What's more worrying, at first sight anyway, is the distrust of the Internet among the supposedly solid democracies of Europe and North America. Why the United States, France and the United Kingdom take their place in this report alongside the thugs that are quick to lock up the merest opponent calls for an explanation. First there are the universally-condemned child-porn, xenophobic and racist websites found everywhere. Even though a very tiny part of the Internet - less than 3 per cent of online activity according to experts - they are rightly disturbing. The authorities cannot and should not ignore them, even if that offends the purists who advocate an Internet free of all monitoring and interference. Calls for violence and appeals to hatred must be fought. But by respecting civil liberties and avoiding abuses. These pages highlight those who have failed to do that. But this isn't the most commonly-cited reason for Internet surveillance in traditionally democratic countries. It's the fight against terrorism that governments say justifies repressive controls and laws. With some reason, too, in view of the e-mails exchanged by the authors of the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. It's understandable that the price of our safety is some encroachment on our freedom. But only as long as parliaments approve all such measures, which doesn't always happen, and police always act only at the request of judges, which sometimes isn't done. This report describes a wide range of circumstances, none of them comparable. Routinely authoritarian regimes and those that may make mistakes (which can be corrected) cannot be lumped together. The report should not be seen as a kind of ranking of regimes by their repression of the Internet, but more as an appeal for vigilance in countries where, as in democracies, it's still possible to exposes abuses and flaws. And also an appeal for solidarity with those who are flagrantly deprived of freedom, such as the 70 or so cyber-dissidents currently in prison around the world. Robert Ménard Secretary-General, Reporters Without Borders United Arab Emirates Population : 2,937,000 Internet users : 1,300,000 (2003) Average charge for 20 hours of connection : 10 euros DAI* : 0.64 Situation** : difficult The media is fairly free but strong social and political restrictions encourage self-censorship. The Internet is only officially censored for "pornographic" websites but in practice a wide range of online publications is targeted. A well-developed Internet scene, but a censored one The country is one of the best-connected of the Gulf states but its rulers are not the most tolerant. No specific law governs the Internet and the only relevant one - the 1996 telecommunications act - seems rather liberal because it guarantees freedom of expression in all media. The UAE has had a kind of Silicon Valley - the tax-free Dubai Media City, occupied by 100 or so mostly foreign media, computer and new technology firms - since January 2002. The pan-Arab satellite TV network Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC) has moved there from its London base. But this gives a false impression of openness. Emirates Internet and Multimedia (EIM), part of the state telecom firm Etisalat, is the country's only ISP. The Internet is also still hampered by filtering that goes far beyond pornographic sites. Privacy International says Internet traffic in the UAE passes through several proxy sites which have filters installed. Censored pages are not the same on each proxy, which would explain why some sites are inaccessible only from some places. Along with pornographic or sex-related sites, online publications about Buddhism, Sufism, religious sects and the US anti-war filmmaker Michael Moore are blocked. Dating sites are banned though marriage agencies are allowed in the UAE. Medical and scientific sites that show naked parts of the human body are also filtered out. Suspected monitoring of online activity The UAE has systems to monitor to monitor e-mail and Web activity, which leads users to censor themselves and avoid mentioning religion, morality, friendly countries or members of the ruling families. Site about the Middle East telecoms sector www.menafn.com The Internet in the UAE http://eim.ae News site http://www.dubainews.com The Dubai Press Club http://www.dpc.org.ae News from the Gulf states (in Arabic) http://www.gulfissues.net Internet law in the UAE www.internetcitylaw.com * The DAI (Digital Access Index) has been devised by the International Telecommunications Union to measure the access of a country's inhabitants to information and communication technology. It ranges from 0 (none at all) to 1 (complete access). ** Assessment of the situation in each country (good, middling, difficult, serious) is based on murders, imprisonment or harassment of cyber-dissidents or journalists, censorship of news sites, existence of independent news sites, existence of independent ISPs and deliberately high connection charges. Saudi Arabia Population : 23,520 000 Internet users : 1,500,000 (2003) Average charge for 20 hours of connection : 27 euros DAI* : 0.44 Situation** : very serious Saudi Arabia has created one of the world's biggest Internet filtering systems. The authorities have officially announced that they block access to nearly 400,000 webpages, with the aim of "protecting citizens from offensive content and content the violates the principles of Islam and the social norms."The Internet blacklist in Saudi Arabia covers some very broad fields, including the websites of political organisations and Islamist movements that are not recognised, and any publication dealing directly or even very indirectly with sexuality. Saudi women, who represent nearly two thirds of the country's Internet users, can only access online content that has been expunged of any reference to their rights, their health or their intimate lives. Saudi Arabia has no law dealing specifically with the Internet. So, in practice, it is covered by the press law, which requires all media to obtain official permission. Furthermore, the royal family has the power to dismiss journalists and appoint news media executives and editors. Free expression does not exist in Saudi Arabia, whether in the press or on the Internet. The Saudi censorship system The Internet Services Unit (ISU) is in charge of maintaining the Saudi Internet censorship system. It manages the gateway used by all the local Internet Service Providers (ISPs). As a result, it can monitor all online data exchanges taking place in Saudi Arabia. The ISU is also the agency that is in charge of the country domain name (.sa) and it manages the technical aspects of the Saudi Internet. But it just carries out the instructions it receives from the Saudi security services and does not decide what must be censored. The ISU offers an online form and e-mail address (abuse@isu.net.sa) for Internet users who want to report sites they think should be blocked. Hundreds of requests of this kind are received every day. They are handled by a team assigned full-time to this task. It seems that the filters installed by the ISU, with the help of such US companies as Secure Computing, are easy to get around. In fact, a seasoned Internet user can access censored sites quite quickly. The simplest solution is to go to a discussion forum offering an up-to-date list of proxy servers. In the great majority of cases, these relay servers are used to access pornography sites. Blocked content The sites blocked by the Saudi authorities are mainly those of a sexual, political or religious nature. (The banned religious sites do not, of course, include approved Islamic ones.) Homosexuality and women's rights are completely absent from the Saudi Internet. Music sites such as www.rollingstone.com, humour sites such as www.poopreport.com, online translation software such as www.systransoft.com and the best-known anonymizers such as www.anonymizer.com and www.megaproxy.com are also on the ISU blacklist. The Saudi government blocked the site of the Jordanian-based Arab Region Resource Center on Violence against Women (www.amanjordan.org) on 5 August 2003 after it posted articles on the violence undergone by women in Saudi society. The blocking was lifted on 30 September 2003. Censored gay sites Gaymiddleeast.com, a news and information website targeted at the Middle-Eastern gay community, was rendered inaccessible by the Saudi authorities at the start of March 2004. It had already been blocked for a month in June 2003. The site carries gay-oriented information on 15 countries (Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen), especially about the persecution undergone by gays. The US site 365gay.com, to which Gaymiddleeast.com is affiliated, was also blocked. Homosexuality is banned in Saudi Arabia, and is punishable by imprisonment or flogging. The OpenNet Initiative, an academic network focussing on Internet censorship, carried out a study on gay sites in Saudi Arabia. It did a search for the word "gay" in Google SafeSearch (which excludes pornographic sites) and selected the first 902 results. Of these 902 sites, 170 are blocked by the Internet Services Unit (ISU). They include : The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission : www.iglhrc.org The Gay and Lesbian Arab Society : www.glas.org The news and information site : www.gay.com Reporters Without Borders wrote a letter requesting the lifting of the ban on Gaymiddleeast.com. The head of the ISU, Eyas Al-Hajery, replied on 29 March : "After receiving your letter, a re-examination of these sites was carried out. As no pornographic content was found, the blocking was lifted." The two sites, 365gay.com and Gaymiddleeast.com, can indeed be freely accessed again in Saudi Arabia. Evading the censorship Created in 1996 by Sa'ad Al-Faqih, the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) is a London-based religious movement that is very critical of the Saudi regime. Its website, www.miraserve.com, is on the list of sites that have been censored by the government since the Saudi Internet's outset. But the movement very quickly found ways of getting round the censorship. It managed to find solutions which, although involving sophisticated technology, are easy to use. To access www.miraserve.com despite the filter, Saudis just have to send an e-mail message to a certain address in order to receive an automatic response identifying an URL (web address) that is not blocked. The MIRA installed a device that allows it to created an unlimited number of web address through which its online publication can be accessed. MIRA also offers advice on how to use the Internet anonymously by using an e-mail address such as Hotmail or Yahoo ! and by surfing the Web using software provided by companies such as Anonymizer or Safeweb. Links The Internet Service Unit www.isu.net.sa A study on Saudi gay sites by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/saudiarabia The Saudi Center for Human Rights Studies http://www.saudihr.org The Saudi Institute for Development and Studies, which works to promote civil society in Saudi Arabia www.saudiinstitute.org An Arabic-language news site covering the Gulf countries http://www.gulfissues.net * The DAI (Digital Access Index) has been devised by the International Telecommunications Union to measure the access of a country's inhabitants to information and communication technology. It ranges from 0 (none at all) to 1 (complete access). ** Assessment of the situation in each country (good, middling, difficult, serious) is based on murders, imprisonment or harassment of cyber-dissidents or journalists, censorship of news sites, existence of independent news sites, existence of independent ISPs and deliberately high connection charges. Qatar Population : 601,000 Internet users : 70,000 Average charge for 20 hours of connection : 17 euros DAI* : 0.55 Situation** : middling Qatar has some of the world's best Internet facilities. It went online in 1997 and the system was first developed by the state telecommunications monopoly Q-Tel. Privately-owned ISPs were later allowed to operate. The media is partially free, though all criticism of the Al-Thani royal family is taboo. The government says it does not censor the Internet but appears to have drawn up a list of "undesirable" websites. Q-Tel reportedly blocks access to them with special software and has the means to spy on messages sent through the other ISPs. Growing influence of Al-Jazeera's website The pan-Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera, which has more than 35 million viewers, is based in Qatar. Its website is one of the world's most frequently visited news sites. The portal Lycos said that during the Iraq war, the term "Al-Jazeera" was the most popular term typed into search-engines, three times more often than the word "sex." The station's website, www.al-jazirah.com, was the target of hackers several times in 2003. During the Iraq war, a young hacker in Los Angeles, John Racine, redirected visitors to a page showing an American flag and the words "Let freedom ring." He was fined $2,000 in November 2003 by a California court that also ordered him to do 1,000 hours of community work. Links The Arab media site of the Cairo-based Adham Center for Television Journalism www.tbsjournal.com The TV station Al-Jazeera www.al-jazirah.com * The DAI (Digital Access Index) has been devised by the International Telecommunications Union to measure the access of a country's inhabitants to information and communication technology. It ranges from 0 (none at all) to 1 (complete access). ** Assessment of the situation in each country (good, middling, difficult, serious) is based on murders, imprisonment or harassment of cyber-dissidents or journalists, censorship of news sites, existence of independent news sites, existence of independent ISPs and deliberately high connection charges. India Population : 1,049,549,000 Internet users : 16,580,000 Average charge for 20 hours of connection : 7 euros DAI* : 0.32 Situation** : middling India has more media outlets than any other country in the world. It also has the most varied and lively news and magazine websites in Asia. Webmasters and Internet users fiercely resist federal and state authorities who regulate online activity with disregard for individual liberties.The country is waging a intense "cyber-war" against its enemy neighbour, Pakistan. The two countries have reproduced their terrestrial rivalry on the Internet, hacking into websites and sending viruses to each other. "Roxx of Calcutta," "Cobra" and "Indian Snakes" are the new war heroes, blocking access to hundreds of websites and destroying thousands of Pakistani and Indian computers. The government is making special effort to combat cybercrime and cyber-terrorism but the rights of Internet users are suffering. New laws Parliament approved the Information Technology Act in May 2000 to crack down on cybercrime, allowing cybercafés and Internet users' homes to be searched without warrants at any time as part of criminal investigations. It also allowed the authorities to block access to sites considered pornographic or that "endanger public order, the integrity and security of the nation and relations with other countries." Those setting up "anti-Indian" websites can be jailed for up to five years. A July 2003 government decree extended the range of Internet content that could be censored under the 2000 law. Websites promoting hatred, defamation, gambling, racism, violence, terrorism, pornography (including child-porn) or violent sex risk being blocked or closed down. The decree said barring access to such websites "may be equated to balanced flow of information and not censorship." It also set up a Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) to handle Internet security and said many institutions and agencies would be allowed to call on it, including the home affairs ministry, courts, the intelligence services, the police and the head of the National Human Rights Commission. Many Asian and European countries have set up such regulatory bodies. Time will tell if India's CERT respects online freedom of expression. The case of the Yahoo ! discussion forums (see below) raises some doubt about this. Monitoring cybercafés The strict laws about the Internet allow prosecution of anyone infringing the country's moral and political laws. To show their goodwill, cybercafés have put up notices warning young users. Police in Mumbai proposed new measures against cybercrime to the state government of Maharashtra (which includes Mumbai) in February 2004 requiring people to show their ID and give their postal address before using a cybercafé, which would be obliged to retain such data for at least a year. Cybercafé owners would also have install monitoring equipment at their own expense (400 euros) to block access to pornographic websites and other offensive material. They would also have to register with the authorities and pay an annual licence fee (9 euros). The owners said these measures would involve the police demanding payoffs. The Indian cybercafé association, APIAP, protested against the measures which it said would lead to closure of most of the city's 3,000 or so cybercafés. Asking customers for their address would discourage many, especially women, from going online. A police inspector told journalists that "if people aren't doing anything wrong, why should they worry about privacy ?" This reasoning is similar to that of most police states. By early March 2004, the measures had not been implemented by the Maharashtra state authorities. Government orders Yahoo ! discussion groups blocked When ISPs complied with a request in late December 2003 by Cert-In (its first censorship action) to block access to a pro-separatist Yahoo !-hosted discussion group, Kyunhun, all Yahoo ! e-groups became inaccessible in India. In blocking the group's IP address, all other Yahoo ! groups were automatically cut off as well.. Kyunhun is linked to the separatist Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council, a Khasi tribal organisation in Meghalaya province. The Indian government has accused it of giving false information to the Pakistani intelligence services. Online newspaper turns to paper version The news website Tehelka (www.tehelka.com) has been constantly harassed by the authorities since 2001. Its journalists, who have revealed several high-level corruption scandals, have been the targets of police searches and arrests and the site was shut down in early 2003 (see 2003 Internet Report). Tehelka was relaunched in January 2004 in printed form and the website simply reproduced the paper's content. Links The Indian cybercafé association www.apiap.cybernook.net The Tehelka news site www.tehelka.com The government Department of Telecommunications www.dotindia.com The independent magazine Frontline www.flonnet.com The computer magazine Dataquest www.dqindia.com * The DAI (Digital Access Index) has been devised by the International Telecommunications Union to measure the access of a country's inhabitants to information and communication technology. It ranges from 0 (none at all) to 1 (complete access). ** Assessment of the situation in each country (good, middling, difficult, serious) is based on murders, imprisonment or harassment of cyber-dissidents or journalists, censorship of news sites, existence of independent news sites, existence of independent ISPs and deliberately high connection charges.