Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. Technology Has Been Used To Block, Censor Net For Years

Kevin Maney writes in USA Today:

Internet users in Yemen can't get to beer.com because of technology from a couple of U.S. companies.

Surely this is a human rights violation, keeping innocent civilians from a website devoted to beer and women. Why, the Yemeni Netizens — all 150,000 of them — are also blocked from getting to gayegypt.com. They're denied spikybras.com! Which, by the way, ya gotta check out — it's hilarious, and no more racy than an I Dream of Jeannie episode.

Anyway, all of those websites are on Yemen's blocked list, according to a study to be released Tuesday by OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a research organization formed by Harvard, the U.K.'s Cambridge and the University of Toronto. The report will say that Yemen filters its Internet by using technology from Websense, based in San Diego, and Blue Coat Systems, based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Shocked? Upset? Time for more table-pounding congressional hearings such as the ones last week, where Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., berated reps from Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft about their roles in censorship in China, repeating, " Are you ashamed?"

Jeez — get a grip.

posted by Fergie @ 2/22/2006 07:45:00 AM