GulfNews.com Report on ONI

There is a story in GulfNews about the ONI’s country report on Internet Filtering in the United Arab Emirates. Thanks to Neil Hrab for forwarding and pointing that out.

I must say, though, that we certainly do not “praise” the UAE, that’s
for sure. I don’t know where the guy got that from. All we said is that
there is only slight blocking of political material (including by the
way, the entire .il domain, which is all of Israel). That’s pretty bad
as far as I’m concerned. I’m certainly not going to praise a regime
that does that, let alone uses Smartfilter to censor.

Makes you wonder what type of editorial controls go into stories like that in UAE, eh?

UAE Internet Filtering Study

Internet Filtering in the United Arab Emirates in 2004-2005: A Country Study

 The OpenNet Initiative announces the release of its study documenting Internet filtering in the United Arab Emirates. ONI tested over 8000 Web sites in the past six months, finding that UAE blocks material viewed as culturally
inappropriate or offensive to the state’s perception of Islam. The study notes that UAE relies on American software (SmartFilter) to implement its filtering, and points out that UAE’s system suffers from considerable overblocking that
prevents its citizens from accessing content unrelated to the state’s expressed goals.

The full country study is available here.
…expect more of these country reports soon.