[Mb-civic] Exporting Censorship

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 9, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Exporting Censorship
By XENI JARDIN

AMERICAN technology firms are taking heat from the public and Congress for
helping China's government police the Internet. But this controversy extends
well beyond China and the so-called Internet Gang of Four: Google, Yahoo,
Cisco and Microsoft. Just how many American companies are complicit hit home
for me last month when dozens of readers of BoingBoing.net e-mailed us to
say they had been suddenly denied access.

The cause was SmartFilter, a product from a Silicon Valley company, Secure
Computing. A recent update to the nannyware's list of no-no sites had
started blocking our site as containing "nudity." This is absurd: a visit to
BoingBoing might yield posts about iPod-shaped cakes and spaceship
blueprints, but not pornography. SmartFilter's data managers later told us
that even thumbnails of Michelangelo's "David" could land a site on the
forbidden "nudity" list.

Many of our locked-out readers were trying to view BoingBoing from
libraries, schools and their workplaces. That is regrettable but not tragic,
as American viewers generally have other options. But after regular visitors
from Qatar and Saudi Arabia complained, we discovered a more worrisome
problem: government-controlled Internet service providers were using
SmartFilter to effectively block access for entire countries.

Secure Computing refused to provide me with a list of the governments that
use its filters. However, the OpenNet Initiative, a partnership between the
University of Toronto, Cambridge University and Harvard Law School, has
compiled data on how such products are used in foreign nations where
censorship is easy because the governments control all Internet service
providers.

The initiative found that SmartFilter has been used by government-controlled
monopoly providers in Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia and the
United Arab Emirates. It has also been used by state-controlled providers in
Iran, even though American companies are banned from selling technology
products there. (Secure Computing denies selling products or updates to
Iran, which is probably using pirated versions.)

According to OpenNet, filtering products from another American company,
Websense, have also been used by a state-controlled service provider in
Iran, ParsOnline. Yemen uses Websense products to filter content on its two
government-owned service providers. Websense software, the initiative says,
filters out "sex education and provocative clothing sites, gay- and
lesbian-related materials, gambling sites, dating sites, drug-related sites,
sites enabling anonymous Web surfing, proxy servers that circumvent
filtering, and sites with content related to converting Muslims to other
religions."

The initiative also found that Myanmar, arguably the most repressive regime
in the world, uses censorware from the American company Fortinet. And
Singapore's government-controlled Singnet server uses filtering technology
from SurfControl, a company formed from the merger of several censorware
companies that is now technically British but has its filtering operations
headquarters in California.

One of our most laudable national goals is the export of free speech and
free information, yet American companies are selling censorship. While some
advocates of technology rights have proposed consumer boycotts and
Congressional action to pressure these firms into responsible conduct, a
good first step would be adding filtering technologies to the United States
Munitions List, an index of products for which exporters have to file papers
with the State Department. While this won't end such sales, it will bring
them to light and give the public and lawmakers a better basis on which to
consider stronger steps.

If American companies are already obligated to disclose the sale of bombs
and guns to repressive regimes, why not censorware?

Xeni Jardin is a co-editor of BoingBoing.net.

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