huridocs-tech Internet restrictions are many in Islamic world

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## author     : uppercaise@iname.com
## date       : 16.03.99
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Posted at 6:06 p.m. PST Monday, March 15, 1999

Internet restrictions are many in Islamic world

New York Times

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Ever so gingerly, the Internet is
being allowed across some final frontiers, into restrictive
parts of the Islamic world, under the wary eye of
governments used to playing Big Brother.

In places like Saudi Arabia, where access was barred until
two months ago, the change is being hailed as a belated
revolution. Internet cafes have sprung up in Teheran and
Riyadh, and novices are being dazzled by sites like
Yahoo.com.

Still, the authorities are trying to have it both ways.

In Iran, users -- who are monitored by some providers --
must promise, among other things, that they ``will not
contact stations against Islamic regulations'' -- a
reference to those with sexual content. Violators are warned
that they could lose Internet privileges.

Censorship in Saudi Arabia is even more overt. Under a
system that took two years to develop, all Internet
connections in the country have been routed through a hub
outside Riyadh, where high-speed government computers block
access to thousands of sites catalogued on a
rapidly-expanding blacklist.

Want to check out what opposition groups abroad have to say
about the ruling al-Saud family? ``Forbidden!!!'' the
computer responds. How about a chat service that allows for,
well, free- wheeling conversation? No again. A game of
blackjack? Uh-uh.

``All access attempts are logged,'' users are somberly
warned, in a hint that attempts to stray beyond what the
Saudi government considers acceptable bounds could have
further, unspecified consequences.

Still, the enthusiasm with which the Internet is being
received seems to reflect a view that a little access is
better than none at all.

``Sometimes I get angry that we had to wait so long,'' said
Hisham A. Turkistani, 25, a young Saudi who sat hunched over
a computer in Jidda's Cafe de Paris, Saudi Arabia's first
Internet cafe, listening to Mariah Carey on mtv.com. ``But
now the Internet is all that my friends and I talk about.
There are so many things in this world.''

On a recent evening at the cafe in Jidda, on the Red Sea
coast, other customers -- who were paying $12 an hour for
the privilege -- included a medical student, Hilal Sonbul,
25, clearly amazed as a technician showed him how much
information about his future profession could be found with
a few keystrokes.

Across the Persian Gulf in Iran, at another brand-new cafe,
a young man was sending an electronic greeting card to a
friend in the United States. He had also spent his Friday
afternoon downloading applications, he said, for admission
to graduate schools, among them the engineering program at
the City University of New York.

``It used to take three or four weeks for letters to get
through; now it takes a few seconds,'' said the young man,
who would give his name only as Hamid. ``I know that some
people here are afraid of the Internet, but I don't think
most of them even know what the Internet is.''

Technophobia is hardly new to the Middle East, where the
sensitivities of strict Islamic cultures and the worries of
security- conscious regimes have long been combined to
justify repressive censorship.

At one time or another, every government in the region has
jammed radio broadcasts, intercepted publications, scuttled
fax transmissions, barred mobile telephones, or prohibited
satellite television.

Since the arrival of the Internet, however, many countries,
such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, have quietly conceded the
fight, concluding that the benefits of the new technology
far outweigh the cost. In these countries and others,
essentially unrestricted Internet access has been available
since the mid-1990s.

Still, more conservative governments, such as Syria, Iraq,
Iran and Saudi Arabia, have done their best to keep walls in
place. There is no Internet access in Iraq and Syria, where
the concept is being studied by a committee headed by the
son of President Hafez al- Assad -- an indication of the
matter's sensitivity.

In Iran, an Islamic Republic that prohibits the publication
of photographs of women unless their heads and bodies are
covered, ordinary people were not permitted graphic access
to the Internet until December 1996, after the election of
President Mohammad Khatami ushered in an era of relative
openness. Even now, the service, whose prices begin at $330
a year for one hour a day, remains too costly for all but a
few.

In Saudi Arabia, it was not until January that users could
get access to the Internet without first establishing an
account abroad and then connecting to the provider via an
international call, at a cost of at least $1 a minute.

Under new rules, 42 local providers have been licensed,
after a high-level government study that lasted two years.
But the service has been plagued by growing pains, and only
10,000 Saudis have signed up so far, though some 115,000 are
expected by the end of the year -- a small fraction in a
country of 20 million people.

And still, neither delays nor limitations have assuaged
fears that the information highway is a road to corruption.

A top Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Janatti, warned in a recent
Friday sermon that the ``disgraceful, immoral pictures''
broadcast on the Internet were an affront to ``all humanity,
morality and chastity'' that ``threatens us all.'' Even now,
the Iranian government still has not officially legalized
Internet use, perhaps with an eye to conservative militias
that have threatened attacks on the offices of Internet
providers.

In Saudi Arabia, criticism has been muted since King Fahd
himself issued a decree in March 1997 calling for the
drafting of guidelines for Internet use, thus offering the
idea his implicit endorsement.

Now that the system is in place, Saudi officials are seeking
to call attention to what is quickly becoming available --
including Internet banking -- instead of what is banned.
``There is nothing to block except two things -- that which
is against our religion, and that which is against our
society,'' said Abdullah al-Rasheed, deputy director of the
King Abdelaziz Center for Science and Technology, a
government entity charged with supervising the Internet in
the kingdom.

In practice, however, those criteria have proven
far-reaching. One local provider's effort to establish a
Saudi chat site was rejected, apparently out of concern that
it would allow contact between unmarried men and women --
still taboo in a society in which even dating is prohibited.

Apparently for similar reasons, videoconferencing also
remains off limits. Sites containing nudity or sexual
material are rendered inaccessible. And the absolute ban on
content ``against our society'' has kept a lid on political
dissent, barring access to sites that offer any hint of
criticism of the Saudi regime.

The restrictions have prompted some quiet criticism, mostly
from parents who argue that online contact between young
people is a healthy alternative to trying to suppress such
contact altogether.

``They're not hearing the voice, they're not seeing the
face, so where is the haram there?'' asked Samar Fatany, a
radio broadcaster, using the Arabic word for something
prohibited for religious reasons. ``I don't think anyone can
label it as a sin.''

To enforce the rules, the Saudi government has assumed the
role of parent -- using commercial software like Smart
Filter, by Secure Computer, to screen all requests and block
contact to sites it wants kept off-limits. The software is
updated every day, Saudi officials say, as Riyadh-based
technicians add new sites to he blacklist -- in part by
watching to see which sites the Saudis themselves seek out.

``It's kind of scary,'' said Fadlil Khaliallah, 33, manager
of the Internet cafe in Jidda. ``If someone manages to get
on to a bad site, we notice that it is always blocked by the
next day.''

With thousands of new web sites created every day, savvy
users can keep a step ahead of most restrictions; even Saudi
officials concede that keeping the blacklist up to date
represents an uphill fight. Still, they say they are
determined to make sure that Internet use in Saudi Arabia is
kept within acceptable bounds.

``There are two choices,'' said Fahad al-Hoyany, a computer
scientist with degrees from three American universities who
heads the government's Internet Services Unit. ``Either you
let it go altogether, or you try to limit it, and we hope to
at least protect the innocents.''


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