WSJ: U.S. Companies Helped Censor Internet in Middle East

When the Middle East erupted in revolution earlier this year, many regimes responded to the upheaval by ramping up their online censorship efforts. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, a lot of them had help from American software companies.

Throughout the region, governments have been using technologies and tools developed by U.S. firms to clamp down on the Web. McAfee reportedly supplied filtering software to ISPs in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, with Blue Coat Systems providing supplementary hardware to the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. A forthcoming report from OpenNet shows that ISPs in at least nine Middle East countries have used "Western-made tools for the purpose of blocking social and political content, effectively blocking a total of over 20 million Internet users from accessing such websites."

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WSJ: U.S. Companies Helped Censor Internet in Middle East originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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