Posted on 10/02/2005 10:24:58 AM PDT by nickcarraway
RIYADH, 2 October 2005 — Of the estimated 2.2 million Internet users in the Kingdom, the majority regularly try to access forbidden or indecent material, Arab News has learned.
“Of those who log on to the Internet, 92.5 percent are trying to access a website that, for one reason or another, has been blocked,” said Dr. Mishaal Al-Kadhi, acting general manager of the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST).
KACST is not only the Internet gateway for the Kingdom but also acts as a filter for unsuitable material. The official said that pornographic material was one of the main items on the city’s “black list” which also includes gambling, terrorism and politics as well as anything contrary to Islamic beliefs.
He said that since the royal decree was issued in 1998 choosing KACST as the gateway for the Internet in the Kingdom and authorizing it to act as a filter, a special committee had been set up to decide what should and should not be inaccessible.
“A permanent security panel was established for this purpose. It consisted of members from 10 ministries, headed by the Interior Ministry,” he explained. A year after the panel’s establishment, 85 percent of the material on the blocked sites was pornographic with the remaining being what was deemed “inappropriate” for the Kingdom.
Asked why he thought many of those who access the web in the Kingdom were looking for pornography, Al-Kadhi said that he did not believe the Kingdom was any different from other nations in the world regarding this phenomenon. He went on to note, however, that a new dangerous tendency has begun to sweep the Internet: People “have shifted from pornography to pedophilia.”
He said that according to statistics from different countries around the world, there had been a global increase in the demand for pedophilia on the Internet.
“Pedophilia has become a major problem in many countries. In Germany alone there are 30,000 people addicted to pedophilia and 20,000 others who are its victims. There is even a nationwide campaign there that asks people, ‘Do you like children too much?’” he said. He said that there was a similar problem in Italy too.
Al-Kadhi said that according to a Swedish official responsible for filtering the Internet there, “after Sweden passed new laws in the year 2000 aimed at preventing people from having sex with children, many had turned to their pets.”
He said that these bizarre sexual preferences were being fought by the European Union with new legislation. “The governments of many European countries are now using ‘safer Internet’ from which this kind of material is filtered.”
He pointed out that many committees were trying to increase public awareness of the phenomenon. “We (officials in Saudi Arabia) feel justified since we blocked this kind of thing from the very beginning and will continue to do so,” he said.
Al-Kadhi said that KASCT had received the Asia Pacific Information and Technology Award for providing the best software to block adult sites.
The system uses “Robots,” a program that automatically blocks certain phrases on an adult website and has an accuracy of 99.9 percent, he said.
Asked about the blocking of sites that promote terrorism, he said that KACST works only as a technical agency and that it blocks such sites when it receives an order to do so from the Interior Ministry.
He explained that KASCT did not screen personal e-mails and would not do so unless it received a request relating to national security from the ministry.
Commenting on the blocking of websites which would permit Internet users to access information about other religions such as Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity, the official said that there were no laws to ban those sites but that KACST naturally made mistakes like any other group or organization.
He said KACST had ignored requests from many people to block all religious sites except for Islamic ones. Any person, he added, may fill out a request concerning a blocked URL and send it to KACST, mentioning the reasons why the site should not be blocked.
“The request is reviewed within 24 hours,” Al-Kadhi added. He said KACST was not to blame for the slow Internet dial-up connections in the Kingdom, adding that the problem was with the Saudi Telecom Company lines.
Speechless!
It won't surprise me one bit if Saudi forbidden sites don't include all of the anti-American jihad whacko sites.
You mean like Free Republic? :)
pornography and politics banned---theres a certain poetry there
“The requester is reviewed interrogated within 24 hours,”
With the exception of the occasional Pat Buchanan Brigadier member, Order of the Tinfoil Hat, with Flat Earth Anti-Neocon Clusters, or its DUmmie Deaniac counterpart, FR is probably the most pro-American site on the WWW.
"You two have sullied the internet by putting pornography on it!" - Ned Flanders
plowing the local goat herd gets old....
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