(Western) Internet Censorship Providers - The Future of the Internet
Last month the OpenNet Initiative published a report that shines light on one of the more sensitive business practices of Western Internet security and filtering companies. These companies – including McAfee (an Intel subsidiary), Websense, and Netsweeper – promote their filtering technologies in the West as tools for parents and schools trying to shield children from online pornography and employers looking to maintain a professional work environment. But they also appear to make their software and URL categorization services available to state-run ISPs and telecoms in Middle Eastern and North African countries, such as Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Sudan, and Tunisia. These ISPs and telecoms, and the governments behind them, use the software to filter out Internet content that they don’t want their citizens to see.
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