Ed Webb's List: Tunisia censorship discussion

• While not all countries in the Middle East and North Africa filter the Internet, censorship across the region is on the rise, and the scope and depth of filtering are increasing. Testing has revealed political filtering to be the common denominator across the region; however, social filtering is on the rise.
• Based on ONI testing results, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank do not currently filter any material; however, none of those are without regulations.
• Bahrain, Iran, Syria and Tunisia have the strictest political filtering practices in the region.
• Although increased filtering is the rule and unblocking the exception, there are a few instances of the latter since our last report. Syria has restored access to Arabic-language Wikipedia, Morocco has lifted a ban on a number of pro-Western Sahara independence Web sites, and Libya has begun to allow access to previously banned political sites. Additionally, Sudanese filtering of sites containing LGBT, dating, and health-related content has lessened since the last round of ONI testing.
• Iran is among the strictest filtering regimes in the world, pervasively filtering political and social content, as well as Internet tools and proxies, and substantially filtering content related to conflict and security.
• In the Middle East and North Africa, the filtering of social media and social networking sites has become relatively commonplace. For example, YouTube and Facebook are currently filtered Syria and Tunisia, and Orkut and Flickr are blocked in Iran and the UAE. Iran also filters a local social networking site, Balatarin.com, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia filter certain YouTube videos, though not the entire site.
• Blocking Web sites in a local language is approximately twice as likely as blocking sites only available in English or other international languages.

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