All Content Related to United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

miriam — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:11:22 -0400

Background

The United Arab Emirates is ruled chiefly by a Federal Supreme Council, consisting of the hereditary leaders of the seven individual emirates. Although the UAE Constitution provides for judicial independence and guarantees freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, political interference and legal constraints undermine these provisions. Rulings by Islamic and civil courts are scrutinized by the government, and the foreign nationals occupying most judicial seats can be deported.1 Print and electronic media are subject to the Press and Publications Law, which permits censorship of content by the state Media Council and prosecution under the Penal Code—for example, for publishing material that causes someone moral harm (Article 372), or for defaming someone without concrete evidence (Article 373). Journalists practice self-censorship, and newspapers often rely on the state’s Emirates News Agency for material.2 Although citizens can voice their concerns through channels such as the open councils (majlis), they do not have the power to transform the government or national law and are prohibited from criticizing their leaders.3 Human rights activists have been detained and academics and critics barred from making their views public.4The government also controls Sunni and Shi’a mosques and monitors sermons for political commentary.5

Internet in the United Arab Emirates

The UAE is among the most highly Internet-connected countries in the Middle East. The UAE Yearbook for 2007 states that there are more than 578,000 Internet subscribers in the country.6 September 2006 figures on Internet penetration place the number of Internet users at 1.40 million, or 35 percent of the population,7 though Etisalat (Emirates Telecommunications Corporation)—the nation’s primary service provider—estimates that more than 51 percent of the country is online.8

Since 1976, nearly all telephone and Internet service in the UAE has been furnished by the government-owned Etisalat—either through direct sale of subscriptions to customers or through commercial resale of Etisalat services via providers such as Dubai Internet City (DIC) telecom. With the release of the General Policy for the Telecommunication Sector (GTP) in 2006,9 the UAE government moved to liberalize the telecommunications market, though it remains to be seen how competition will affect Etisalat’s monopoly on telecom operations. The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) granted a twenty-year license to the Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC)—more widely known under its traded name “du”—to offer fixed-line, mobile, and Internet services. Prior to liberalization, du served the Dubai free zone and a few affiliated residential complexes, providing unfettered Internet access in those areas, but acquisitions and partnerships with other telecom companies have expanded du’s capabilities and customer base. du now aims to capture 30 percent of the UAE telecom market within three years.10

Legal and regulatory frameworks

Controls on Internet content in the UAE, actualized through filtering and other forms of enforcement, are geared toward safeguarding political, moral, and religious values. According to Etisalat, there is some evidence that these controls enjoy popular support. A 2002 survey found that 60 percent of Etisalat subscribers surveyed favored retaining the ISP’s automatic filtering system, with 51 percent saying that it protected family members from objectionable content. In 2004, the UAE cited the survey as indicating that the role of filtering “in protecting users from offensive material is considered to be an acceptable form of censorship.”11

The mandate for technical filtering in the UAE derives from the TRA and is executed at the ISP level. Etisalat prohibits the use of its services for any “criminal or unlawful purpose such as but not limited to vice, gambling or obscenity, or for carrying out any activity which is contrary to the social, cultural, political, economical or religious values of the UAE.”12 Emerging competitor du is also moving toward compliance with the TRA’s filtering policies. In January 2007, the company defended its decision to block the use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the free zone, saying that TRA rules and guidelines mandated the ban.13 This decision heralded a comprehensive plan to implement technical filtering throughout the Dubai free zone in 2007.14

The UAE government has also issued a federal law on combating cybercrimes. Cyber-Crime Law No. 2 of 2006 considers any intentional act that abolishes, destroys, or reveals secrets, or that results in the republishing of personal or official information, to be a crime.15 Individuals may be imprisoned for using the Internet to abuse Islamic holy shrines and rituals, insult any recognized religion, incite or promote sins, or oppose the Islamic religion.16 Anyone convicted of “transcending family principles and values”17 or setting up a Web site for groups “calling for, facilitating and promoting ideas in breach of the general order and public decency”18may be jailed.

ONI testing results

ONI conducted tests on the UAE's two ISPs: Etisalat, which services most of the country; and du, which (at the time of testing) serviced only Dubai Media City, Dubai Internet City, and some residential areas associated with the free zone. To conduct the tests, ONI used dialup, broadband, and wireless connections. Access in the Dubai free zone was unfettered, while considerable filtering behavior was exhibited on the Etisalat ISP.

Testing in the UAE points to selective filtering of Web sites that express alternative political or religious views. UAEprison.com, a site hosting testimonials of former prisoners and critiques of the government’s human rights practices, was blocked, as was the site of the U.S.-based Arab Times (arabtimes.com). Several sites presenting unorthodox perspectives on Islam (thekoran.com, islamreview.com, secularislam.org) were blocked, along with a handful of sites promoting minority faiths (albrhan.org, ansarweb.net). Among the few extremist sites filtered in the UAE were hinduunity.org, a site advocating Hindu solidarity and resistance to Islam, and kahanetzadak.com, a site devoted to the founder of the militant Jewish Defense League. Meanwhile, the state continued to deny access to all sites on the Israeli country code top-level domain “.il”.

Testing revealed pervasive filtering of pornographic and gay and lesbian sites, which were extensively blocked. Web pages relating to sexual health (circumcision.org) and education (sexualhealth.com) or containing provocative attire (lingerie.com) were filtered to lesser degrees. Sites promoting alcohol and drug use or facilitating online gambling or dating were also blocked in large numbers.

ONI found substantial filtering of Internet tools in the UAE, including translation (systranbox.com), hacking (thesecretlist.com) and anonymizer (surfsecret.com) sites. Numerous VoIP sites (Skype.com, pc2call.com) were blocked in accordance with the national ban on such applications. In October 2006, the UAE unblocked access to social networking and multimedia sharing sites, including youTube.com, flickr.com, metacafe.com, and mySpace.com. However, sections of these sites containing objectionable material remain unavailable.

Conclusion

The UAE prevents its citizens from accessing a significant amount of Internet content spanning a variety of topics, though the majority of sites filtered appear to be those deemed obscene. Outside the free zones, the state employs SmartFilter software to block content such as nudity, sex, dating, gambling, cults/occult, religious conversion, and drugs. Sites containing anonymizer, hacking, translation, and VoIP applications are also filtered in this manner. The manual blocking of the entire Israeli domain is indicative of the government’s political opposition to the Israeli state, rather than to the particular contents of the Web sites hosted there. Though most political sites and news sources are accessible throughout the country, a handful are blocked. It remains to be seen how severely the enforcement of TRA policies in the free zone and affiliated residential clusters will hamper access to Internet content and transform the traditionally unrestricted information environment in those areas.

NOTES

1. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2006: United Arab Emirates, at 1.e., http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78865.htm.
2. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2006: United Arab Emirates, at 2.a., http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78865.htm.
3. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2006: United Arab Emirates, at 2.a. and 3., http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78865.htm.
4. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2007: United Arab Emirates, http://hrw.org/englishwr2k7/docs/2007/01/11/uae14724.htm.
5. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2006: United Arab Emirates, at 2.c., http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78865.htm.
6. United Arab Emirates Yearbook 2007: Infrastructure at 190, http://www.uaeinteract.com/uaeint_misc/pdf_2007/English_2007/eyb6.pdf.
7. Internet World Stats “Middle East Internet usage and population statistics,” (citing International Telecommunication Union data), http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm.
8. See Etisalat, About Us: Corporate Information, http://www.etisalat.co.ae/.
9. See General Policy for the Telecommunication Sector (GTP), http://www.tra.ae/NationalTelecomPolicyofUAE.pdf.
10. See United Arab Emirates Yearbook 2007: Infrastructure at 193, http://www.uaeinteract.com/uaeint_misc/pdf_2007/English_2007/eyb6.pdf.
11. United Arab Emirates Yearbook 2004: Information and Culture at 254, http://www.uae.org.ae/uaeint_misc/pdf/English/Culture_&_Information.pdf.
12. Etisalat (ecompany) Policies: Terms & Conditions, “Condition of Use” at 1(v), http://ecompany.ae/eco/isp/english/cs/policies/terms.html.
13. Gulf News, “du defends blocking of VoIP calls in free zones,” January 29, 2007, http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/01/29/10100242.html.
14. Gulf News, “Free zones to be put under official web filters,” February 10, 2007.
15. Article 2, Cyber-Crime Law No. 2 of 2006, printed in Gulf News, February 13, 2006, http://archive.gulfnews.com/uae/uaessentials/more_stories/10018507.html.
16. Article 15, Cyber-Crime Law No. 2 of 2006.
17. Article 16, Cyber-Crime Law No. 2 of 2006.
18. Article 20, Cyber-Crime Law No. 2 of 2006.

UAE blog blocked after analyzing impact of US financial crisis on UAE economy

ONI-MENA — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:51:06 -0400

The UAE ISPs blocked access to the Arabic blog Mujarad Ensan (Just a man) a few days after the blogger published a post sarcastically entitled "Lough with me and say: Our economy is in a good condition" in which he accused the UAE government of the lack of transparency in dealing with the current US economic crisis, and the local papers of lying about the real status of the local economy. The writer also accused government-owned real estate companies of publishing exaggerated information about business deals to create the impression that the local economy has not been negatively effective by the US financial crisis.

The blogger has in the past discussed sensitive issues such as media freedom, human rights, and political transparency in the UAE.

The UAE's filtering system continues to target political, social and sexual contents. Earlier this year, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority expanded the filtering regime to the Dubai free zones which in the past enjoyed unfettered access to the Internet.

A Blind-date with the Censors in UAE

ONI-MENA — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:29:18 -0400

Western software companies continue to make key decisions about what is acceptable speech in numerous countries around the world by compiling the lists of web sites that fall into potentially undesirable categories, such as provocative content and hate speech.

Livejournal.com, a free service for journaling and blogging, was blocked in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this week, apparently because it was categorized as a dating site in the database of the filtering software Secure Computing. The UAE uses SmartFilter, a product of Secure Computing, to block access to various content categories including dating, porn, sex, and gambling.

We checked livejournal.com and three other URLs currently blocked in the UAE for current categorization in the SmartFilter database and found that all were categorized as “dating” sites, even though many will argue against this categorization.

Western companies sell to ISPs not only filtering software, but also decisions on speech. This blocking highlights serious issues surrounding coverage, quality, accuracy and inaccuracy of Web filtering. Secure Computing, used by ISPs in various countries in the Middle East, has a database of 20 million blockable Web sites in over 91 categories. So when ISPs purchase SmartFitlter, they also buy 20 million decisions and 91 potential inaccurate categorizations.

It is up to the ISPs to make corrections and exceptions in either direction. Web sites such as friendster.com and hi5.com were unblocked in the UAE a few weeks ago, even though they are still categorized as dating Web sites by SmartFilter. These processes, however, are not always clear or easy to figure out, and site owners may not be easily able to appeal the blocking of their site.

Dubai free zone no longer has filter-free Internet access

ONI-MENA — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:29:00 -0400

ONI's preliminary investigation found that Dubai's ISP, du, which started filtering the Internet on April 14, 2008, targets sexual materials as well as politically oriented content. Examples of political sites blocked include Arabtimes.com and Secret Dubai blog, both of which have content critical of UAE. Other examples of non-pornographic Web sites blocked include the wikipedia article on the controversial movie "fitna".

Users who attempt to access banned content receive a blockpage saying, "This website is not available in the UAE. The internet offers us a great opportunity to communicate, share knowledge and do good. Unfortunately, the website you are trying to access has content that might hurt the religious, cultural and moral sentiments of our fellow users in the UAE."

This new filtering regime targets content deemed to offend the "moral, social and cultural values" of the UAE as regulated by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) guidelines, but access to popular websites such as Skype and Facebook will not be prevented, du CEO told arabianbusiness.com, in an attempt to allay fears that Web sites needed by businesses could be banned. He also added,

“People are worried about their businesses but these access restrictions could not be to websites necessary for business. [However] the TRA will listen to legitimate requests from businesses that need access to certain places, and can come to arrangements” he said.

Three days before the implementation of this filtering system, a media story reported complains from du users that "inappropriate" content such as adult Web sites is accessible on the du network.

It remains to be seen how this new censorship will affect the businesses in the free zone, especially those in Dubai Media City, the only global media hub in the region, whose mission is "to become an efficient and leading provider of services to foster the growth of Dubai’s knowledge based economy."

Analysis of the scope and depth of du's Internet filtering will be published in future ONI research.

Dubai free zone will no longer have unfettered Internet access

ONI-MENA — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:52:07 -0500

Internet companies and users in Dubai free zone will go through filtered Internet this year, reported the Gulf News. Currently more than 500 companies based in the free zone enjoy unfettered Internet access unlike the rest of the country. UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) plans to extend its filter into the free zone which includes Dubai Media City and Dubai Internet City as well as the residential areas affiliated with the free zone.

The TRA will exempt companies "with a legitimate interest in keeping unfettered internet access".

The ONI has previously analyzed the legal and technological restrictions on Internet access in UAE

Internet Filtering in Yemen in 2004-2005: A Country Study

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

PDF Version

1. Executive Summary

2. Political, Technical, and Legal Context in Yemen

A. Sensitive / Controversial Topics for Media Coverage
B. Internet Infrastructure and Access
C. Legal Background

3. Testing Methodology

A. Methods
B. Results Analysis
C. Methods Specific to Yemen
D. Topics Tested

4. Results and Analysis

A. Summary
B. Global List Results
C. Yemen Specific Results
D. Longitudinal Testing Results

5. Conclusion

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Appendix 6

Appendix 7

Appendix 8

Appendix 9

Appendix 10

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Republic of Yemen limits what Internet content its citizens can access by using commercially available filtering technology and by controlling its two Internet service providers (ISPs), TeleYemen (operators of the service YNET) and YemenNet, through the state's powerful Ministry of Telecommunications. The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) tested the filtering systems of both ISPs, and found significant congruence but also notable differences between the two.¹ Pornography is the primary target of both, but other types of content are targeted to varying degrees, including sex education and provocative clothing sites, gay and lesbian-related materials, gambling sites, dating sites, drug-related sites, sites enabling anonymous Web surfing, proxy servers that circumvent filtering, and sites with content related to converting Muslims to other religions.

The Republic of Yemen's legal regime involves relatively little formal restriction of Internet use and access, though the rules set by the ISPs include substantial restrictions on what may be accessed or published. These rules prohibit the access or publication of material deemed to be obscene or subversive on political or religious grounds. Human rights and other non-governmental organizations have complained that the Yemeni state restricts what journalists may write and how citizens use the Internet through a variety of means of intimidation. However, Internet access is readily available from homes or Internet cafés for those who can afford it.

To carry out its filtering regime, Yemen relies upon the commercial product Websense. ONI's testing reveals that TeleYemen blocks sites classified by Websense into the categories "Adult Content," "Lingerie and Swimsuit," "Nudity," "Gay or Lesbian or Bisexual Interest," and "Sex Education," and likely blocks the master category "Adult Material." TeleYemen also uses a category called "User-Defined," which enables a filtering entity to compile and block sites based on its own criteria. The sites included by TeleYemen in the "User-Defined" category primarily deal with religion and the religious conversion of Muslims. The specific Websense categories blocked by YemenNet are "Adult Content," "Lingerie and Swimsuit," "Nudity," "Sex Education," "Abused Drugs," "Marijuana," and "Gambling," and likely the master category "Adult Material."

While the Republic of Yemen substantially filters material on topics related to sex, sexuality and gambling, the state does not try to control broadly what its citizens see on the Internet. For instance, unlike certain other states that filter Internet content, Yemen does not block political content and its blocking of religious content is limited, focusing only on a small number of anti-Islam sites.

2. POLITICAL, TECHNICAL, AND LEGAL CONTEXT IN YEMEN

A. Sensitive / Controversial Topics for Media Coverage

Sensitive issues for media in Yemen include: policies towards the southern part of the state (in which region the 1994 Yemeni civil war was fought), relations with other states such as Saudi Arabia, corruption, and anti-terrorism policy.² Yemen has demonstrated particular sensitivity to media coverage of security issues since the bombing of the United States warship U.S.S. Cole off its shores in October 2000. Criticism of the government has resulted in arrests of journalists,³and Yemen works to control reporting on its armed forces.⁴Yemen is also concerned about pornography, obscene material, and content that is objectionable on religious grounds (for example, converting an adherent from Islam to another religion is illegal).⁵ The state is especially sensitive to how security issues are covered because of Yemen's role in anti-terrorism efforts, and the Ministry of the Interior has filed lawsuits against journalists for alleged violations of the press law in covering security issues.⁶ The state has no tolerance for Islamic extremism. It closed 4,000 religious schools in 2004 on the grounds that their funding and curricula came from sources that encouraged violence and civil unrest.⁷Among these sources, the state claimed, was material written by Hussein Badrudin Al-Houthi, a dissident cleric whose clash with the state over its pro-American policies ended in bloodshed and Al-Houthi's death.⁸

B. Internet Infrastructure and Access

Internet use in the Republic of Yemen is confined to a very small percentage of the population, but is limited more by economic factors than by state-sanctioned censorship. Compared to other states in the region, Yemen's people are relatively poor on the whole, a fact that is borne out in the lack of Internet access for the vast majority of the population. There are over a million land lines in Yemen⁹, and about 400,000 mobile phone users.¹⁰Telephone density is the lowest in the region, due to the population's poverty and the difficult physical geography.¹¹Estimates of the number of Internet users vary between 100,000¹²and 150,000.¹³Barriers to expanded use include the high cost of computers relative to low average incomes, the high cost of access, and the low bandwidth available on Yemen's telephone-based infrastructure.¹⁴Businesses own 60% of Internet subscriber accounts, while government and educational institutions are responsible for only 3% of accounts.¹⁵Far fewer women than men access the Internet, which may be attributable to the high illiteracy rate among Yemeni women (nearly 75%).¹⁶

Home Internet access is not legally restricted in Yemen. Internet cafés, though, are a far more important venue for Internet access. Yemen has an estimated 250 Internet cafés just in the capital city of Sana'a.¹⁷Approximately 61% of the state's Internet users gain their access through these cafés.¹⁷

Yemen has two ISPs, TeleYemen¹⁹and YemenNet.²⁰YemenNet predominates, providing 89% of all dialup accounts, because its services are free apart from an initial registration fee and a negligible dial-up fee.²¹Both ISPs rely on the U.S.-based Websense²² filtering company to provide the software for their filtering lists and blocking mechanisms. TeleYemen employs a single dedicated Websense server and possesses individual licenses for each user. YemenNet, which uses a Blue Coat integrated cache/filter appliance running Websense, possesses only 10,000 concurrent user licenses to cover over 65,000 users. Thus, if more than 10,000 YemenNet subscribers access the Internet simultaneously, the requests of all but the first 10,000 will circumvent the filtering software.

The filtering practices of both ISPs are transparent ? users are notified of filtering and told why particular sites are blocked. Despite the filtering, one study found 46% of entertainment Web sites requested by users were pornographic, and 43% of Internet café owners reported that users tried to access pornography.²³ The most common Internet uses are e-mail and chatting.²⁴

C. Legal Background

1. General Media Regulation
Yemen openly censors sexual and religious content (particularly material critical of Islam) on the Internet to preserve Islamic values and tradition. Similarly, "Customs officials confiscate foreign publications regarded as pornographic or objectionable because of religious or political content."²⁵ For a time, Yemen took a relatively liberal approach to regulation of media content by regional standards, tolerating some dissent and even direct criticism.²⁶The state does not usually censor online political content, and many Yemeni political groups have accessible Web sites, indicating tolerance for some dissenting voices.²⁷Despite the relatively free press in Yemen during the 1990s, Yemeni journalists reportedly suffered some harassment at the hands of the state. In particular, journalists at the Yemen Times were frequently targeted with violence, threats, and arbitrary imprisonment.²⁸

The Yemeni state seemed poised to reduce pressure on and detention of journalists somewhat beginning in July 2002, when the President declared an amnesty for all journalists and dropped all existing charges.²⁹However, throughout 2003 and 2004, the government handed down prison sentences to several journalists and suspended the publication of various newspapers. In 2003, when Nasserist Party newspaper al-Wahdawi published content critical of Saudi Arabia, three of its journalists were given suspended prison sentences for harming Yemeni-Saudi relations.³⁰In 2004, the state shut down opposition newspaper Al-Shoura for 6 months and sentenced its editor, Abdul Karim Al-Khaiwani, to a year in prison for publishing editorials³¹criticizing the president's violent handling of the Al-Houthi uprising.³²Human rights observers responded to the arrest with outrage,³³ and Al-Khaiwani was released after seven months of petitioning by international human rights and press freedom organizations,³⁴as well as prodding by the US government.³⁵ In an exceptional case, the state also imprisoned several merchants for selling a cassette tape containing poetry critical of the government.³⁶

The Yemen Press Law, signed in December 1990 by President Ali Abdullah Salih, is the primary legal instrument regulating print and broadcast media.³⁷This law theoretically establishes a press that "shall be independent and shall have full freedom to practice its vocation," but that must operate "within the context of Islamic creed, within the basic principles of the Constitution, goals of the Yemeni Revolution, and the aim of solidifying national unity."³⁸ It creates concomitant rights to "Freedom of knowledge, thought, the press, personal expression, communication and access to information" for every citizen.³⁹Local journalists must be Yemeni citizens and must obtain Press Cards from the Ministry of Information.⁴⁰Foreign journalists must be accredited to receive Press Cards.⁴¹Press Cards can be revoked by the Ministry of Information without any reason given, and this revocation requires the former holder to leave Yemen unless they have an independent reason for residency.⁴²

Journalists must "respect the objectives and aims of the Yemeni Revolution and the provisions of the Constitution, and shall not contravene this law."⁴³They are required to "respect the sovereignty and independence of the country, the creed, religious law, ethics and traditions of the Yemeni people" and must not "engage in [any] activity which endangers the security of the country."⁴⁴Newspapers and magazines need a license from the Ministry of Information to publish.⁴⁵Publications of "political parties, popular organizations, and ministries, or government authorities" do not require licenses. Setting up a printing press, though, requires a license from the Ministry of Culture.⁴⁶The Minister of Information can prevent the distribution of foreign publications that contravene the law.⁴⁷

In June 2004, President Salih ordered the removal of a clause in the Press Law allowing the imprisonment of journalists for certain offenses. However, a draft for a new Press Law put forward this year by the Ministry of Information would increase press restrictions in other ways, forbidding journalists from "criticis[ing] the head of the state" or "publishing or exchanging anything that directly and personally prejudices monarchs and heads of brotherly and friendly states."⁴⁸The law as originally drafted would also impose even higher startup costs on new publications, including Web sites.⁴⁹In September 2005, the Parliament approved a modified version of the Press Law to the dismay of Yemeni journalists, some of whom believe that the law will "restrict press freedom and increase limitations on online news services."⁵⁰Under pressure from international media commentators and the Yemeni Press Syndicate, though, the government has continued to revise the draft law.⁵¹

Under Yemeni criminal law, "the humiliation of the State, the Cabinet, or parliamentary institutions," the publication of "false information" that "threatens public order or the public interest," and "false stories intended to damage Arab and friendly countries or their relations" with the state can result in fines or jail terms of up to five years.⁵² The penal code also allows for the death penalty in cases where information related to state secrets or national security is published.⁵³Reports suggest that these regulations may lead journalists to self-censor.

The state's Ministry of Information controls: the national news agency Saba; Yemen's four daily newspapers, al-Thawra, al-Jumhuriyya, 14 Uktubar, al-Sharara; and all television and radio outlets through the Public Corporation for Radio and Television (PCRT).⁵⁴The Ministry of Information may shut down publications without notice or reason, particularly publications it deems too critical of the government.⁵⁵News broadcasts of information critical of the government are rarely permitted.⁵⁶The Ministry of the Interior controls access to information regarding security-related issues and has filed lawsuits against journalists for allegedly misusing anonymous sources in covering security issues.⁵⁷Journalists report being threatened by security officials who seek to influence their reporting, and must "consult" with the Ministry of Defense before reporting on information related to Yemen's armed forces.⁵⁸The Ministry of Telecommunications owns YemenNet outright and strictly controls TeleYemen,⁵⁹which is owned by another government entity, the Public Telecommunication Corporation, and run by FranceTelecom SA.⁶⁰According to one source, the Ministry of Culture prohibits and monitors Web sites as well.⁶¹

2. Internet Access Regulation
The state does not formally restrict Internet access, but many Yemenis claim the costs of Internet access are "prohibitively high."⁶²Standard analog dial-up service from TeleYemen costs 3,000 Yemen rials (U.S.$16.48) for installation, and a maximum per-minute charge of five rials (U.S.$0.027), with a minimum monthly charge of 300 rials (U.S.$1.65). (Note that per capita GDP in Yemen is approximately U.S.$800 a year, and the state is one of the world's least-developed economically.⁶³) Dial-up service from YemenNet costs 5,000 rials (U.S.$27.47) for installation, with a per-minute charge of one rial (U.S.$0.0055) and no monthly fee. High-speed services are also available, but are even more expensive.⁶⁴

3. Internet Content Regulation
Yemen's Internet content regulation occurs primarily at the level of the ISP. Yemen does not have a specific Internet law or legislation setting forth formal content restrictions, nor is there a record of the state censoring or pursuing criminal charges against specific Internet users or content providers. Yemen has invoked security in exercising general media censorship, but there are no published examples of Yemen using security to justify Internet censorship.

At the ISP level, for example, TeleYemen's rules include broad prohibitions on content. TeleYemen bans anything that is: deemed obscene; "offensive on moral, religious, communal, or political grounds"; "inconsistent with the provisions of the Holy Qoran, the Prophet Mohamed's Traditions and the Islamic jurisdiction"; defamatory, "caus[ing] disturbance of security, National Unity, instability, call[ing] for or encourag[ing] such illegal acts in the country"; or "offensive to Yemen, its history, culture and relationship with any of the world countries."⁶⁵TeleYemen filters content that it believes falls within this description with the commercial product Websense.

Human rights organizations and journalists claim that Internet censorship is widespread in Yemen and is impeding the growth of Internet usage. Restrictions on Internet usage can be informal as well as formal. Internet cafés play an important role in access for many Yemenis, since Internet service at home is cost-prohibitive. The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information reports that Yemen recently ordered Internet cafés to remove the barriers between computer stations in the cafés, thus eliminating users' privacy and causing a decline in the cafés' usage and profitability. The report also claims that the state imposes broad censorship on political and cultural Web sites under the guise of preserving "morality."⁶⁶

Yemen has been a focus of NGO efforts to oppose censorship on the Internet. Likewise, Omani journalist Mohamed Al-Yahyai recently founded the Gulf Press Freedom Center⁶⁷to address efforts by several Middle Eastern states, including Yemen, to "impede access to the Internet by allowing only government-controlled companies to provide services, limiting access to computer servers, keeping costs of access high, arresting and questioning Internet users who challenge national leadership, and censoring content."⁶⁸

Yemen participated in the first meeting of the United Nations-led World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in 2003. The WSIS process resulted in the creation of a declaration of principles that establishes the participants' commitment to open access to information technology for their citizens and recognizes the critical role such technology and access play in development.⁶⁹However, the summit accords have no regulatory force, are relatively vague, and do not necessarily reflect the participants' actual policies for information technology and the Internet.⁷⁰

3. TESTING METHODOLOGY

A. Methods

ONI performs technical testing across multiple levels of access at multiple time intervals in a number of regions around the world. The team analyzes results within the contextual framework of the target state's filtering technology, law, and regulations. To obtain meaningful, accurate results we seek to:

generate lists of domain names and URLs that have been or are likely to be blocked, based upon background research into relevant social and political issues in Yemen;
enumerate ISPs and national routing topography;
determine the type, location, and behavior of the filtering technology;
deploy network interrogation and enumeration software at multiple access points; and
conduct a thorough statistical analysis of results.

Determining which URLs to test is a vital component of our research, as it reveals the filtering system's technical capacity and content areas subject to blocking. ONI employs three types of lists:

a list of "high impact" sites reported to be blocked or likely to be blocked in the state due to their content (for example, political opposition);
a "global list" containing a control list of manually categorized Web sites reflecting a range of Internet content (for example, news and hacking sites), intended in part to enable comparisons across multiple states; and
a multilingual list of significant key words used to generate significantly larger lists through search engine queries.

To explore Internet filtering, we deploy network interrogation devices and applications, which perform the censorship enumeration, at various Internet access levels. These tools download the ONI testing lists and check whether specific URLs and domains are accessible from that point on the network. Interrogation devices are designed to run inside a state (i.e., behind its firewall) to perform specific, sensitive functions with varying degrees of stealth. Similarly, ONI distributes interrogation applications to trusted volunteers who run the software inside the state. For testing, depending upon a series of local factors, ONI obtains network access at multiple levels through a combination of:

Proxy servers,
Long distance dial-up,
Distributed applications, and
Dedicated servers.

During initial testing, we use remote computers located in states that filter. These remote computers are located behind the state's firewalls yet allow access to clients connecting from the wider Internet. We attempt to access the URL and domain name lists through these computers to reveal what content is filtered, and how consistently it is blocked. The ONI team also tests these lists from control locations in non-filtered countries. The testing system flags all URLs and domains that are accessible from the control location, but inaccessible from ones inside the target state, as potentially blocked.

B. Results Analysis

We carefully analyze the data obtained from testing to document the nature of filtered content, to explore the technical capabilities of the target state, and to determine areas that require in-depth study during testing from inside the state's firewall. In particular, ONI examines the response received over HTTP when attempting to access filtered content. As discussed, when content is filtered, users often receive a "block page" - a Web page with text indicating that the requested content cannot be accessed. In other cases, filtering can be less obvious or transparent, appearing to be network errors, redirections, or lengthy timeouts rather than deliberate blocking. We analyze HTTP headers - text sent from the Web server to the browser - to derive information about both the server and the requested page. This information is generally hidden from the end user. However, these headers can indicate whether content was successfully accessed or was inaccessible. If an error occurs, the HTTP protocol returns codes that indicate the type of error in the header. Thus, by analyzing the headers captured during testing, we seek to distinguish between errors caused by Internet filtering and more mundane, unintentional network connection errors.

We classify results in one of four categories:

URL was accessible both through the local connection and the remote computer (not filtered);
URL was accessible through the local connection but inaccessible through the remote computer, which returned a different HTTP response code (possibly filtered);
URL was accessible through the local connection but inaccessible through the remote computer due to a network connection error (possibly filtered, but not definitive); or
URL was accessible through the local connection but inaccessible through the remote computer; the remote computer returned a block page (filtered).

If a URL is inaccessible through both the local connection and the remote computer, we consider it "dead" and remove it from the results. This result indicates that the URL's content was not available to Internet users generally at the time of our testing, making the URL irrelevant for our testing.

The ONI team analyzes blocked, unblocked, and uncertain URLs both at an aggregate level (to estimate the overall level of filtering) and at a category level (to indicate what types of content the state seeks to control). We publish state-specific studies, such as this one on Yemen, that provide background on a state's political and legal system, lists of tested sites, and analysis of results to reveal and analyze, to the greatest extent we can given the data we are able to collect, what information a state blocks and how it does so.

C. Methods Specific to Yemen

We performed two sets of tests for both the TeleYemen/YNET and YemenNet networks: initial proxy tests involving remote access of computers on the two networks, and subsequent in-country testing. The proxy tests occurred in October and December 2004 and the in-country testing was performed in September 2005. In general, ONI has found in-country testing to be more accurate than proxy testing, and this report thus focuses on the in-country results. However, a comparison of the proxy and in-country results yielded a strong correlation, with 94% of sites tested via both methods producing identical results. As the sites that produced divergent results were heavily clustered in specific content areas, we are confident that the minor variances represent changes in the filtering policies of the respective networks and present this longitudinal analysis below.

D. Topics Tested

Our testing included our global lists, designed to run in every country in which ONI tests, a "high impact" list of sites potentially sensitive to the Yemeni state, and sites contained on results lists for keyword searches.⁷¹Topics to which the Yemeni state has demonstrated sensitivity include pornography, sexual content, gambling, security and terrorism issues, political dissent, and material critical of Islam or attempting to convert Muslims to other faiths.⁷²

4. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

A. Summary

ONI ran tests via proxy server in 2004 and through in-country testing in 2005 and 2006 on Yemen's two ISPs, TeleYemen/YNET and YemenNet. Our results indicate that filtering increased on both providers in Yemen from 2004 to 2005; TeleYemen increased blocking from 10% of ONI's global list to 12%, and YemenNet from 6% to 14%. Both ISPs block nearly all pornographic material, a considerable amount of sexually-themed content, and a number of well-known proxy and filtering circumvention sites. In addition, TeleYemen increased its blocking of gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender sites during the two years, and YemenNet commenced blocking sites on this topic that focus on the Middle East. TeleYemen also blocks any URL with the string "sex" in it; the ISP also filters religious conversion sites and a limited number of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and circumvention sites. YemenNet increased its blocking of sexual material, gambling sites, and illegal drugs content from 2004 to 2005, and filters a limited number of VoIP sites. Both ISPs increased filtering of proxy services to reduce users' ability to access prohibited content, such as pornography, through such sites. Neither provider blocked any politically-related sites, or any sensitive sites on our high-impact list.

1. YemenNet

We tested 1,653 unique URLs on the TeleYemen/YNET network, and found 160 blocked (10%). The bulk of TeleYemen's filtering focused on sexually-themed material and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (GLBT) content. The ISP also attempts to filter sites discussing the conversion of Muslims to other religions. Despite comprehensive research and testing, we found no evidence of any politically-focused blocking (for example, we found no filtering of opposition party Web sites, newspapers typically critical of the government, or international media sites). As in most states that employ an extensive filtering regime, we found a wide variety of other content areas with minimal blocking. The limited blocking in these content areas may be intentional, or may result either from miscategorization or the classification of a site in multiple categories (for example, a sexually explicit humor site could be classified based on humor or based on sexual content). ONI believes that TeleYemen employs limited, but intentional, blocking of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony sites and sites facilitating circumvention of filtering.

Our testing indicated that TeleYemen blocks sites classified by Websense into the categories "Adult Content," "Lingerie and Swimsuit," "Nudity," "Sex Education," and "Gay or Lesbian or Bisexual Interest."⁷³Overall, we believe TeleYemen has activated Websense's parent category "Adult Material" in an effort to block sexually explicit content as comprehensively as possible. We also found several blocked sites for which Websense reported a category of "User-Defined." This category enables a filtering entity, such as the Yemeni state, to compile and block sites based on its own criteria. The sites included by TeleYemen in the "User-Defined" category primarily deal with religion and the religious conversion of Muslims. Interestingly, all URLs that included the string "sex" were blocked by TeleYemen, including those containing content otherwise not targeted for filtering (for example, a site presenting historical, scriptural, and medical testimony in support of the proposition that "homo [sic] sex is sin"⁷⁴).

In our 2004 proxy results, we found minimal filtering of GLBT content. However, our 2005 in-country results found widespread blocking within this category, leading us to conclude that TeleYemen increased dramatically its filtering of gay and lesbian-related content during the intervening period, and that the ISP activated the relevant Websense category after we concluded our 2004 testing.

2. TeleYemen/YNET

We tested 3,589 unique URLs on the YemenNet network and found 202 blocked (6%). Like TeleYemen, YemenNet employs Websense to filter sexually-themed material. In contrast to TeleYemen, however, YemenNet also heavily filters gambling and illegal drugs sites, and only blocks a minimum of GLBT content (mostly sites aimed at individuals living in the Middle East). Furthermore, we found no blocking by YemenNet of any religious sites. We found no politically-oriented blocking on YemenNet, despite extensive testing of sites and search results. YemenNet demonstrated scattered blocking in a number of content areas, although to a lower degree than with TeleYemen. Our testing again revealed what appears to be limited intentional blocking of VoIP sites.

ONI's results indicate that YemenNet blocks sites classified by Websense into the categories "Adult Content," "Lingerie and Swimsuit," "Nudity," "Sex Education" (again, most likely utilizing the "Adult Material" parent category), "Marijuana," "Abused Drugs," and "Gambling".⁷⁵

We found significant changes in content filtering between our 2004 and 2005 testing. While the absolute number of tested sites whose accessibility changed was small, these results demonstrate a clear change in policy. YemenNet did not filter any drug-related content in 2004, but engaged in extensive filtering of such material in 2005. In 2004, YemenNet filtered substantially less of the pornographic sites we tested than TeleYemen, and did not filter any content in related categories frequently affected by overblocking (such as lingerie, swimwear, and sex education sites). In 2005, YemenNet filtered the same number of pornographic sites as TeleYemen and also blocked sites in these related categories, demonstrating that comprehensive category filtering (e.g., blocking all or most porn sites) requires heavy filtering within related categories that may not be targeted for filtering (e.g., sex education sites). YemenNet also dramatically increased its filtering of gambling sites, and began to block Middle East-specific GLBT sites.

The discrepancies between TeleYemen and YemenNet's filtering criteria are puzzling, given the high degree of state involvement in the operation of both ISPs. While both ISPs heavily block adult content, it is not clear why only YemenNet targets drugs and gambling sites or why only TeleYemen comprehensively blocks GLBT sites. The most likely explanation for the disparate policies is simply that the filtering policies of each ISP were defined independently; this is plausible since YemenNet began operations much more recently. Hence, the two providers may be attempting to filter roughly equivalent content with different degrees of success.

B. Global List Results

We tested two global lists in Yemen: our original list of 786 sites in 31 categories, and our updated list of 459 sites in 28 categories.⁷⁶Of the sites that were either clearly blocked or clearly accessible during our testing, 13% were inaccessible on YemenNet (160 sites) and 11% were inaccessible on TeleYemen/YNET (133 sites).⁷⁷

1. TeleYemen

TeleYemen filtered heavily the following categories on our global list: pornography (92% of sites tested), provocative attire (77%), gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/queer issues (64%), and sex education (48%). Our testing revealed moderate to light filtering in the dating (17%), humor (17%), medical (11%), blogging domains (11%), religious conversion (10%), anonymizers (9%), free Web space (9%), groups (8%), filtering sites (6%), gambling (5%), alcohol (5%), hate speech (4%), VoIP (3%), and P2P (3%) categories. A number of the individual sites blocked in each category contain content that overlaps with heavily filtered subjects (such as www.breastenlargementmagazine.com in the medical category) or has been classified as adult content by Websense (such as thumbs.globalnews.it in the groups category). ONI believes this overlap explains the blocking within the dating, humor, medical, alcohol, and hate speech categories. For categories such as religious conversion, anonymizers, and VoIP, the small-scale filtering indicates limited intentional efforts; these types of sites are less likely to be mistakenly categorized by commercial filtering software such as Websense. In the religious conversion category, there is particular focus on blocking sites in Arabic and those critical of Islam. The VoIP blocking pattern was curious; overall (including both global lists and ONI's Websense category testing), we located two blocked sites (www.dialpad.com and www.net2phone.com), but were able to access better-known VoIP sites such as www.skype.com. According to Alexa, www.skype.com ranked 237 of all Web sites for traffic volume, while www.net2phone.com ranked 17,396 and www.dialpad.com came in at 50,474.⁷⁸

2. YemenNet

YemenNet filtered heavily the following categories: pornography (92% of sites tested), gambling (89%), provocative attire (81%), drugs (71%), and sex education (55%). We found moderate to light filtering in the dating (17%), humor (16%), medical (8%), groups (8%), VoIP (7%), gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/queer issues (5%), alcohol (5%), hate speech (4%), and P2P (3%) categories. As with TeleYemen, when we reviewed the individual sites in these categories, we found that blocking within dating, humor, medical, groups, alcohol, and hate speech categories was most likely a by-product of blocking the heavily-filtered categories. The blocked sites within the GLBT category were those focused on the Middle East: www.gayegypt.com (which contains a "gay Yemen" page) and www.al-fatiha.net. Similar to TeleYemen, YemenNet blocked several less-visible VoIP sites, although the majority of such sites, including www.skype.com, were accessible.

C. Yemen-Specific Results

To investigate Internet filtering on topics sensitive to the Yemeni state, we tested three additional lists: a short, high-impact list, a list of the top 100 sites generated by 11 different keyword searches of the Google search engine in both English and Arabic, and a list of proxy server or circumvention sites. ONI tested the high-impact and proxy lists on both networks, and tested the keyword list only on YemenNet. We also tested a list of sites classified in selected Websense categories to determine which of these categories each ISP chose to filter.

1. High-Impact List

Using ONI's research on sensitive topics, we compiled a list of 28 Web sites providing content in English or Arabic on these topics to probe whether they were accessible from within Yemen. None of the sites were blocked ? all were accessible from both TeleYemen and YemenNet. The sites included those of an opposition newspaper (www.al-shoura.net), a non-governmental organization created to monitor human rights abuses in Yemen (www.hoodonline.org), the Arab Press Freedom Watch (www.apfw.org), and the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (www.hrinfo.net).⁷⁹

2. Keyword List

Our keyword list also probed politically sensitive subjects. Using Google, we conducted keyword searches in both English and Arabic and attempted to access the top 100 results for each keyword. YemenNet did not filter any political sites in either language, but did block a small number of sites related to GLBT themes.

We conducted keyword searches on the following political topics: Al-Houthi (a Yemeni imam who fought the government's pro-American policies and was killed), Islamic Army of Aden (a radical Islamic organization seeking the overthrow of the Yemeni government), Yemen Times (an anti-government newspaper), USS Cole (an American naval vessel bombed in Aden, Yemen), Al-Shoura (another opposition newspaper), Al-Thawri (the newspaper of the Yemeni Socialist Party), and Islamic Jihad. Neither ISP blocked a single site responding to these keyword searches, which indicates strongly that Yemen's filtering policy is not intended to shape the contours of domestic political debate.

We also tested the results for English and Arabic searches for the terms "gay" and "lesbian". For "gay," 10% of the top 100 English language results and 1% of the top 100 Arabic results were filtered. For "lesbian," 1% of the top 100 English language results and 2% of the top 100 Arabic results were filtered. All of the filtered sites for these keywords were classified by Websense as sexually-themed content (e.g., www.gayuniverse.com, classified by Websense as "Adult Content", or www.androphile.com, classified as "Nudity"). These results were consistent with our global list testing, which found that YemenNet conducted minimal filtering on GLBT topics.

3. Proxy / Circumvention Sites

Sources in Yemen indicated that the state's ISPs have, in the last six months, increased their efforts to prevent users from bypassing the filtering system via sites that offer open proxy servers or other techniques to circumvent blocking. To test these reports, an ONI volunteer attempted to access 15 of the most popular proxy sites (as listed by Google's Directory).⁸¹All 15 sites were blocked by both TeleYemen/YNET and YemenNet.⁸²These services include the Anonymizer service⁸³and the JAP software program⁸⁴; both are commonly used in the region to evade filtering. We conclude that both ISPs attempt to enforce filtering by blocking users from sites that enable them to bypass these restrictions, and that filtering of this type of content has increased in the past six months.

4. Websense Categories

We also tested ONI's list of 351 URLs classified by Websense into 65 categories to determine which Websense categories TeleYemen and YemenNet selected to block. While some of these categories contain only a limited number of sites, we compare results from this list with our global list testing to obtain a robust picture of what content was targeted for filtering, and what level of success was achieved.

We report results for categories of interest below; a complete list of results is available at Appendix 4. (In a few cases, the percentage of sites blocked was not either 0% or 100%. This could occur for one of three reasons: 1) discrepancies in site classification between our list and the list in use by the ISP at the time of testing, 2) manual targeting of the site by the ISP, or 3) multiple categorization of a particular site.)

a.TeleYemen/YNET

TeleYemen comprehensively blocked all of the sexually-themed content categories we tested, as well as the "Gay or Lesbian or Bisexual Interest" category. The disparate blocking in the Internet Telephony (i.e., VoIP) category is similar to the results from our global list testing, suggesting that the Yemeni state or TeleYemen itself deliberately targets a limited number of these sites. Further research is necessary to understand the other categories with partial blocking; this filtering may simply indicate over-blocking that often accompanies concerted attempts to filter certain Internet content comprehensively.

Figure 1 - Websense Category Blocking by TeleYemen

b.YemenNet

ONI's testing found comprehensive blocking of all sexually-themed content categories, as well as those relating to illegal drugs and gambling. Although a single gambling site was accessible, the high level of blocking within this category from our global list testing confirms that YemenNet targets this content. The Internet Telephony (VoIP) category reveals a level of blocking consistent with manual targeting rather than activation of this Websense category. Interestingly, YemenNet had far fewer categories with low levels of filtering than TeleYemen did. Further research is required to investigate why YemenNet appears to have less overblocking.

Figure 2 - Websense Category Blocking by YemenNet

D. Longitudinal Testing Results
We compared the results from our 2004 proxy testing with the 2005 in-country results to examine how Yemen changed its filtering policies in the intervening period. Change was minimal: nearly all sites (94%) tested in both 2004 and 2005 yielded the same result, with 96% of the 2005 TeleYemen/YNET results matching those from 2004, and 92% for YemenNet. There are three possible explanations why sites might have divergent results: the proxy testing yielded inaccurate results, the ISP changed its filtering policy, or Websense changed the site's categorization from a non-activated category to an activated one (i.e., one selected for filtering) or vice versa. We conclude that our proxy testing was extremely accurate given the high degree of overlap from the two methods, and that 87% of the sites with divergent results were in a limited number of content areas. For example, YemenNet blocked 20 illegal drug sites in 2005, but filtered none of these sites in 2004. We believe that the remainder of the difference between ONI's 2004 and 2005 results were caused by changes in Websense's categorization.

1. TeleYemen/YNET

The chart below presents categories from our global list where TeleYemen's block rate changed between 2004 and 2005. The full results, including the URLs of all sites whose results changed, are available in Appendix 6.

Figure 3 - Global List Categories With Blocking Changes 2004-2005 on TeleYemen

We found a modest increase in the absolute amount of blocking of the global list sites, from 10% to 12%, from 2004 to 2005. This increase resulted almost entirely from a dramatic increase in the blocking of GLBT sites. In 2004, the only GLBT block we detected was a Middle East-specific site (www.gayegypt.com). In 2005, a much wider range of this material was inaccessible within Yemen. Our Websense category testing leads us to conclude that TeleYemen activated the Websense "Gay or Lesbian or Bisexual Interest" at some point between the 2004 and 2005 testing. The change in accessibility of pornographic material is slightly puzzling; it is rare for porn sites to go from blocked to accessible in states that filter this material.

2. YemenNet

The chart below highlights categories of interest from our global list where YemenNet's block rate changed between 2004 and 2005. The full results, including the URLs of all sites whose results changed, are available in Appendix 7.

Figure 4 - Global List Categories With Blocking Changes 2004-2005 on YemenNet

The overall level of filtering on YemenNet rose dramatically between 2004 and 2005, from 6% to 14%. The majority of the increase stemmed from several apparent policy changes: addition of the blocking of illegal drug-related content, expansion of blocking of sexually-themed content, and improvement in blocking of gambling sites. The increase in pornography filtering appears to result from using Websense to filter provocative attire and sex education sites. ONI's previous research demonstrates the difficulty commercial filtering software products, such as Websense, have in distinguishing between sexually explicit Web sites and non-explicit sites on sexual topics; a common example is the blocking of sites with information about breast cancer based on an erroneous classification of the content as pornography. The increased effectiveness of pornography blocking from 2004 to 2005 (76% to 92%) appears to reflect a decision to cast a wider net and to accept overblocking that makes some otherwise non-offensive sites unavailable.

The change in the filtering of drug-related content on YemenNet was dramatic, and our Websense testing indicates that YemenNet activated the relevant content category in the period between our tests. Less dramatically, YemenNet increased the effectiveness of its filtering of gambling sites, and began to block a small number of Middle East-focused GLBT sites. Interestingly, YNET moved from filtering only Middle East GLBT sites to much wider blocking of this content at the same time that YemenNet went from not blocking any GLBT content to blocking only Middle East specific GLBT content. This may indicate increased concern by the Yemeni state about this material.

3. Proxy Services

In addition, our testing in January 2006 demonstrates that YemenNet and TeleYemen/YNET have both increased their efforts to block proxy server sites and to prevent users from bypassing the ISPs' content controls.

5. CONCLUSION

Yemen imposes controls on Internet usage through formal laws regulating what material the press may cover, informal pressures to shape reporting, and filtering software that blocks certain content. The state focuses its Internet filtering efforts most consistently on pornography and related sexually themed content, as well as sites providing proxy servers that bypass filters, but users of the two principal ISPs will find different types of sites unavailable. Yemenis connecting to the Internet via TeleYemen/YNET will be unable to access most gay and lesbian-related content and will have limited access to sites targeting the religious conversion of Muslims, but will have generally unimpeded access to illegal drug and gambling-related sites. Yemenis connecting via YemenNet, however, will find only Middle East-focused gay and lesbian sites unavailable, face no restrictions on religious conversion sites, but be largely unable to get to drug or gambling sites. Users of both networks will likely experience small amounts of the apparently unintended blocking that generally accompanies any wide-spread internet filtering. Despite an extensive search, we found no evidence that the Yemeni state seeks to prevent access to political or media materials online. Thus, while Yemen's Internet filtering is quite broad in a few areas, the state tends to limit its blocking to these topics. However, the additional restrictions on press freedom proposed by the Ministry of Information in the new draft press law may indicate a shift toward generally more conservative policies.

Appendix 1. Original Global List Testing Results

Appendix 2. Revised Global List Testing Results

Appendix 3. High Impact Testing Results

Appendix 4. List of Proxy / Circumvention Sites Blocked by TeleYemen/YNET and YemenNet

Appendix 5. Websense Category Testing Results

Appendix 6. TeleYemen/YNET Global List Testing 2004 vs. 2005

Appendix 7. YemenNet Global List Testing 2004 vs. 2005

Appendix 8. Copy of TeleYemen/YNET Block Page

Appendix 9. Copy of YemenNet Block Page

Appendix 10. Yemen Background

A. General Description

Located in the Middle East, Yemen borders Saudi Arabia and Oman. Most of Yemen's 20 million inhabitants are Muslim, although small minorities of Christians, Hindus and Jews reside there as well.⁸⁵The population was estimated at 20 million in July 2004, with an age distribution skewed towards youth ? almost 50% of the population is under age 15.⁸⁶ Yemen is comparatively poor, with high economic dependence on its oil and agricultural sectors.⁸⁷The state depends on oil for 70% of its revenue and is vulnerable to changes in oil prices.⁸⁸ Political dissension and the rapid growth of the population have made International Monetary Fund restructuring efforts difficult, and Yemen remains one of the poorest Arab countries; the per capita GDP is US$800 a year (compared to $37,800 a year in the U.S.).⁸⁹ The state resolved a long-standing border dispute with Saudi Arabia through a treaty in 2000.⁹⁰

B. Political System

The Republic of Yemen was produced by the 1990 unification of North Yemen and South Yemen, which were independent states. The South developed along Marxist lines; the North remained relatively progressive, attracting migrants from the South. In 1994, the newly united state faced a secessionist movement in the south. This led to a civil war in which Yemen quickly suppressed the secessionists.

The state is a nominal democracy; the current president, Ali Abdullah Salih, has been in power since the 1990 merger. The president is elected by popular vote for a seven-year term. The executive branch wields most power politically despite theoretical checks by the legislature and judiciary.⁹¹There are more than 12 active political parties in Yemen, but the two most significant are the General People's Congress (GPC, Salih's party) and the Islamic Reform Grouping. Yemen's "Constitution prohibits the establishment of parties that are contrary to Islam, oppose the goals of the country's revolution, or violate the country's international commitments."⁹²Yemen also has an elected House of Representatives (dominated by the GPC) and an appointed Shura Council that comprise its legislature.⁹³The judiciary, which is headed by a Supreme Court in the capital of Sana'a, is nominally independent but effectively weak.⁹⁴

Footnotes

1 The OpenNet Initiative wishes to thank a reviewer and volunteer from Yemen who prefers to remain anonymous.

2 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices -- 2003, at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27942.htm (Feb. 25, 2004).

3 Presidential pardon to imprisoned journalist, Yemen Observer, Mar. 23, 2005, at http://www.yobserver.com/cgi-bin/yobserver/exec/view.cgi/1/4310.

4 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

5 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

6 International Press Institute, Yemen: 2003 World Press Freedom Review, at http://www.freemedia.at/wpfr/Mena/yemen.htm.

7 Yemen to close 4,000 religious schools, The Yemen Times, Feb. 10, 2005, at http://www.yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=815&p=local&a=1.

8 Yemen to close 4,000 religious schools, The Yemen Times.

9 1,149,000 Telephone Lines in Yemen, The Yemen Observer, Oct. 27, 2005, available at http://www.yobserver.com/cgi-bin/yobserver/exec/view.cgi/1/8522.

10 CIA, The World Factbook ? Yemen.

11 Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Profile Yemen 2004: Main Report.

12 CIA, The World Factbook ? Yemen.

13 The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Yemen: All Roads Lead Backwards, June 2004, at http://www.hrinfo.net/en/reports/net2004/yemen.shtml (citing an article on the Al-Riyadh newspaper Web site in September 2003).

14 Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Profile Yemen 2004: Main Report.

15 Helmi Noman, An Overview of The Demographics and Usage Patterns of Internet Users in Developing Countries: Yemeni Internet Population as a Case Study, United Nations Development Programme, at http://www.undp.org.ye/ict.php.

16 Helmi Noman, An Overview of The Demographics and Usage Patterns of Internet Users in Developing Countries: Yemeni Internet Population as a Case Study.

17 The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Yemen: All Roads Lead Backwards.

18 Helmi Noman, An Overview of The Demographics and Usage Patterns of Internet Users in Developing Countries: Yemeni Internet Population as a Case Study.

19 See http://www.yemen.net.ye.

20 See http://www.yemen.net.ye.

21 Yemen.net.ye, Dial-up Connection, at http://www.yemen.net.ye/en/index.php?q=dailup.

22 See http://www.websense.com/.

23 Helmi Noman, An Overview of The Demographics and Usage Patterns of Internet Users in Developing Countries: Yemeni Internet Population as a Case Study.

24 Helmi Noman, An Overview of The Demographics and Usage Patterns of Internet Users in Developing Countries: Yemeni Internet Population as a Case Study.

25 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

26 Brian Whitaker, Freedom of the Press in Yemen, Yemen Gateway, Apr. 29, 2001, at
http://www.al-bab.com/yemen/media/bwmed.htm.

27 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

28 U.S. Department of State, Yemen Human Rights Practices, 1995, March 1996, available at http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/democracy/1995_hrp_report/95hrp_report_nea/Yemen.html (documenting anonymous threats aimed at Yemen Times journalists and the abduction and beating of journalist Abu Bakr Al-Saqqaf); International Organizations Call for Release of Zaidi, The Yemen Times, Sept. 24, 2001, at http://www.yementimes.com/01/iss39/front.htm (reporting the imprisonment, without a given cause, of journalist Hassan al-Zaidi).

29 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

30 Committee to Protect Journalists, Attacks on the Press 2003: Yemen, at http://www.cpj.org/attacks03/mideast03/yemen.html.

31 Yemen's commitment to democracy questioned, The Yemen Times, Jan. 17, 2005, at http://www.yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=808&p=front&a=3.

32 Yemen's commitment to democracy questioned, The Yemen Times (al-Hawthi is a transliteration of the same name).

33 See, e.g., Arab Press Freedom Watch, IFJ Joins Yemeni Journalists in Protest Over "Shocking Injustice" and Jail Threat to Editor, Sept. 7, 2004, at http://www.apfw.org/indexenglish.asp?fname=news\english\12700.htm.

34 Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ protests journalist's imprisonment, Sept. 16, 2004, available at http://www.cpj.org/protests/04ltrs/Yemen16sept04pl.html.

35 Jailed Yemeni journalist pardoned, Aljazeera.Net, Mar. 23 2005, at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F53E1CAE-A4FE-44B3-88B7-7C9286D3A4C9.htm.

36 Government has hurt itself, The Yemen Times, Feb. 12, 2004, at http://www.yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=711&p=view&a=1.

37 Republic of Yemen, Press and Publications Law, available at http://www.yemeninfo.gov.ye/eng/press%20Low_english.pdf.

38 Article 4, Press and Publications Law.

39 Article 3, Press and Publications Law.

40 Articles 7 & 10, Press and Publications Law.

41 Articles 27-29, Press and Publications Law.

42 Article 31, Press and Publications Law.

43 Article 20, Press and Publications Law.

44 Article 30(a), Press and Publications Law.

45 Article 34, Press and Publications Law.

46 Article 76, Press and Publications Law.

47 Article 57, Press and Publications Law.

48 YEMEN: Journalists reject new draft of press and publications law, Reuters AlertNet, May 3, 2005, at http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/b700da8f8df8a9ac29a1a4d7f6cb2c4b.htm.

49 Journalists reject draft press law, Yemen Times, at http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=837&p=front&a=2.

50 Abdul-Aziz Oudah, Yemeni Journalists Reject Modified Press Law, Yemen Observer, Sept. 29, 2005, available at http://www.yobserver.com/news_8297.php.

51 Mohammed Al-Asadi, International Concerns Over Press Law, Yemen Observer, Dec. 3, 2005, available at http://www.yobserver.com/cgi-bin/yobserver/exec/view.cgi/1/8776.

52 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

53 YEMEN: Journalists reject new draft of press and publications law.

54 BBC News, Country Profile: Yemen, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/country_profiles/784383.stm#media (Aug. 11, 2004) (noting that "The Ministry of Information controls all broadcasting through the Public Corporation for Radio and Television" along with "most printing presses" and it "funds some newspapers"). See Saba, at http://www.sabanews.gov.ye/html/about_saba_e.html (noting that "Saba reports to the Ministry of Information"); see also Brian Whitaker, Freedom of the Press in Yemen, Yemen Gateway, Apr. 29, 2001, at
http://www.al-bab.com/yemen/media/bwmed.htm; Yemen Gateway, The Media in Yemen, Dec. 30, 2001, at http://www.al-bab.com/yemen/media/med.htm (listing Yemeni media sources).

55 International Press Institute, Yemen: 2003 World Press Freedom Review.

56 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

57 International Press Institute, Yemen: 2003 World Press Freedom Review.

58 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

59 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

60 Teleyemen.ye.net, Introduction, at http://www.teleyemen.com.ye/intro.htm.

61 The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Yemen: All Roads Lead Backwards.

62 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

63 See, e.g., United Nations Development Programme, Yemen Country Profile, at
http://www.undp.org.ye/y-profile.htm.

64 See Y.Net, Leased Line, at http://www.y.net.ye/services/leasedline.htm; YemenNet, Leased Line, at http://www.yemen.net.ye/en/index.php?q=leasedline. Conversion from Yemeni to U.S. currency can be accomplished using online converters such as the Universal Currency Convertor, available at http://www.xe.com.

65 Y.Net, Terms & Conditions, at http://www.y.net.ye/support/rules.htm.

66 The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Yemen: All Roads Lead Backwards.

67 See Gulf Press Freedom Center (GPFC), Background and Goals, at http://www.wmd.org/gpfc/gpfc.html#background.

68 William New, Internet Touted As Democratizing Tool In Arab Region, National Journal's Technology Daily, Aug. 5, 2004.

69 See World Summit on the Information Society, Declaration of Principles, Dec. 12, 2003, at http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html.

70 See generally Mary Bridges, WSIS ? Conference Hype or Lasting Change?, Jan. 23, 2004, at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/briefings/wsis.

71 We were only able to perform keyword testing on the YemenNet network due to the complexities and risk of in-country testing.

72 See, e.g., U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

73 See Websense Inc., URL Categories, at http://ww2.websense.com/global/en/ProductsServices/MasterDatabase/URLCategories.php.

74 See Homo Sex Is Sin!, at http://www.homosexissin.com/.

75 Gambling was the only one of these categories where less than 100% of sites (89%) tested were blocked. These descrepancies are generally caused by difficulties in determining the version of the site classification database used by the filtering state at the time of testing.

76 See Appendix 1 for categorized results of our standard global list testing. Appendix 2 contains the full results of our new global list testing. To provide comparable results across multiple country studies, the majority of the sites in our global list have content only in English.

77 A small percentage of URLs tested returned errors that could have been generated at various "hops" between the requesting computer and the site's host server. Since both ISPs in Yemen respond to a request for a filtered site with a block page, we only considered sites that generated a block page as filtered.

78 We checked rankings at www.alexa.com on Jan. 1, 2006.

79 See Appendix 3 for a complete list of the sites.

80 We obtained classification results from Websense's database at http://www.websense.com/global/en/SupportAndKB/SiteLookup/index.php on Jan. 1, 2006 (log-in required).

81 We obtained these sites at http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Proxying_and_Filtering/Hosted_Proxy_Services/.

82 See Appendix 4 for a complete list of these blocked sites.

83 This site is available at http://www.anonymizer.com.

84 This software can be downloaded from http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html.

85 CIA, The World Factbook ? Yemen, at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ym.html (Nov. 30, 2004).

86 CIA, The World Factbook ? Yemen.

87 Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Profile Yemen 2004: Main Report (Oct. 8, 2004).

88 U.S. Department of State, Background Note: Yemen, Sept. 2004, at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35836.htm.

89 CIA, The World Factbook ? Yemen.

90 U.S. Department of State, Background Note: Yemen.

91 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

92 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

93 U.S. Department of State, Yemen: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003.

94 U.S. Department of State, Background Note: Yemen.

In the News: Hints of Net Liberalization in Certain Spaces, Increased Clamps in Others

nart — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:37:08 -0500

On top of all the excitement at WSIS, there have been some recent articles examining freedom of information on the Net in the Arab world and beyond.

The UAE has recently legalized VOIP, the technology that enables Internet telephony.

Arab News, the Saudi Arabian English daily, has attempted to highlight the benefits of cultural expression on the Internet. The newspaper recently published an article on Jasad Al-Thaqafa (note: in Arabic), the Saudi website that serves as a cultural forum for such areas as photography, art, poetry, fiction, and journalism. While the expression of ideas on the site is not unfettered (forum supervisors monitor topics for appropriateness and may even ban users in extreme cases), such an outlet may serve as significant to many who feel constrained by local media. Interestingly, a collection of short stories from the website, entitled "The Spinning Wheel" will be published and sold in local Saudi Arabian bookstores. The original volume was slated to contain 34 stories--but half were rejected due to censorship and will not be published domestically. As a result, while the site is still subject to the widescale filtering that occurs in Saudi Arabia, citizens may very well have greater access to cultural information on the net than in traditional printed media.

Such access may not come without recourse. A Voice of America story reports that certain countries are seeking to quiet "outspoken bloggers" and curb political dissent.
While Saudi Arabia has only recently allowed access to some popular blogging sites, it continues to routinely block over 400,000 sites, undoubtedly including blogs. Providing access to such tools might be a step in the right direction, but the security implications for bloggers are far from clear. According to the Committee to Protect Bloggers, Iran has arrested over 20 bloggers for publicly criticizing the regime during the past year alone. The implications for not blogging anonymously in regimes that have such laws can be huge--advocates encourage bloggers to do so by using anonymous email addresses, secure proxies, and not disclosing any personal information in the process.

Another recent report indicates that most Net users in Saudi Arabia are prevented from visiting sites they seek to view. Of the estimated 2.2 million users in the country, 92.5% attempt gain access to blocked websites. With so many people trying to access filtered content, societal norms may not very well be in line with those of the authorities making these determinations.

Filtering in the United Arab Emirates

derek — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:46:22 -0400

Gulf News Online covers our study on Internet filtering in the United Arab Emirates, with a comparative approach. Tip of the cap to Ron Deibert for the find...

Press Law Revisions, and Libel Punishments, in UAE

nart — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 20:49:51 -0400

Gulfnews.com reports that the UAE is working to revise its Press Law in consultation with the Journalists' Association. The same story notes a libel judgment against two editors of a newspaper in a suit by an Education Ministry official - even though the accused opinion pieces criticized a Ministry decision and not an individual. The ONI has previously analyzed the legal restrictions on media in UAE, noting that defamation law is only one way that the press is kept under control.

UAE's Etisalat Unblocks Popular Blog

nart — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 08:38:15 -0400

Gulfnews.com reports that Secret Dubai, a blog blocked by the UAE ISP Etisalat, has been unblocked after a flood of complaints. The UAE is one of the countries about which the ONI has released a country study on Internet filtering.