Censorship of the internet in Saudi Arabia - Essay Example

There are many ways wherein the use of the Internet is being control and censored throughout Saudi Arabia. Among the common strategy used in filtering the content, the World Wide Web (WWW) traffic has to pass through the main proxy server at ISU. (Al-Tawil, 2001) This process will enable the machine to automatically log all activities that happens using the Internet. In line with the need to filter the Internet content, the ISP proxies are given the power to block or filter any sites that violates the cultural, moral, and religious beliefs of people in Saudi Arabia including pornographic and gay sites whereas the ISP servers are required to keep a one-month activity log of all IP address, user name, time and date of activity of each subscribers (Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia, 2009).

Strictly for control purposes, ISPs could use firewalls to increase their network security (ibid). With the use of control and censorship of Internet use, Saudi Arabian government could easily trace the source of crime in order to give justice to the victims. Some people argue that censoring the Internet is very important for the government and people. In line with this argument, Klang & Murray (2005) explained that “Saudi Arabia uses technology developed by Secure Computing Corporation, the makers of Smart Filer, at the national level to filter access to human rights, dissident, gambling sites and pornography” (p. 122). Likewise, the act of controlling the use of the Internet can be useful in tracking suspects of online crimes (WorldNetDaily , 2009).

Since the Internet technology is capable of transmitting high quality photos and images online (Horrigan, 2006), a lot of people have committed themselves to the online marketing of pornographic materials such as the cyberspace (Thornburgh & Lin, 2002). The problem with the use of the Internet browsers such as Google and Yahoo is