Global Voices Advocacy » Algeria

Microsoft Compromises Users’ Privacy: No HTTPS in Arab Countries, Iran

Anas Qtiesh — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:50:19 +0000

With the ongoing protestes and violent crackdown from governments in the Middle East, compromising online security could have dire repercussions on the wellbeing of internet users in the region. Email security is a priority and HTTPS should be enabled by default. Gmail does that, while Microsoft allows users to choose to activate the option, and Yahoo! Mail does not offer it.

Accessnow created and circulated a much needed step-by-step guide to protect privacy online. This morning a Syrian student in Jordan approached me on twitter and said that he couldn't follow the guide to enable HTTPS for his Hotmail account. I asked him send me a screen shot and proceeded to alert Jillian York of the Berkman Center to the issue.

York, who's also an Advocacy contributor, proceeded to investigate the issue further. Her first suspicion was export controls due to sanctions imposed on Syria, but the user stated he was in Jordan and that his profile info was set to Jordan as well. That ruled out the possiblity of the problem being caused by over-complying with the export controls, so she took a closer look at the issue:

I quickly created a Hotmail account to see if I could replicate the situation; sure enough, when I set my location to the United States, I could turn on HTTPS as a setting, but when I switched to Jordan, I could not. I tested several other Arab countries–Syria, Bahrain, Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria–also no HTTPS. I then tested Guatemala, Israel, and Turkey: all fine. France, German: fine. Iran…no HTTPS.

The screenshot below shows the error message users from Arab countries and Iran get when attempting to activate secure connections (HTTPS) for their free webmail account provided by Microsoft.

Luckily, a temporary workaround exists for concerned users. All they need to do is change the country in their profile to the US and they would be able to set HTTPS to be used automatically. York also suggests that affected users can also switch to gmail which has the setting enabled by default globally, and she states that Microsoft has been contacted and informed about the problem. Hopefully Microsoft will handle this security risk in a timely manner.

Web filtering In the Middle East using Bing Microsoft's search engine

Tal Pavel — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:31:59 +0000

Research conducted earlier this year examined the extent of Internet filtering in Arab countries made using Bing search engine of Microsoft for terms with a sexual orientation.

Bing search engine is active in 41 languages and it offers a Web filtering system based on keywords entered into the system in advance, according to different countries. In this way, Bing avoids a free Internet usage among countries in the Middle East while performing search using terms with a sexual orientation – in English and Arabic.

The study was conducted between 2 and 15 January 2010, by inspecting 100 keywords in Arabic and 60 English. The list contains sexual terms as well as those which do not have sexual meaning (terror, violence, politics, women's rights and religion). The search was made using Bing search engine in four countries, which operates different levels of Web filtering: United Arab Emirates, Syria, Algeria and Jordan.

The results showed that Bing search engine filter terms in Arabic and English through which users can reach sexual and LGBT content. The experiment revealed that Bing search engine is filtering also some of these keywords in English when searching for images.

While performing a search using one of these keywords, the user will be noticed (in Arabic or English) that the search result may include adult content, determined by the search engine settings depending on region or country.

Bing search engine does not allow users in the Middle East to control the filtering or to turn it off. On the other hand, the study reveals that if user in the Middle East choose and use the search engine's version that matches to one of the western countries, it will not filter the list in question.

Internet filtering performed by Bing search engine is not complete; it only deals with sexual content and only in the local versions in the Middle East of the search engine. However, even so, this activity of Microsoft is a further evidence of regional governments’ efforts to block websites, primarily for reasons of maintaining the values of morality, culture and religion of the local societies.

Unfortunately, this study highlights the role of organizations such as Microsoft in the issue of Internet filtering and the efforts of Middle Eastern governments to constrict free Internet in the Middle East.

Would You Defend The Rights of Your Political Enemies? (on Algerian censorship)

Houwari D — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:36:54 +0000

For my first post on Global Voices Advocacy I'd like to entertain a discussion on an issue that has been bothering me since news of the first censored political website in Algeria was broken. That is, how far would one go in defending the human rights, and most relevant the right to free speech, of one's political arch-rivals*. Picture in your mind your most hated group, a group that you think would definitely alter your life in extremely unpleasant ways were they to obtain power that you think your raison d'être would be to defeat them politically every possible way. I'll help you do that by explaining the background to this.

The website that was censored in Algeria is that of Rachad. Rachad is a political organisation in exile that seeks to “overthrow” the regime peacefully. They do no hold any big political weight (which makes their dubious honour of being the first censured website rather disappointing – one would think the regime would censor some real threat). But many of its members are associated with the now banned islamist FIS party. FIS was about to win the majority in Parliament in 1991 on an islamist platform that sometimes hinted at doing away with democracy all together in favour of a totalitarian regime a.k.a Iran. The process was halted by the military and the rest as they say is history. Nearly 20 years later and over 100000 deaths and now the FIS's previous members are looked at with extreme suspicion.

Add to this the distrustful nature of typical Algerians after many years of lies, deceit and behind the scene politics, the result is a political atmosphere that is electric and unproductive. The conservative islamic parties do not like the FIS who do not like the communists who do not like the socialists who do not like the liberals who do not like islamic parties, and all mutually do not like each other to the core, to the point of not trusting any other with power whatsoever. Each believes that their ultimate annihilation would come if the other won power, and that their ultimate responsibility is in taking the country exclusively in the direction that they set to the exclusion of all others, with the result that nobody wins (or, the winner is the status quo). You'd think that the two Kabyle parties would agree on some things? nope, the socialists and the communists? nope, The moderate islamic parties and the FIS? nope.

What has this background to do with censorship though? When Rachad's website was censored several blogs and websites carried the story including mine, with a petition to oppose all forms of censorship. Replies were extremely distrutful and vehement. Hchicha, a famous Algerian blogger who blogs in French, had a Youtube video that denounced censorship in all forms. He was attacked mercilessly and had multiple video replies. He says he was swamped with angry emails. I received emails to the tune that I am an islamist in disguise for starting the petition and had to alter the text to make it generic. “How dare you defend the rights of Islamists?” was their argument. These emails and Video replies were coming from people who, themselves, oppose the current regime to the core.

In keeping with Algerians’ distrutful nature, the opposition to the opposition to censorship took strange turns when they accused Rachad of manufacturing censorship to stir up controversy. The accusation took on legs and stifled much of our effort to combat this censorship, even though all docile (Swiss business) websites that were hosted on the same Rachad shared servers were also shown to be censured.

Denouncers of censorship tried to argue the universal nature of freedom of speech, alluding to the well known poem by Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Many Algerians simply cannot stomach this message. To many the threat of another militant islamist takeover that abolishes democracy is still real. Americans, for example, do not see a problem with freedom of speech for neo-Nazis or the KKK. In western free countries, there is an intellectual class that would vehemently oppose and deny extremists and undemocratic currents the ascent to power. There is virtually no chance that, say, the KKK wins enough popular support to win anything of value because the intellectual outcry will eventually defeat them. In countries like Algeria though and many other third world countries, such an intellectual force is not strong. Regimes are often discredited and hated and that tends to make voters vote for any credible alternative, however bad it may be.

This brings me to the question: beyond the slogans and the principles, how far would you go in defending your political rival some fundamental human right, even if you know that the rival presents a substantial threat to your way of life? Upping the stakes once more, what if even the values that you're defending for them may be substantially jeopardised in case they win power?

[* I'm not stating that I am the enemy of Rachad (the censored website) or any other political group. This post is not passing judgement on possible future actions Rachad or any other political group.]

Algeria Joins Filtering Fray

Jillian York — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:43:11 +0000

Algeria is the latest Arab country to join the ranks of Internet filterers, leaving only Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Lebanon without widespread filtering. The first report of a blocked site came about a week ago, when users on Twitter reported www.rachad.org, the site of political movement Mouvement Rachad to be blocked. The sites have since been reported to Herdict.

The blog Algerian Review outlines the filtering and calls on Algerian Internet users to sign a petition against the creation of a filtering regime.

Algerian blogger taken to court

Sami Ben Gharbia — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:23:19 +0000

Today, June 11th, 2007, will be the first time that an Algerian blogger is being taken to court for articles posted on his personnel blog. Abdulsalam Baroudi is being sued by Tlemcen’s Director of Religious Affairs, who has accused him of posting defamatory material on his personal blog on February 20, under the title “Al Sistani Appears in Tlemcen“

Tlemcen’s Journalism club is backing Abdulsalam Baroudi and calling for journalists and reporters to rally for his case and struggle for the protection of Algerian journalists and bloggers.

Online Freedom for All: Some cases worth supporting

Sami Ben Gharbia — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 11:58:26 +0000

In my last article, “Lessons from the Free Kareem campaign”, I talked about campaigning and why some jailed and persecuted bloggers and online writers are winning sympathy, while others have difficulty attracting the attention of the public. I also discussed the logic behind the success or the failure of campaigning, and made a comparison with the Tunisian cyber-activism case.

In this post I would like to draw attention to a list — which makes no pretensions to completeness — of under-covered advocacy campaigns and point to specific cases of bloggers, online writers and activists whose causes are worth supporting. A few of them have been in prison for years, and a few others are being sued or harassed because of what they are writing online. Not all of them are bloggers, and I personally do not believe that blogging communities should reserve their support and activism for persecuted bloggers and abandon other online writers who suffer harassment and torture. They all deserve our support to protect their basic human rights. One hopes that we can learn from other people's experiences in order to spread the word and raise awareness among blogspheres whose support is crucial in putting an end to a silence that ought not to be allowed to continue. (more…)