[WSIS CS-Plenary] Tunesia and Internet access

[Jean-Louis FULLSACK]

For your information 
To read attentively
Best regards 
Jean-Louis Fullsack
CSDPTT-France
WSIS HOST TUNISIA GUILTY OF DENYING ACCESS TO INFORMATION BY FILTERING
INTERNET
____________________________________________________________________________

In November Tunisia will be hosting the second phase of the World Summit on
the Information Society, which according to the President of Tunisia, Zine
El Abidine Ben Ali, ³constitutes a historic opportunity for the
international community to agree on a common vision of the Information
Society and to develop an approach for action aimed at bridging the digital
divide and allowing the advent of an Information Society that is balanced
and accessible to all.² Ironically, however, Tunisia has one of the poorest
records in allowing freedom of expression and has repeatedly been criticised
for denying access to information on the internet.

Earlier this year members of the International Freedom of Expression
Exchange (IFEX) conducted a fact-finding mission to Tunisia undertaken from
14 to 19 January 2005. Members of IFEX have taken a close interest in the
World Summit on the Information Society since its inception. In June 2004,
31 members of IFEX signed an open letter to United Nations Secretary General
Kofi Annan expressing serious concerns for the second Summit in Tunis and
setting out a series of freedom of expression benchmarks. These concerns
were reinforced by experiences at the Tunis Summit Preparatory Committee
meeting held in Hammamet, Tunisia in June 2004 when Tunisian government
officials and Tunisian government sponsored ³NGOs² sought to suppress any
discussion of human rights in Tunisia.

In consequence, a number of IFEX members involved in the WSIS process took
the decision to establish the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group to observe and
report on freedom of expression in Tunisia in the run up to and the period
following the Tunis Summit of the WSIS. The report produced by the IFEX-TMG,
assesses the current state of freedom of expression in Tunisia and makes a
series of recommendations for the country to improve its implementation of
internationally agreed freedom of expression and other human rights
standards if it is to hold the World Summit on the Information Society in
Tunis in November 2005. One of the principle findings in this report was the
blocking of websites, including news and information websites, and police
surveillance of e-mails and Internet cafes. In addition, young people
exploring the Web are harassed, arrested, tortured and sentenced to heavy
prison terms following unfair trials. More Tunisians have been arrested for
expressing themselves on the Internet during the past three years than for
views carried by the print media since the country¹s independence, 48 years
ago.  

The number of states seeking to control the Internet has risen rapidly in
recent years, according to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a collaborative
partnership that investigates and challenges state filtration of the
internet and surveillance practices. They are currently conducting research
on internet filtering in Tunisia and spoke to News Update¹s Mapara Syed
about their findings.

Internet content filtering is a term that refers to the techniques by which
control is imposed on access to information on the Internet. Content
filtering can be divided into two separate techniques. Content analysis
refers to techniques used to control access to information based on its
content, such as the inclusion of specific keywords. Blocking techniques
refer to particular router configurations used to deny access to particular
Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or specific services that run on particular
port numbers. For example, a state may run a blocking filter at the
international gateway level that restricts access from within the country to
websites that are deemed illegal, such as pornographic or human rights
websites. 

³From our observations, the latter technique is applied in Tunisia where
internet filtering is conducted in a centralised manner,² said Nart
Villeneuve, ONI¹s Technical Director. ³We believe that the institution that
governs the internet in Tunisia [Tunisian Internet Agency] controls the
international gateway and it is near here that the filtering occurs. We
believe this because different ISPs in the country have exhibited similar
behaviour and there is a consistency in the filtering, which suggests that
website blocking is specific, is systematic and is centrally controlled. In
countries like Iran, on the other hand, there is an inconsistency in
filtering with different ISPs and that is because internet filtering in this
country occurs in a distributed manner where responsibility is delegated to
each ISP by the state,² he added.

³The Internet blocking in Tunisia appears to be performed by the software
application SmartFilter, which is an application developed and marketed by a
US company, Secure Computing. SmartFilter is a commercial product and a
popular system for the national category, which refers to state-directed
implementation of national content filtering and blocking technologies at
the backbone level,² explained Villeneuve. According to the IFEX-TMG report,
this application provides a series of website categories which may be
switched on or off. In addition it allows for unique blocking of specified
URLs. The Tunisian use of Smartfilter appears to have the categories of
nudity, pornography and anonymisers (websites that try and get around
filtering) switched on. In addition a number of unique URLs are switched on
to ensure website blocking. These include political, news and information
websites.  

³Tunisia ranks very high, along with China, Vietnam and Burma, that target
websites specific to the country so religious, political or what may be
viewed as opposition websites and mainly those giving alternative Tunisia
perspectives on Tunisia. As these are popular, high profile sites it gives a
contextual indication of the impact of internet filtering in Tunisia rather
than the number of sites blocked,² claimed Villeneuve. ³Considering all the
Arab states, internet filtering in Tunisia is more politically orientated
than say in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. It is definitely
unmatched in North Africa,² he added.

According to the Tunisian Human Rights League, the tight police surveillance
of the Internet and the harassment and imprisonment of cyber dissidents have
had a negative impact on the rate of Internet use. The IFEX-TMG report
concluded that in Tunisia, the rate of internet use is 750 per 10,000
inhabitants and that most Internet users in Tunisia work for the government
and personal accounts amount to only 7.5% of Internet users. It was also
reported that there are 0.3 Internet cafes per 10,000 inhabitants in
Tunisia, while in neighbouring Algeria there are 4 times as many, i.e; 1.3
Internet cafes per 10,000 inhabitants. ³The implications of such internet
filtering are a growing sense of fear, which leads to self-censorship,² said
Villeneuve. ³Internet filtering is by no means 100% accurate [depends on
accuracy of filtering software] and commercial filtering products can make
mistakes. Systems that filter based on content can misclassify certain urls,
which results in crucial teen advice or health websites being blocked. In
Tunisia, we have seen that filtering can interfere with internet
collaborative systems, which means that NGOs and activist interaction can be
disrupted.²

For the rest of this story go to:
http://www.balancingact-africa.com
After 15.00 hours GMT, 7 June
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20050606/15a54896/attachment.htm