<P>For your information </P>
<P>To read attentively</P>
<P>Best regards </P>
<P>Jean-Louis Fullsack</P>
<P>CSDPTT-France</P>
<P>WSIS HOST TUNISIA GUILTY OF DENYING ACCESS TO INFORMATION BY FILTERING<BR>INTERNET<BR>____________________________________________________________________________<BR><BR>In November Tunisia will be hosting the second phase of the World Summit on<BR>the Information Society, which according to the President of Tunisia, Zine<BR>El Abidine Ben Ali, ³constitutes a historic opportunity for the<BR>international community to agree on a common vision of the Information<BR>Society and to develop an approach for action aimed at bridging the digital<BR>divide and allowing the advent of an Information Society that is balanced<BR>and accessible to all.² Ironically, however, Tunisia has one of the poorest<BR>records in allowing freedom of expression and has repeatedly been criticised<BR>for denying access to information on the internet.<BR><BR>Earlier this year members of the International Freedom of Expression<BR>Exchange (IFEX) conducted a fact-finding mission to Tunisia undertaken from<BR>14 to 19 January 2005. Members of IFEX have taken a close interest in the<BR>World Summit on the Information Society since its inception. In June 2004,<BR>31 members of IFEX signed an open letter to United Nations Secretary General<BR>Kofi Annan expressing serious concerns for the second Summit in Tunis and<BR>setting out a series of freedom of expression benchmarks. These concerns<BR>were reinforced by experiences at the Tunis Summit Preparatory Committee<BR>meeting held in Hammamet, Tunisia in June 2004 when Tunisian government<BR>officials and Tunisian government sponsored ³NGOs² sought to suppress any<BR>discussion of human rights in Tunisia.<BR><BR>In consequence, a number of IFEX members involved in the WSIS process took<BR>the decision to establish the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group to observe and<BR>report on freedom of expression in Tunisia in the run up to and the period<BR>following the Tunis Summit of the WSIS. The report produced by the IFEX-TMG,<BR>assesses the current state of freedom of expression in Tunisia and makes a<BR>series of recommendations for the country to improve its implementation of<BR>internationally agreed freedom of expression and other human rights<BR>standards if it is to hold the World Summit on the Information Society in<BR>Tunis in November 2005. One of the principle findings in this report was the<BR>blocking of websites, including news and information websites, and police<BR>surveillance of e-mails and Internet cafes. In addition, young people<BR>exploring the Web are harassed, arrested, tortured and sentenced to heavy<BR>prison terms following unfair trials. More Tunisians have been arrested for<BR>expressing themselves on the Internet during the past three years than for<BR>views carried by the print media since the country¹s independence, 48 years<BR>ago. <BR><BR>The number of states seeking to control the Internet has risen rapidly in<BR>recent years, according to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a collaborative<BR>partnership that investigates and challenges state filtration of the<BR>internet and surveillance practices. They are currently conducting research<BR>on internet filtering in Tunisia and spoke to News Update¹s Mapara Syed<BR>about their findings.<BR><BR>Internet content filtering is a term that refers to the techniques by which<BR>control is imposed on access to information on the Internet. Content<BR>filtering can be divided into two separate techniques. Content analysis<BR>refers to techniques used to control access to information based on its<BR>content, such as the inclusion of specific keywords. Blocking techniques<BR>refer to particular router configurations used to deny access to particular<BR>Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or specific services that run on particular<BR>port numbers. For example, a state may run a blocking filter at the<BR>international gateway level that restricts access from within the country to<BR>websites that are deemed illegal, such as pornographic or human rights<BR>websites. <BR><BR>³From our observations, the latter technique is applied in Tunisia where<BR>internet filtering is conducted in a centralised manner,² said Nart<BR>Villeneuve, ONI¹s Technical Director. ³We believe that the institution that<BR>governs the internet in Tunisia [Tunisian Internet Agency] controls the<BR>international gateway and it is near here that the filtering occurs. We<BR>believe this because different ISPs in the country have exhibited similar<BR>behaviour and there is a consistency in the filtering, which suggests that<BR>website blocking is specific, is systematic and is centrally controlled. In<BR>countries like Iran, on the other hand, there is an inconsistency in<BR>filtering with different ISPs and that is because internet filtering in this<BR>country occurs in a distributed manner where responsibility is delegated to<BR>each ISP by the state,² he added.<BR><BR>³The Internet blocking in Tunisia appears to be performed by the software<BR>application SmartFilter, which is an application developed and marketed by a<BR>US company, Secure Computing. SmartFilter is a commercial product and a<BR>popular system for the national category, which refers to state-directed<BR>implementation of national content filtering and blocking technologies at<BR>the backbone level,² explained Villeneuve. According to the IFEX-TMG report,<BR>this application provides a series of website categories which may be<BR>switched on or off. In addition it allows for unique blocking of specified<BR>URLs. The Tunisian use of Smartfilter appears to have the categories of<BR>nudity, pornography and anonymisers (websites that try and get around<BR>filtering) switched on. In addition a number of unique URLs are switched on<BR>to ensure website blocking. These include political, news and information<BR>websites. <BR><BR>³Tunisia ranks very high, along with China, Vietnam and Burma, that target<BR>websites specific to the country so religious, political or what may be<BR>viewed as opposition websites and mainly those giving alternative Tunisia<BR>perspectives on Tunisia. As these are popular, high profile sites it gives a<BR>contextual indication of the impact of internet filtering in Tunisia rather<BR>than the number of sites blocked,² claimed Villeneuve. ³Considering all the<BR>Arab states, internet filtering in Tunisia is more politically orientated<BR>than say in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. It is definitely<BR>unmatched in North Africa,² he added.<BR><BR>According to the Tunisian Human Rights League, the tight police surveillance<BR>of the Internet and the harassment and imprisonment of cyber dissidents have<BR>had a negative impact on the rate of Internet use. The IFEX-TMG report<BR>concluded that in Tunisia, the rate of internet use is 750 per 10,000<BR>inhabitants and that most Internet users in Tunisia work for the government<BR>and personal accounts amount to only 7.5% of Internet users. It was also<BR>reported that there are 0.3 Internet cafes per 10,000 inhabitants in<BR>Tunisia, while in neighbouring Algeria there are 4 times as many, i.e; 1.3<BR>Internet cafes per 10,000 inhabitants. ³The implications of such internet<BR>filtering are a growing sense of fear, which leads to self-censorship,² said<BR>Villeneuve. ³Internet filtering is by no means 100% accurate [depends on<BR>accuracy of filtering software] and commercial filtering products can make<BR>mistakes. Systems that filter based on content can misclassify certain urls,<BR>which results in crucial teen advice or health websites being blocked. In<BR>Tunisia, we have seen that filtering can interfere with internet<BR>collaborative systems, which means that NGOs and activist interaction can be<BR>disrupted.²<BR><BR>For the rest of this story go to:<BR><A href="http://www.balancingact-africa.com/" target=http://www.balancingact-africa.com><FONT color=#000096>http://www.balancingact-africa.com</FONT></A><BR>After 15.00 hours GMT, 7 June<BR><BR></P>