Saudi Arabia
Country Profile: Saudi Arabia
Background
Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the cradle of Islam. It embraces a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam and has a strong religious self-identity. Political parties are banned and activists who publicly call for reform risk being jailed.“Country...
- Posted on 06/Aug/2009; tagged in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Saudi Arabia
ONI Blog: Saudi Government Blocks Amnesty International’s Website
On July 22, Amnesty International posted a secret draft of a Saudi Arabian anti-terrorism law, titled "Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing of Terrorism." In response, the government of Saudi Arabia has blocked Amnesty International's website.
According to...
- Posted on 26/Jul/2011; tagged in Human rights, Legislation, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Saudi Arabia
ONI Blog: Saudi Arabia Tightens Media Restrictions
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has issued a new Royal Decree introducing sweeping restrictions on the country’s media, with considerable fines and even closure of news organizations that “undermine national security.” The restrictions, which extend to writers as well, bar the...
- Posted on 09/May/2011; tagged in Legislation, Saudi Arabia
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: April 29, 2011
Every week, the OpenNet Initiative provides a weekly news roundup (dubbed "Threats to the Open Net") in addition to our usual in-depth blog posts. If you would like to subscribe to the RSS feed for our newsreel, our entire blog,...
ONI Blog: Saudi Arabia Requires License for Bloggers
Drawing media attention for its nation-wide Blackberry ban last year, Saudi Arabia made news again concerning its telecommunications last week when its government invoked a blogging license policy. According to the Al Arabiya News Channel, the Culture and...
ONI Blog: Saudi Arabia Blocks Facebook For Hours Over Moral Concerns
On Saturday, Facebook was blocked for several hours in Saudi Arabia after the government deemed it morally inappropriate in accordance with the country’s conservative values, according to PC Magazine. Several news sites have quoted officials claiming the social...
- Posted on 14/Nov/2010; tagged in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), ONI, Saudi Arabia, Social filtering, Take-down
ONI Blog: Pakistan Lifts Facebook Ban; Bangladesh Cracks Down
As Pakistan lifted a two-week long ban on Facebook Monday, Bangladesh began blocking the site.
Both bans followed the creation of a Facebook group promoting "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," an event that encourages participants to submit artistic representations of the prophet...
- Posted on 01/Jun/2010; tagged in Arrests and legal action, Asia, Bangladesh, Hate speech, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Obscenity, Overblocking, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Social filtering, United Arab Emirates
ONI Blog: Blocked or Not Blocked? Lessons from an Intriguing “Filtering” Instance
Determining whether a Web site is blocked by a state filtering regime is sometimes a complicated issue that goes beyond finding out whether the site is simply accessible or inaccessible, and requires a multi-disciplinary approach, which ONI has been uniquely employing in...
- Posted on 30/Apr/2010; tagged in Egypt, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), ONI, Political filtering, Saudi Arabia
ONI Blog: Bahrain, Tunisia Filtering Individual Twitter Pages
Over the past few weeks, reports have trickled in to Herdict and via Twitter, alerting us of the filtering of individual Twitter pages in Tunisia and Bahrain (as well as, possibly, China). In Tunisia, the accounts of exiled activist Sami...
- Posted on 04/Jan/2010; tagged in Bahrain, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Saudi Arabia, Social filtering, Tunisia
Report: Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia in 2006-2007
PDF Version
Note: a newer version of this profile is available at Country Profiles: Saudi Arabia.
Overview
Saudi Arabia has filtered the Internet since its introduction into the kingdom less than a decade ago. The filtering regime most extensively covers religious and...
