United Arab Emirates
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 Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Asia, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Arrests and legal action, Obscenity, Hate speech, Social filtering, Overblocking
ONI Blog: Facebook Blocked in Pakistan Following "Draw Mohammad Day" Competition
Last month, following controversy over Comedy Central's decision not to show a depiction of the prophet Mohammad on the popular TV show South Park, Seattle-based cartoonist Molly Norris came up with the idea for "Draw Mohammad Day," to assert the right...
- Posted on 19/May/2010; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Asia, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Hate speech, Political filtering, Social filtering, Overblocking
Report: Sex, Social Mores, and Keyword Filtering: Microsoft Bing in the "Arabian Countries"
To view this bulletin as a PDF, click here.
Overview
Microsoft recently added a new layer of complexity to the ongoing debate regarding the filtering and censorship practices of U.S. search engines via its own search engine, Bing. ONI testing reveals liberal...
- Posted on 04/Mar/2010; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Search result removal, Social filtering, Internet tools filtering, Voluntary filtering
ONI Blog: UAE unblocks access to top Israeli domain ".il"
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has unblocked access to Web sites on the Israeli country code top-level domain “.il"
ONI noticed earlier this month that .il Web sites have been accessible from the UAE, and has since been testing for filtering of...
- Posted on 20/Nov/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Political filtering, Conflict and security filtering
Report: Internet Filtering in the United Arab Emirates in 2006-2007
PDF Version
Note: a newer version of this profile is available at Country Profiles: United Arab Emirates.
Overview
The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) pervasively filters Web sites that contain pornography or relate to alcohol and drug use, gay and lesbian...
- Posted on 07/Aug/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Publications
ONI Blog: UAE: An Expanding Censorship Regime?
Dubai police are pursuing a plan to censor upwards of 500 search terms deemed offensive in an effort to block access to certain websites, AME Info reports. Though no progress has yet been made, according to Lieutenant General...
- Posted on 31/May/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), ONI, Political filtering
ONI Blog: Google: No Intention to Censor UAE's Internet
According to reports in Business Intelligence—Middle East, Google has no intention of engaging in an Internet censorship program with the United Arab Emirates.
Google admitted to having recently met with Dubai Police authorities along with several other “entities spanning government,...
- Posted on 20/Apr/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), ONI, Social filtering, Internet tools filtering, Filtering tech and software
ONI Blog: UAE Seeks Feedback On Flickr Filtering
In an unprecedented move, the Telecommunications and Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the UAE is giving users the opportunity to submit feedback over the blocking a number of sites, including Flickr. Internet Service Provider (ISP) du, followed larger ISP...
- Posted on 30/Mar/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Obscenity, Social filtering
ONI Blog: Dubai police chief wages war on youtube
Commander-in-Chief of Dubai police Lt General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim called (full article in Arabic , English summary) this week for the blocking of the social networking Web site youtube because, he said, the site contains religiously inappropriate...
- Posted on 10/Mar/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Obscenity, Hate speech, Human rights, Political filtering, Social filtering
ONI Blog: Middle East countries continue to censor content deemed offensive to Muslims
Countries in the Middle East continue to block online content deemed offensive to Muslims. The latest example comes from the United Arab Emirates which blocked access this week to the Web site Ahmed and Salim, an Israeli Web site which...
- Posted on 01/Mar/2009; tagged in United Arab Emirates, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Hate speech, Political filtering, Conflict and security filtering