Internet censorship in Tunisia
Encyclopedia
Internet censorship in Tunisia significantly decreased in January 2011, following the ouster of President
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
, as the new acting government
removed filters on social networking sites such as Facebook
and YouTube.
The success of the Tunisian revolution
offers a chance to establish greater freedom of expression in Tunisia
, a country previously subject to very strict censorship, especially online. At the same time success in this effort is not certain. In response to the dramatic events and opportunities of the Arab Spring
, in March 2011, Reporters Without Borders
moved Tunisia and Egypt from its "Internet enemies" list to its list of countries "under surveillance". However, there are also warnings that Internet censorship in some countries might increase following the events of the Arab Spring.
In May the Permanent Military Tribunal of Tunis ordered four Facebook pages blocked for attempting "to damage the reputation of the military institution and, its leaders, by the publishing of video clips and, the circulation of comments and, articles that aim to destabilize the trust of citizens in the national army, and spread disorder and chaos in the country." This resurgence of Internet censorship lead to the resignation of blogger and political activist Slim Amamou from his post as Secretary of State for Youth and Sport on 23 May.
On May 26 a group of lawyers obtained a court order forcing the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) to block porn sites on the grounds that they posed a threat to minors and Muslim values. The ATI went to court in an attempt to block the order, but its request was rejected on June 13. The ATI began to comply with the court's order in stages on June 15. On August 15 a Tunis appeals court upheld the previous decisions requiring the ATI to block access to pornographic websites. The matter is being appealed to the country's highest court.
Internet censorship
in Tunisa was extensive. Tunisia was on Reporters Without Borders
' "Internet enemies" list. The OpenNet Initiative
classified Internet filtering as pervasive in the political, social, and Internet tools areas and as selective in the conflict/security area in August 2009.
Ben Ali promised "a removal of internet restrictions" among several other promises in a speech shortly before he was forced out.
Ammar 404 is the nickname Tunisian internet surfers use for the authority responsible for Internet censorship.
In addition to filtering Web content, the government of Tunisia utilized laws, regulations, and surveillance to achieve strict control over the Internet. For example, journalists were prosecuted by Tunisia’s press code, which bans offending the president, disturbing order, and publishing what the government perceives as false news. The government also restricted the media by controlling the registration of print media and licensing of broadcasters, refusing permission to critical outlets, and controlling the distribution public sector advertisement. Journalists are also charged in courts with vague violations of the penal code.
Online dissidents faced severe punishment. For example, human rights lawyer Mohamed Abbou was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2005 publishing on a banned Web site a report in which he accusing the government of torturing Tunisian prisoners.
In a landmark legal case that challenged the Web filtering regime in the country, journalist and blogger Ziad El Hendi filed a legal suit against the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) for censoring social networking site Facebook. Facebook was blocked on August 18, 2008, then unblocked on September 2 at the Tunisian President’s request. The Tunisian Union of Free Radio Stations and the Unionist Freedoms and Rights Observatory joined El Heni in the lawsuit and called Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
to testify. The Third District Court of Tunisia, however, dismissed the case, in November 2008 without providing any explanation.
In addition to being blocked in Tunisia, many opposition and dissident Web sites and blogs were victims of hacking attempts and in some cases, successful content removal, and shutting down of servers. Even though it was not clear who was behind these cyber attacks, many Tunisian opposition leaders believed it to be the government. For example, the independent news sites Kalima was hacked into and shut down in October 2008. The eight-year Arabic and French archives were completely destroyed. The site had been blocked since it was launched in 2000. The administrator of the site accused the government of being behind the attack because, as she told the Committee to Protect Journalists, "The only ones who benefit from this attack are the authorities." She also said, “I would not rule out the possibility that this act was committed by the secret services, with the aid of hackers or pirates based in Tunisia or abroad." The Web-based newsletter Tunis News and a blog run by a judge (TunisiaWatch) have been subject to similar attacks.
Tunisia did not have specific laws to regulate online broadcasting. As a result, a group of journalists exploited this and launched Tunisia’s first Internet radio station, Radio 6, on 10 December 2007 to mark the 59th anniversary of the World Declaration of Human Rights.
A transparent proxy processed every HTTP request sent out and filtered out sites based on host names. Empirical evidence showed that NetApp hardware was used to implement the controls and NetCache
.
The OpenNet Initiative
carried out tests in Tunisia using the ISPs Planet Tunisie and TopNet. Similar to 2006-2007 test results, 2008-2009 testing revealed pervasive filtering of Web sites of political opposition groups such as:
Also blocked were Web sites run by opposition figures such as activist Moncef Marzouki
and Web sites that contain oppositional news and politics such as:
Web sites that publish oppositional articles by Tunisian journalists were also blocked. For example, ONI verified the blocking of the French daily Libération Web site in February 2007 because of articles by Tunisian journalist Taoufik Ben Brik critical of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali appeared on the site.
Also blocked were Web sites that criticize Tunisia's human rights
record. These include the web sites of:
Although the home page of Human Rights Watch
(HRW) was accessible, the Arabic
and French
versions of a Human Rights Watch report on Internet repression in Tunisia were blocked.
The prominent video sharing Web sites youtube.com and dailymotion.com were blocked, apparently because Tunisian activists used them to disseminate content critical of the regime’s human rights practices. The Web site of the OpenNet Initiative (opennet.net), which researches and documents state filtering and censorship practices, was blocked. Also blocked was the Web site of Global Voices (www.globalvoicesonline.org), a non-profit global citizens’ media project. Most of the tested sites in the anonymizers and circumvention tools category were also blocked. These include:
The filtering regime pervasively filtered pornographic content, several gay and lesbian information or dating pages, and several online translation services. Also blocked were a few Web sites that criticize the Quran (thequran.com) and Islam
(www.islameyat.com), though the small number points to limited filtering of religious content in Tunisia.
Starting in May 2010, the popular Skype
VOIP application that is heavily used by Tunisian expats to stay in touch with their families went offline in Tunisia due to ATI's throttling of SIP traffic.
ATI's blocking of SIP traffic has made life very difficult for call centers, whose main business is taking calls to/from French speaking
Europe
. Most (if not all) call centers serving Europe used SIP, often with minutes bought from European (mostly French) providers. Blocking SIP traffic resulted in many job losses in Tunisia.
There was also technical surveillance where downloading or e-mail attachments went through a central server. In order to protect public order and national security, a 1998 post and telecommunications law allowed authorities to intercept and check the content of email messages. Filtering of e-mail messages of government opponents was been reported. Global Voices
Advocacy Director and Tunisia Activist Sami Ben Gharbia conducted a test from the Netherlands with two Tunisia-based activists and confirmed by logging in to their e-mail accounts from the Netherlands that what he saw was not what the activists saw when they logged in from Tunisia, and that they could not access all of the messages they received.
In early 2011 there was increasing evidence that the private e-mail accounts of Tunisian citizens along with login details of their Facebook pages had been targeted by phishing scripts put in place by the government.
There were increasing incidences of censorship in this manner as many dissidents were blocked from using the internet.
President of Tunisia
The President of Tunisia, formally known as the President of the Tunisian Republic is the head of state of Tunisia. Tunisia is a presidential republic in which the president is the head of the executive branch of government with the assistance of the Prime Minister of Tunisia, formally the head of...
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is a Tunisian political figure who was the second President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. Ben Ali was appointed Prime Minister in October 1987, and he assumed the Presidency on 7 November 1987 in a bloodless coup d'état that ousted President Habib Bourguiba, who was...
, as the new acting government
Fouad Mebazaa
Fouad Mebazaa is a Tunisian politician who has been President of Tunisia since 15 January 2011. He was active in Neo Destour prior to Tunisian independence, served as Minister of Youth and Sports, Minister of Public Health, and Minister of Culture and Information, and has been President of the...
removed filters on social networking sites such as Facebook
Censorship of Facebook
Censorship of Facebook has occurred because of the open nature of Facebook; several countries have interfered with or banned access to it, including Syria, China, Iran, Vietnam and the United Kingdom.-China:...
and YouTube.
The success of the Tunisian revolution
Tunisian revolution
The Tunisian Revolution is an intensive campaign of civil resistance, including a series of street demonstrations taking place in Tunisia. The events began in December 2010 and led to the ousting of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011...
offers a chance to establish greater freedom of expression in Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
, a country previously subject to very strict censorship, especially online. At the same time success in this effort is not certain. In response to the dramatic events and opportunities of the Arab Spring
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring , otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18 December 2010...
, in March 2011, Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
moved Tunisia and Egypt from its "Internet enemies" list to its list of countries "under surveillance". However, there are also warnings that Internet censorship in some countries might increase following the events of the Arab Spring.
Censorship following the Tunisian revolution
The provisional government of national unity that took over following Ben Ali's departure immediately proclaimed complete freedom of information and expression as a fundamental principle and on 17 January 2011 abolished the information ministry. Internet censorship was immediately lifted, as President Ben Ali promised in his 13 January address, but some online controls were still in place in early February.In May the Permanent Military Tribunal of Tunis ordered four Facebook pages blocked for attempting "to damage the reputation of the military institution and, its leaders, by the publishing of video clips and, the circulation of comments and, articles that aim to destabilize the trust of citizens in the national army, and spread disorder and chaos in the country." This resurgence of Internet censorship lead to the resignation of blogger and political activist Slim Amamou from his post as Secretary of State for Youth and Sport on 23 May.
On May 26 a group of lawyers obtained a court order forcing the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) to block porn sites on the grounds that they posed a threat to minors and Muslim values. The ATI went to court in an attempt to block the order, but its request was rejected on June 13. The ATI began to comply with the court's order in stages on June 15. On August 15 a Tunis appeals court upheld the previous decisions requiring the ATI to block access to pornographic websites. The matter is being appealed to the country's highest court.
Censorship during the Ben Ali regime
Prior to the Tunisian revolutionTunisian revolution
The Tunisian Revolution is an intensive campaign of civil resistance, including a series of street demonstrations taking place in Tunisia. The events began in December 2010 and led to the ousting of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011...
Internet censorship
Internet censorship
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative...
in Tunisa was extensive. Tunisia was on Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
' "Internet enemies" list. The OpenNet Initiative
OpenNet Initiative
The OpenNet Initiative is a joint project whose goal is to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employs a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigators, to determine the extent and nature of government-run...
classified Internet filtering as pervasive in the political, social, and Internet tools areas and as selective in the conflict/security area in August 2009.
Ben Ali promised "a removal of internet restrictions" among several other promises in a speech shortly before he was forced out.
Ammar 404 is the nickname Tunisian internet surfers use for the authority responsible for Internet censorship.
In addition to filtering Web content, the government of Tunisia utilized laws, regulations, and surveillance to achieve strict control over the Internet. For example, journalists were prosecuted by Tunisia’s press code, which bans offending the president, disturbing order, and publishing what the government perceives as false news. The government also restricted the media by controlling the registration of print media and licensing of broadcasters, refusing permission to critical outlets, and controlling the distribution public sector advertisement. Journalists are also charged in courts with vague violations of the penal code.
Online dissidents faced severe punishment. For example, human rights lawyer Mohamed Abbou was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2005 publishing on a banned Web site a report in which he accusing the government of torturing Tunisian prisoners.
In a landmark legal case that challenged the Web filtering regime in the country, journalist and blogger Ziad El Hendi filed a legal suit against the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) for censoring social networking site Facebook. Facebook was blocked on August 18, 2008, then unblocked on September 2 at the Tunisian President’s request. The Tunisian Union of Free Radio Stations and the Unionist Freedoms and Rights Observatory joined El Heni in the lawsuit and called Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is a Tunisian political figure who was the second President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. Ben Ali was appointed Prime Minister in October 1987, and he assumed the Presidency on 7 November 1987 in a bloodless coup d'état that ousted President Habib Bourguiba, who was...
to testify. The Third District Court of Tunisia, however, dismissed the case, in November 2008 without providing any explanation.
In addition to being blocked in Tunisia, many opposition and dissident Web sites and blogs were victims of hacking attempts and in some cases, successful content removal, and shutting down of servers. Even though it was not clear who was behind these cyber attacks, many Tunisian opposition leaders believed it to be the government. For example, the independent news sites Kalima was hacked into and shut down in October 2008. The eight-year Arabic and French archives were completely destroyed. The site had been blocked since it was launched in 2000. The administrator of the site accused the government of being behind the attack because, as she told the Committee to Protect Journalists, "The only ones who benefit from this attack are the authorities." She also said, “I would not rule out the possibility that this act was committed by the secret services, with the aid of hackers or pirates based in Tunisia or abroad." The Web-based newsletter Tunis News and a blog run by a judge (TunisiaWatch) have been subject to similar attacks.
Tunisia did not have specific laws to regulate online broadcasting. As a result, a group of journalists exploited this and launched Tunisia’s first Internet radio station, Radio 6, on 10 December 2007 to mark the 59th anniversary of the World Declaration of Human Rights.
Filtering during the Ben Ali regime
Web filtering in Tunisia was achieved through the use of a commercial software program, SmartFilter, sold by U.S.-based company Secure Computing. Because all fixed-line Internet traffic passed through facilities controlled by ATI, the government was able to load the software onto its servers and filter content consistently across Tunisia’s eleven ISPs. Tunisia purposefully hid the filtering from Internet users by displaying the standard 404 “File Not Found” error message, which gives no hint that the requested site is being blocked.A transparent proxy processed every HTTP request sent out and filtered out sites based on host names. Empirical evidence showed that NetApp hardware was used to implement the controls and NetCache
NetCache
NetCache is a former web cache software product which was owned and developed by NetApp between 1997 and 2006, and a hardware product family incorporating the NetCache software.-History:...
.
The OpenNet Initiative
OpenNet Initiative
The OpenNet Initiative is a joint project whose goal is to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employs a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigators, to determine the extent and nature of government-run...
carried out tests in Tunisia using the ISPs Planet Tunisie and TopNet. Similar to 2006-2007 test results, 2008-2009 testing revealed pervasive filtering of Web sites of political opposition groups such as:
- Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberty (www.fdtl.org)
- Al-Nadha Movement (www.nahdha.info)
- Tunisian Workers' Communist Party (www.albadil.org)
- Democratic Progressive Party (pdpinfo.org)
Also blocked were Web sites run by opposition figures such as activist Moncef Marzouki
Moncef Marzouki
Moncef Marzouki is a Tunisian human rights activist, politician and physician.-Education and early human rights activities:Born in Grombalia , Marzouki studied medicine at the University of Strasbourg...
and Web sites that contain oppositional news and politics such as:
- www.nawaat.org
- www.perspectivestunisiennes.net
- www.tunisnews.com
- www.tunezine.com
Web sites that publish oppositional articles by Tunisian journalists were also blocked. For example, ONI verified the blocking of the French daily Libération Web site in February 2007 because of articles by Tunisian journalist Taoufik Ben Brik critical of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali appeared on the site.
Also blocked were Web sites that criticize Tunisia's human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
record. These include the web sites of:
- Amnesty InternationalAmnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
(www.amnesty.org) - Freedom HouseFreedom HouseFreedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
(www.freedomhouse.org) - Reporters Without BordersReporters Without BordersReporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
(www.rsf.org and www.rsf.fr) - International Freedom of Expression eXchange (www.ifex.org)
- the Islamic Human Rights Commission (www.ihrc.org)
- the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (www.hrinfo.org)
Although the home page of Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
(HRW) was accessible, the Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
versions of a Human Rights Watch report on Internet repression in Tunisia were blocked.
The prominent video sharing Web sites youtube.com and dailymotion.com were blocked, apparently because Tunisian activists used them to disseminate content critical of the regime’s human rights practices. The Web site of the OpenNet Initiative (opennet.net), which researches and documents state filtering and censorship practices, was blocked. Also blocked was the Web site of Global Voices (www.globalvoicesonline.org), a non-profit global citizens’ media project. Most of the tested sites in the anonymizers and circumvention tools category were also blocked. These include:
- Psiphon (http://psiphon.civisec.org)
- TOR (tor.eff.org)
- Anonymizer (www.anonymizer.com)
- email privacy service provider Steal the Message (www.stealthmessage.com)
- Guardster (www.guardster.com/)
- JAP (anon.inf.tu-dresden.de)
The filtering regime pervasively filtered pornographic content, several gay and lesbian information or dating pages, and several online translation services. Also blocked were a few Web sites that criticize the Quran (thequran.com) and Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
(www.islameyat.com), though the small number points to limited filtering of religious content in Tunisia.
Starting in May 2010, the popular Skype
Skype
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chat over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system...
VOIP application that is heavily used by Tunisian expats to stay in touch with their families went offline in Tunisia due to ATI's throttling of SIP traffic.
ATI's blocking of SIP traffic has made life very difficult for call centers, whose main business is taking calls to/from French speaking
Francophone
The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....
Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. Most (if not all) call centers serving Europe used SIP, often with minutes bought from European (mostly French) providers. Blocking SIP traffic resulted in many job losses in Tunisia.
Surveillance during the Ben Ali regime
The Tunisian authorities practiced different sorts of Internet surveillance and request that service providers such as Internet cafés be partners in controlling Internet use. For example, the authorities monitored Internet cafés, required Internet users to show IDs before they could use the Internet in some regions, and held Internet café operators responsible for their clients’ online activities.There was also technical surveillance where downloading or e-mail attachments went through a central server. In order to protect public order and national security, a 1998 post and telecommunications law allowed authorities to intercept and check the content of email messages. Filtering of e-mail messages of government opponents was been reported. Global Voices
Global Voices Online
Global Voices Online is an international network of bloggers and citizen journalists that follow, report, and summarizes what is going on in the blogosphere in every corner of the world...
Advocacy Director and Tunisia Activist Sami Ben Gharbia conducted a test from the Netherlands with two Tunisia-based activists and confirmed by logging in to their e-mail accounts from the Netherlands that what he saw was not what the activists saw when they logged in from Tunisia, and that they could not access all of the messages they received.
In early 2011 there was increasing evidence that the private e-mail accounts of Tunisian citizens along with login details of their Facebook pages had been targeted by phishing scripts put in place by the government.
There were increasing incidences of censorship in this manner as many dissidents were blocked from using the internet.
See also
- Tunisia Monitoring GroupTunisia Monitoring GroupThe Tunisia Monitoring Group is a coalition of 21 free expression organisations that belong to the International Freedom of Expression Exchange , a global network of non-governmental organisations that promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press.The IFEX-TMG...
of the International Freedom of Expression ExchangeInternational Freedom of Expression ExchangeThe International Freedom of Expression eXchange , founded in 1992, is a global network of around 90 non-governmental organisations that promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression....
(IFEX-TMG) - Internet censorshipInternet censorshipInternet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative...
- Freedom of Expression
External links
- Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG) of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
- How Facebook Helped Fell the 23-Year-Old-Tunisian Dictatorship and Fueled the Jasmine Revolution, Tawnia Sanford Ammar, OpEdNews, 16 January 2011
- "Tunisia and the Internet: A chance to get things right?", Rebecca MacKinnon, RConversation, 20 October 2011