[Egypt-opensource] Security, Filtering and Islam

[Khaled Hassounah]

Joel,

This has not come up in discussions with the government as a concern
yet, although I expect it to. The interesting thing, is that filtering
happens closer to the Internet than we would have a say in or ability to
control. So this is not likely to be an issue that will be discussed
with us.

We have no interest in actively censoring the Internet. Existing
experiences (in the state of Maine and the wide use of Internet in the
US generally) has shown this not to be as serious a concern as initially
perceived. I can't think of a 6 year old who would rather spend his/her
time on a porn site than a cartoon or animation site.

Once kids are knowledgeable enough in how to use their computers, no
matter how many barriers you put, if they want to reach something they
will. Censorship is not the solution and could actually act as an
incentive rather than a deterrent.

I would be interested in hearing other opinions of course :)

Khaled

Joel Mitchell wrote:
> I have wondered, as someone living in a primarily Islamic country, if
> there is or will be a significantly greater concern about security and
> filtering of inappropriate content in Egypt.  I have heard that there is
> already some sort of centralized filtering or surveillance of internet
> activity generally in Egypt, but the standards for this might be higher
> for children.  I read a recent article about 8e6
> <http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060705005083&newsLang=en>
> working on some security solutions, but I wondered how far this had
> gotten.  I would love to hear whether this has come up in talks with
> Egypt and the Ministry of Education people there.
> thanks,
>     Joel
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Egypt-opensource mailing list
> Egypt-opensource at laptop.org
> http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/egypt-opensource

-- 
Khaled Hassounah
OLPC - http://laptop.org