Yemenis Should Be Incensed At Websense 93
Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton writes "Websense, a US-based Internet-censoring software maker, claims not to sell to foreign governments that are censoring Internet access for all of their citizens. But the OpenNet Initiative reports that national ISPs in Yemen have been using Websense to filter Internet access for at least the past four years. Will Websense revoke their license? And what would happen then?" Update: 08/10 21:01 GMT by KD : Bennett adds, "After the story ran, Websense sent me this update." "Since we were informed about the potential use of our products by Yemeni ISPs based on government-imposed Internet restrictions in Yemen, we have investigated this potential non-compliance with our anti-censorship policy. Because our product operates based on a database system, we are able to block updated database downloads to locations and to end users where the use of our product would violate law or our corporate policies. We believe that we have identified the specific product subscriptions that are being used for Web filtering by ISPs in Yemen, and in accordance with our policy against government-imposed censorship, we have taken action to discontinue the database downloads to the Yemeni ISPs."