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“This is not simply a case of a general purpose, neutral tool being used for an end not contemplated by its maker,” the report states.

“The filtering products of today engage in regular communications with their makers, updating lists of millions of Websites to block across dozens of categories, including political opposition and human rights.”

The OpenNet Initiative is a joint partnership between the Citizen Lab at the Munk School for Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the SecDev Group in Ottawa.

According to the report, it’s not just that governments in the Middle East are using these technologies to block access to content deemed harmful to the states, which can include everything from Websites that are critical of Islam to human rights organizations and even dating Websites.

In some cases, the Western companies that develop these tools are complicit in the censoring activity, maintaining lists of banned sites for these governments.

Canada’s Netsweeper Inc. provides a commercial filtering technology to three national Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the Middle East: Qtel in Qatar, “du” in the UAE and YemenNet in Yemen.

According to the report, governments in these countries have used Netsweeper’s technology to implement “political and religious censorship” and that the company has acknowledged working with ISPs in these countries (as well as India and Canada) to block content deemed inappropriate by governments.

Officials from Netsweeper did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another company, Websense, claims that it does not provide governments with mass filtering tools, except in cases where the regulation or banning of pornography is required by law. However, the ONI found that YemenNet has used Websense to filter political and social content.

SmartFilter, which is now owned by semiconductor giant Intel Corp., is used by governments in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Tunisia.