A study released by the ONI, a partnership between universities in Toronto, Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford, concluded that online censorship is rising in those regions, with sophisticated technology being used to filter and monitor Internet activities.

"Internet censorship in the region is increasing in both scope and depth, and filtering of political content continues to be the common denominator," said ONI lead researcher Helmi Noman, who authored the study.

"Governments also continue to disguise their political filtering, while acknowledging blocking of social content."

Censors are getting more successful at catching online content, in part by wielding filtering software developed by US firms, according to the study.

Researchers surveyed 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, finding that 14 of them employed Internet-filtering technology.

Research results show that "next-generation cyberspace controls" are being used in those regions to expand censorship "beyond mere denial of information," according to ONI principal investigator Ron Deibert.

"The media environment of the Middle East and North Africa region is a battle-space where commercially-enhanced blocking, targeted surveillance, self-censorship, and intimidation compete with enhanced tools of censorship circumvention," said Deibert, who directs the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, an ONI partner.

Examples cited in the research include Qatar blocking online educational health content; Syria blocking social-networking service Facebook, and the United Arab Emirates blocking websites hosted on Israel's .il domain.

Countries that have been filtering political content continue to add more websites to "blacklists," according to Noman.

Syria expanded Internet filtering to include popular sites such as Google-owned video-sharing hotspot YouTube and online retail giant Amazon, according to the research.

"Increases in filtering are the norm in the Middle East and North Africa, and unblocking is the exception," Noman wrote in the study.

Arab countries are introducing regulations to make Web publishing subject to press laws and requiring local websites to register with authorities before they can go live, according to the research.

Saudi Arabia announced in May that it plans to enact legislation requiring newspapers and websites based in that country to get licenses from a special agency under the purview of the ministry of information, ONI said.

"The absence of technical filtering in some countries in the region by no means indicates free online environments in those countries," Noman wrote.

"Surveillance and monitoring practices and extra-legal harassment from security agencies create a climate of fear used to silence online dissidents."

Increased Internet censorship comes as the Web grows in popularity as a platform for political campaigning, dissent, and activism.

"States continue to introduce more restrictive legal, technical and monitoring measures, amid growing local and regional calls to ease restrictions and remove barriers to the free flow of information," the study concluded.

ONI is a partnership between the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, the Advanced Network Research Group at the Cambridge Security Programme (University of Cambridge), and the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.

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