Syri lwa used American equipment to active blocking, it is apparent from the data of Blue Coat Systems. That company supplies equipment for blocking websites. How the Syrian regime the resources received, is unclear.
The American Blue Coat Systems produced initially filtering devices for an Iraqi ministry. By an unknown cause, this would, however, have found a way into neighboring Syria, according to research by The Wall Street Journal. The western world has the Arab country, an embargo imposed due to the alleged suppression.
In Syria is currently an uprising against the regime of president Assad going on. The products of Blue Coat Systems allow the Syrian government to blocking and to keep those who visit these sites. In Tunisia and Egypt, where previously a successful revolt took place, did protesters use social media to get their message to proclaim.
Blue Coat received automatic status updates from the devices. Although the logs would not show from which country these updates come, claims The Wall Street Journal after its own investigation that the signals from Syria are coming from. Other media to confirm that, but report that the original discovery, however, in August would have been done by the Swedish hackgroepering Telecomix. It is not the first time that a computer company inadvertently regime helps with maintaining a dictatorship. The Egyptian secret service, used the technology of a foreign company to dissidents on the internet to find out, the newspaper.
In a reaction opposite to The Wall Street Journal shows Blue Coat themselves surprised. “We do not want our products to be used by the Syrian government or any other country embargoed by the United States,” says Steve Daheb of Blue Coat. The company still has no idea how the approximately fifteen ProxySG 9000’s in Syria have ended up; the equipment was at the end of 2010 of Rotterdam, shipped to Dubai and was meant for the Iraqi government. That has not yet on the news can react.
Syria the use of social media since the beginning of the rebellion, closely in the holes. In contrast to earlier in Egypt and Libya, the internet is not completely closed. However, on social media critical of the regime outlet, is arrested. In Egypt and Libya, where uprisings were, locks the governments the access to the internet completely.
