Courtesy: Cnet

A plan by Pakistan for a Web-filtering project prompts U.S. firms to take a stance on selling software to be used for government censorship.

For years, Silicon Valley companies have quietly conducted a lucrative trade selling software and equipment to countries that restrict dissent over the Internet. But the recent dust-up involving an Internet filtering plan by Pakistan has turned the spotlight on a controversial business that may have a difficult time remaining secret much longer.

Broad public backlash appears to have prompted Pakistan officials to back off plans this week to build a system that will enable them to easily filter and block Internet content seen by the more than 170 million people living in the country. But Pakistan isn’t the first country to want to control what online material its citizens can see and it won’t be the last.

While the U.S. government has export restrictions on the sale of technology to certain countries including Iran, Syria, and North Korea, U.S. firms are at liberty to export censorship and even surveillance-enabling technologies to many other countries that have similarly poor records on human rights and freedom of expression even though they have not been hit with trade sanctions. For instance, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and Tunisia have used SmartFilter products now owned by Intel’s McAfee unit, according to a report from the OpenNet Initiative.

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