Tunisia Shuts Off Internet Filter

By: Jillian C. York on 13 January 2011
Posted in Tunisia, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Legislation, Human rights, Political filtering, Social filtering, Internet tools filtering, Filtering tech and software

Following a speech in which Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stated that all censorship of the internet and traditional media will be halted, Tunisia appears to have shut off its Internet filtering system.

At around 9:45pm local time, Tunisian news site Nawaat reported on Twitter that their site, along with video-sharing sites YouTube and DailyMotion, had been unblocked:

"Nous confirmons, la censure illégale de Nawaat est levée POUR CE SOIR. Youtube et dailymotion également."

Translation:

We confirm that the illegal censorship of our site has ceased, FOR THE MOMENT. YouTube and Dailymotion too."

In our 2009-2010 round of testing, ONI found that Tunisia was filtering political and social content pervasively. In particular, a number of local news sites were blocked, as well as opposition sites and nearly major every video-sharing site. In 2010, Nawaat reported that Tunisia was using a multilayered method of filtering, and that "Nawaat" was blocked as a keyword.