Gulf Daily News – 15 August 2006
By TARIQ KHONJI
FREE web-based satellite imaging service Google Earth was down again yesterday, but Bahraini government officials remained tight-lipped on whether or not they were responsible for blocking it.
Information Ministry Assistant Under-Secretary for Press and Publications Dr Abdulla Yateem refused to comment, referring the GDN instead to Bahrain News Agency head Abdulla Salman.
However, Mr Salman said he didn’t have any information on the subject and referred us back to Mr Yateem.
Press and Publications director Jamal Dawood said that since his superior Mr Yateem couldn’t say anything, he couldn’t comment either.
Gulf Daily News – 15 August 2006
By TARIQ KHONJIFREE web-based satellite imaging service Google Earth was down again yesterday, but Bahraini government officials remained tight-lipped on whether or not they were responsible for blocking it.
Information Ministry Assistant Under-Secretary for Press and Publications Dr Abdulla Yateem refused to comment, referring the GDN instead to Bahrain News Agency head Abdulla Salman.
However, Mr Salman said he didn’t have any information on the subject and referred us back to Mr Yateem.
Press and Publications director Jamal Dawood said that since his superior Mr Yateem couldn’t say anything, he couldn’t comment either.
Human rights activists have criticised moves to deny access to the Google Earth service and say two other services offered for free by Google – Google Maps and Google Videos – have also been blocked.
They said it was not the first time the government has tried to restrict access to information on the Internet, but claimed that such moves contravene the national constitution.
Vice-president of the now-dissolved Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) Nabeel Rajab added that a number of Bahraini websites have been blocked for their political content, including popular discussion forum bahrainonline.org.
“The BCHR once again recalls Article 23 of the Constitution of Bahrain and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both of which guarantee the right to receive and impart electronic information without hindrance,” he said.
“The BCHR calls upon the relevant government authorities to unblock the aforementioned websites immediately and urges civil society and the media to continue applying pressure and shedding light on the issue until this happens.”
When the GDN tried to access Google Earth yesterday, it could only access the information that was already in the computer’s cache and when it zoomed in on landmarks could only see a blurred image on the screen.
The following message appeared when the programme was first opened: “Google Earth could not contact the authentication server to activate your session. The application will continue to operate, but will only display data available locally (in cache). To retry session activation, you should verify your network connection and restart the application.”
A Batelco spokesman said the company was not the entity responsible for such decisions.
However, it is understood Batelco or any other service provider must have legal documentation from the relevant authority – in this case the Information Ministry – before it blocks any service. Batelco has said earlier that it would not block any web service unless it had been ordered to do so by the Information Ministry.