LONDON—Researchers have identified a Canadian company at the centre of a small Arab nation’s online censorship system—a finding that sits awkwardly with Ottawa officials’ public support for digital freedoms.
Specialists from Internet watchdog Citizen Lab said in a report published Wednesday, Sept. 21, that web-filtering firm Netsweeper Inc. is helping block news and opposition websites in Bahrain, a Gulf Arab monarchy that has been wracked by unrest since pro-democracy protests were stifled there in 2011.
Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert said the discovery undermines Canadian leaders’ forceful condemnations of online censorship.
“Canadian policymakers have been quite vocal about saying that this is wrong,” he said. “Yet here we have a Canadian company that’s doing precisely that.”
Netsweeper, based in Guelph, Ont., did not return a call and other messages seeking comment. In 2011, a company spokesman was quoted as saying there was “no good conversation for us to have” about allegations of censorship.
