A recent article said that the German Interior Ministry is looking to invest 130 million euros (SR715 million) to block more than 4,500 Internet websites used by terrorists. This amount is more than the amount of money specified for the poverty fund.
If it is true that the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) is blocking more than 45,000 websites — something I read in a local newspaper and which I find hard to believe — then we must be spending over SR7.1 billion in blocking websites. If this is true, we could have used this amount of money to build hospitals and education institutions. I think this amount of money is more than the amount specified to fight terrorism itself.
I bet KACST is not spending one tenth of this money on research and I also believe that the entire process of blocking websites is simply not working. We have many Saudis that are using satellite connections to surf the web and we should also keep in mind that some websites change their URLs, sending their new web addresses by e-mail, which spread like a bushfire.
KACST is playing a cat and mouse game with these websites and IT technicians there try rooting out new URL addresses, a process which is very costly and time consuming.
At the same time, young Saudis are using smart cards to view pornography TV channels — channels that are much worse than the pornography available on the Internet. If this is the case, then what is the use of blocking websites? I think that the amount of money spent on blocking websites should be spent on other things that would potentially benefit people.
