ALKHOBAR: When the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games kicked off this week, there were screams particularly from Western journalists that they were unable to fully access the Internet at the Media Village in Beijing.

“It has been our policy to provide the media with convenient and sufficient access to the Internet. I believe our policy will not affect reporters’ coverage of the Olympic Games,” said Sun Weide, spokesman for the Beijing Olympics organizing committee.

Journalists in Saudi Arabia must function daily with limits on the Internet imposed by faceless bureaucrats. Internet censorship in the Kingdom is possible thanks to the use of products developed by US corporations. While the US government bars the export of many high-end security technologies which it believes might be used for detrimental purposes, apparently there is no issue in allowing the technology produced by US companies to be used to halt freedom of expression through the Internet for hundreds of millions of people.

In the current censorship efforts in the Kingdom there appears to be little common sense. Last week, in the post I received two catalogs from a US company, Lands’ End. The cover and all the pages through Page 42 of one catalog had been torn off. The missing pages in the first copy of the Lands’ End catalog contained some discreet photos of women in swimsuits. I know this because the second Lands’ End catalog came through the post intact. Both catalogs were exactly the same. Even sillier, by simply clicking to the company’s website, I could see all the swimsuits.

At a time when we have a desperate need as a nation to allocate resources to education, infrastructure and health care, somewhere a group of Saudis is spending their days tearing pages out of magazines and catalogs to protect my morality - and getting paid for it. My psyche wasn’t permanently damaged by seeing the swimsuit photos in the second catalog. I’ve seen worse just by visiting the swimming pool at almost any housing compound in Alkhobar.

The filtering of the Internet is as messy as the filtering of hard copy publications. A local businessman, Bilal, came into his son’s room and caught the youngster staring intently at thumbnail images of women’s chests. By turning off the “safe” filter option on his browser and typing in the appropriate search term, the 12-year-old had been able to bring up quite a selection of pictures. Most of the lewd ones could not be accessed full size because of network blocking, but there were some nice photos available of women after augmentation surgery.

This is actually a remarkable improvement over just a few years back when women looking for information and medical resources in regards to breast cancer found them blocked. It seems that with the huge increase in the incidence of breast cancer in the Kingdom here has been some softening in this position and the authorities should be commended for coming to their senses. But rationalization on one point doesn’t indicate overall improvement and the authorities aren’t blocking just pornography. And the government of the Kingdom isn’t alone in its policies. Governments throughout the Middle East find political, religious, moral and financial reasons to block content and applications.

So to all the journalists in Beijing furious at having their all access Internet passes limited for a few weeks, I say, “quit your belly aching.” For you it is a minor inconvenience. For millions of people like me, it is a daily reality.

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