Director of Legal Affairs and International Cooperation at the Ministry of Interior Abdullah Al-Ansari said that in the study carried out by KACST, 26 percent of Internet searches were for adult sites, which he said matched figures from the rest of the world.
In a survey by the Communication and Information Technology Commission in May 2005, 65 percent of Internet users approve of the Internet safeguards, while 28 percent are against them.
Al-Ansari pointed out that around 780,000 adult content and porn sites were blocked as of 2007, representing almost 94 percent of all restricted websites in the Kingdom. The rest included proxy bypass sites and websites linked to bank fraud, drugs and terrorism.
Al-Ansari said the Kingdom would be represented at the 20th session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Austria later this year, an initiative to protect children against the misuse of technology to abuse and manipulate them.
Al-Ansari added that this initiative is based on the Kingdom's Islamic constitution, which rejects any form of abuse on human beings, including pornographic and adult content photos regardless of the sources and the media used to exchange and spread them.
“Experts collected data and carried out scientific researches and studies that led to one conclusion: Ignoring the distribution of pornographic and sexual content photos will definitely lead to the rise of many negative trends and social crimes,” he said, adding that it will also impact countries financially and socially, and undermine national security.
The initiative, according to Al-Ansari, discusses technical, technological and legal precautions the Kingdom has taken to prevent technology users from abusing children, indicating that security forces are the bodies responsible for tackling such activities.
The Kingdom's initiative, he added, is working toward keeping abreast of rapid technology growth by conducting a study to identify the authorities responsible for the content of these technologies and adapt quickly and skillfully to changes in these mediums.
“The Kingdom called for cooperation between countries of similar interests and concerns in its initiative to find a way to devise an international evaluation system for information content, enabling every country, family and guardian to restrict what could be socially harmful to children,” said Al-Ansari, adding that the initiative urged the UN to adopt a comprehensive agreement similar to the European Convention on Cybercrime.
Al-Ansari also revealed that as a result of cooperation between security forces, the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution and Communications and the Information Technology Commission, a number of Saudi networks and bloggers in the Kingdom were arrested for distributing pornographic photos and content.
