netsweeper

This report describes our investigation into the global proliferation of Internet filtering systems manufactured by the Canadian company, Netsweeper Inc. After undertaking a mapping of worldwide country installations, we focus in on ten country cases in which we verify that Netsweeper systems are being used to censor the Internet for subscribers of consumer Internet Service Providers, and where human rights and corporate social responsibility questions are acute.

This section details the research questions that informed our study. We also outline in detail the methods that we adopted to identify Netsweeper installations worldwide, and those that we employed to reduce the findings to countries of interest. We also present high-level technical findings and observations.

This section examines the legal, regulatory, corporate social responsibility, and other public policy issues raised by our report’s findings. We focus on the responsibilities of Netsweeper, Inc. and the obligations of the Canadian government under international human rights law.

In this report, we confirm the use of the services of Canadian company Netsweeper, Inc. to censor access to the Internet in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

A new Citizen Lab report has found that Canada-based Netsweeper filtering products have been identified on three ISPs in Somalia.

A new Citizen Lab report, entitled O Pakistan, We Stand on Guard for Thee: An Analysis of Canada-based Netsweeper’s Role in Pakistan’s Censorship Regime, has found that Canada-based Netsweeper filtering products have been installed in Pakistan, and are being used for filtering political and social web content.