Internet censorship in Syria

In August 2007 YouTube was blocked after videos circulated denouncing the crackdown on the Kurd minority.[12][13]

In November 2007 the Syrian government blocked Facebook, explaining that the website promoted attacks on authorities. The Facebook ban, like the ban of most websites, was not entirely effective and many people were able to maintain access using open proxies or other circumvention techniques.[14][15]

From 30 April 2008 to the present (23 October 2013) the Arabic Wikipedia has been blocked.[16][17] Syrian journalist Waed al-Mahna, an activist for archaeological preservation, was sentenced imprisonment via absentia in 2008 over an online article that criticized Syrian Ministry of Culture's policy to destroy a heritage site in Old Damascus.[18]

In February 2011 Syria stopped filtering YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.[19][13]

Early in the Syrian civil war on 3 June 2011 the government shut down the country's Internet network. Although fully restored the following day, the country's 3G, DSL and dial-up were disconnected the same day massive protests and marches were being organized throughout the country to call for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and for “Children’s Friday”, to honor children who had died during the uprisings.[20]

On 26 July 2011 the website the-syrian.com, a site dedicated to "granting freedom of speech to everyone, whether against or with the regime",[21] was blocked from within Syria.[22] The site is mostly in Arabic and targeted to Syrian audiences, although it has an English section.[23] A graph that appeared in the Wall Street Journal shows the number of blocked access attempts to the-syrian.com and other sites between August 1 and 5 2011.[24]

In October 2011 US based Blue Coat Systems of Sunnyvale, California acknowledged that Syria is using its devices to censor Web activity, a possible violation of US trade embargoes. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal information about Blue Coat in Syria began to trickle out in August, after a "hacktivist" group called Telecomix managed to gain access to unsecured servers on Syria's Internet systems and found evidence of Blue Coat filtering. The group found computer records, or logs, detailing which Web pages the Blue Coat devices were censoring in Syria.[25]

In June 2012 the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reported that pro-Syrian-government malware campaigns have increased in frequency and sophistication and that a new Trojan distributed as a .pif file via Skype targets Syrian activists. The malware gives an attacker the ability to execute arbitrary code on the infected computer. Evidence suggests that this campaign is being carried out by the same pro-Syrian-government hackers responsible for previous attacks. The new Trojan is one in a series used to attack Syrian opposition activists that includes several Trojans, one disguised as a Skype encryption tool, which covertly install spying software onto the infected computer, as well as a multitude of phishing attacks which steal YouTube and Facebook login credentials.[26][27][28]

On July 19, 2012, Internet access from Syria traveling via the state carrier Syrian Telecommunications Establishment was cut off for a period of 40 minutes.[29]

On 29 November 2012, almost all Internet connectivity between Syria and the outside world was cut off[3][30] at around 12:00 to 13:00 UTC+02:00 (local time).[31] This coincided with intense rebel activity inside Syria.[3] In 2014, Edward Snowden alleged that the NSA was responsible.[32]

The Syrian Internet blackout was a break in Syria's Internet connectivity that happened for nineteen hours between 7 and 8 May 2013. Mobile phone and telephone services were also cut. No-one yet has admitted responsibility for the event or can figure out how it happened. The Syrians blamed Cyberterrorists for the incident. It caused worry that the blackout was intended to mask an impending military offensive.[33][34]

Syria's Internet was cut off more than ten times in 2013, and again in March 2014.[5][6]