Alkasir () is an

internet censorship circumvention Internet censorship circumvention is the use of various methods and tools to bypass internet censorship. Various techniques and methods are used to bypass Internet censorship, and have differing ease of use, speed, security, and risks. Some method ...

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

developed by Yemeni

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, Computer programming, programming, software documentation, documenting, software testing, testing, and Software bugs, bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applic ...

Walid al-Saqaf. Al-Saqaf is the son of Yemeni

investigative journalist Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years rese ...

Abdulaziz Al-Saqqaf Professor Abdulaziz Y. Al-Saqqaf (24 October 1954 in Taiz – 2 June 1999) was a Yemeni human-rights activist, economist, and journalist. Saqqaf established the ''Yemen Times'', unified Yemen's first and most widely read English language, Engli ...

who died under what

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

called "mysterious circumstances" and who had set up a

news website An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Going online created more opportunities for newspa ...

focusing on Yemeni affairs, YemenPortal.net, while he was earning a PhD in Sweden. Alkasir was created when the government blocked access to the site using

Websense Forcepoint, an American multinational corporation software company headquartered in Austin, Texas, that develops computer security software and data protection, cloud access security broker, firewall and cross-domain solutions. Forcepoint was fo ...

, and later, Netsweeper. Alkasir was launched in 2009 with the newest version, added in May 2010, containing an internal browser with updates often being released. Governments around the world, most notably in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and in the Middle East, use censorship to block access to various websites. In light of using

social networking sites A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...

in political movements, such as the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in T ...

, Middle Eastern governments have implemented Western tools to censor the internet. Alkasir's site also contains a map tracking the use of its software to gain access to particular URLs. The more people using the software to access a particular site, such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

, the more likely it is blocked by the people's country. As of 2012, the Arab country with the highest number of Alkasir users was Syria and the software received over a hundred thousand reports of blocked URLs. Walid al-Saqaf was selected as a

TED TED may refer to: Economics and finance * TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar Education * ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association ** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey ** Transvaal Education Depa ...

fellow in 2010 for the development of Alkasir. He was also selected as a

2012 senior fellow.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Alkasir

Mideast Youth

Yemen Portal

Presentation of Alkasir
i
''How to Bypass Internet Censorship''
a

FLOSS Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

Manual, 10 March 2011, 240 pp. Censorship in Yemen