Internet censorship is a major and growing human rights issue today. Access to content is restricted for users onsocial media, like Facebook, on mobile applications, and on search engines.  The most egregious form of censorship, however, is that which occurs at a national level for entire populations.  This type of censorship has been spreading for many years, and now has become normalized across numerous countries...

Bahrain is one of the world’s worst countries for respect for human rights, particularly press and Internet freedoms.  For many years, Bahrain has restricted access to Internet content having to do with independent media, websites critical of the Kingdom, and content related to the Shia faith, which is heavily persecuted in Bahrain.

[T]he case is significant because Netsweeper is a Canadian company, and the provision of Internet filtering services to a country like Bahrain— though not in violation of any Canadian law per se — is definitely being used to suppress content deemed legitimate expression under international human rights law, which Canada explicitly supports.  All the more troubling, then, is the fact that Netsweeper has benefited, and will benefit in the future, from tangible support provided by both the Canadian and the Ontario governments in trade shows held in the Gulf region. 

Should the government of Canada be promoting a company whose software is used to violate human rights and which offers services in direct contradiction to our stated foreign policy goals on cyberspace? ...to require companies like Netsweeper to have some explicit corporate social responsibility process in place.  Export controls could be established that restrict the sale of technology and services to countries that will use their product to infringe internationally-recognized human rights.