This Page May Contain Content That is Not Consisent With the Moral Cultural, or Social Values of the UAE

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I was in Dubai for a night two weeks ago on my way to Uganda and tried from my Holiday Inn Express in Dubai Internet City home of the Middle East campuses of Sun Microsystems, Cisco, and EMC and to access a blog called Secret Dubai Diary. The site came up in a Google search for Dubai nightlife. When I tried to access the site, I got the lovely “Surf Safely” message above, indicating that this site was “inconsistent with the moral, cultural, or social values of the UAE.” Unfortunately for the government censors in the United Arab Emirates, they didn’t think to block the Google Cache version of the page.

It was very reassuring that UAE recognizes the Internet as a “powerful medium of communication, sharing and serving our daily learning requirements.”

If you wish, you can send an email to “safesurf[at]du.ae” to share your view of Internet censorship.