One of the most popular filtering SW is SmartFilter, owned by Secure Computing in California, a company that’s just been bought by McAffee for $465m. SmartFilter has been used by some of the world’s most authoritarian regimes: Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, as well as in US and UK. The list of sites that are blocked by SW is so secret that not even the countries that use the technology know what is actually being censored. These lists are the IP of SW companies and are protected by copyright. / Last month, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft signed up to a code of conduct (the Global Network Initiative) that will require them to pay special regard to free expression and privacy as part of their business practice. It has taken 18 months and some very tough negotiation to hammer out the agreement, led by Leslie Harris at the Centre for Democracy and Technology and Dunstan Hope at Business for Social Responsibility. The plan now is to bring others into the fold, including European telecoms.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/17/censorship-internet