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(EMAILWIRE.COM, December 06, 2012 ) San Francisco, CA -- Numerous American companies are hosting official Syrian government websites on their servers as of Friday afternoon, a violation of sanctions that the United States has on the Western Asian country.
According to a report by The New York Times, many of those companies had stated they had or were taking down those sites.
Although Internet access is restricted within Syria, many of the embattled nation's government websites, including SANA, the Syrian state news agency, were able to be accessed by visitors from other nations, including the U.S.
Citizen Lab, a research laboratory that monitors North American Web service providers that host Syrian websites, identified several companies that host Syrian sites, according to published reports.
For example, Dallas, Texas-based SoftLayer Technologies, hosts the Sana website. It is one of a handful of U.S.-based Internet providers sell their services, sometimes unknowingly, to websites operated by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.
Other companies that currently host official Syrian websites include Jumpline.com, which hosts Syrian General Authority for Development website, and Orlando, Fla.-based HostDime.com, which gives access to the website of Syria's Ministry of Religious Affairs.
WeHostWebSites.com, based in Denver, Colo., hosts the government of Hama, a city that has been the focal point of many clashes government troops and rebels.
Following an executive order issued by President Barack Obama, American companies are prohibited from providing Web hosting services to Syria licensing from the U.S. Treasury Department.
The U.S. State Department on Thursday confirmed that providing the services was a violation of U.S. sanctions against Syria.
"Our policies are designed to assist ordinary citizens who are exercising their fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly and association," said State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner.
HostDime.com's vice president of operations, Dennis Henry, said that he had been unaware that his company was hosting the Syrian government website, saying that it was hosted by a customer's server housed in HostDime.com's data center.
"We have contacted our direct client whose server is housing the website to express our concerns," Henry said. By Friday, the company had removed the website, according to Henry.
A 20-month conflict, which has resulted in more than 40,000 deaths, underscored how the conflict has moved to including the Web. Cyberattacks have been used by both rebels and Syrian government officials to advance their causes.
In July, Assad's government ordered that all official websites be hosted inside Syria. The government also maintains websites based in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the U.S. in case of an emergency or an Internet shutdown, said Citizen Lab senior researcher Helmi Noman.
"This most recent Internet disruption in Syria highlights the issue of Web hosting and how the regime is able to make use of servers outside Syria to promote its message while locally hosted sites are down," Noman said.
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