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11/9/15

Governments have gone to war on Internet freedom

The Internet has been doing too good of a job promoting freedom, international cooperation, and the exchange of ideas. So much so that governments around the world are fighting back.

That appears to be the bottom line of a recent survey by Freedom House. Its Freedom on the Net 2015, the fifth in its annual series on government policies and Internet freedom, found that Internet freedom is on the decline in most parts of the world. The survey scores governments on their practices for removing content from the Internet, arresting and intimidating people for what they put on the Internet, surveillance, and undermining encryption and anonymity. Countries are then classified as Free, Partly Free, or Not Free. Most of the 65 countries (representing 88% of the world’s Internet users) surveyed for the 2015 report experienced decreases in freedom since joining the survey.

Main findings: A few bright spots and a mostly negative trend

Let’s first highlight some good news. Nearly one-third of Internet users are in countries that are considered Free. Also, freedom has increased in eight countries over the past few years; the list might surprise you, as it includes Cuba, Iran, Malawi, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Zambia. All of these fall into the Partly Free or Not Free categories. It is tempting to argue that maybe some of these countries had nowhere to go but up, but a lot of other poor performers showed declines in freedom. For example, Russia fell from Partly Free to Not Free. Furthermore, the two other countries that saw improvement were Estonia and the Republic of Georgia, both of which were categorized as Free. The best score went to Iceland with a score of 6 (low scores represent more freedom), but Estonia is catching up, achieving a score of 7 in 2015.

Despite the good news, the general pattern is that governments are finding the freedoms the Internet enables to be problematic. Fifty of the 65 countries – comprising over 75% of those studied – experienced decreases in freedom since joining the report. The US is one of those experiencing decline. Also, according to Freedom House:

  • Authorities in 42 of the 65 countries assessed required private companies or Internet users to restrict or delete web content dealing with political, religious, or social issues.
  • Authorities in 40 of 65 countries imprisoned people for sharing information concerning politics, religion or society through digital networks.
  • Authorities in 28 countries sought to cover up accusations of corruption or misuse of public funds.
  • 21 countries censored content that was considered insulting to religion
  • Governments in 14 of 65 countries passed new laws to increase surveillance since June 2014, and many more upgraded their surveillance equipment.

Some of the stories are disturbing. A Sudanese journalist living in Saudi Arabia was arrested for running a web site critical of government corruption and human rights abuses in Sudan. According to Freedom House, “in July 2015, the Malaysian government blocked access to the UK-based whistle-blower site Sarawak Report over its coverage of bribery allegations linking the prime minister and a Sarawak state investment fund.”

What kinds of countries are ramping up their restrictions? The largest decline in freedom was in Pakistan, but other struggling states showed significant, double-digit declines in freedom since entering the survey, including Bahrain, Ethiopia and Libya. The list of more developed countries that also showed double-digit changes isn’t surprising: Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela. The honor of the worst ranking goes to China, with a score of 88 (remember that large numbers are bad). China was noted this year for upgrading its national firewall, issuing false digital security certificates, strengthening its real-name registration laws for websites, and arresting bloggers.

A correlation between Internet freedom and corruption?

There also appears to be a correlation between Internet restrictions and government corruption. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2014 (the most recent available) measures perceptions of public corruption, including the extent of bribery and weak government efforts to fight corruption. Countries are scored on a scale of 100 (very clean) to zero (very corrupt). Figure 1 shows that there is a high correlation between corruption and restrictions on Internet freedom. Recalling that a high corruption perception score implies a lack of corruption, countries that Freedom House categorized as Partly Free or Not Free scored significantly more corrupt than did countries that were categorized as Free.

Jamison blog 20151109

The correlation isn’t perfect: Freedom House categorized Argentina and Armenia as Free, and Transparency International gave them corruption scores on par with the averages for the Partly Free and Not Free countries. And the United Arab Emirates, categorized as Not Free, has a corruption score that is higher than the average for Free countries. Nevertheless, suppressing Internet freedom appears to have a comfortable bedfellow with government corruption.

Reversing the trend

What can be done to reverse this decline in Internet freedom? One strategy is to protect Internet governance from political control. Some of the worst offenders of Internet freedom – namely Russia and China – are leading efforts to make governments the only legitimate stakeholders in Internet governance. The Obama administration has been a strong supporter of Internet freedom, but has drawn criticism for being weak on Internet governance.

Furthermore, the US badly needs a coherent strategy for protecting freedom. We have been unable to resolve how to protect citizens from crimes and terrorism while at the same time protecting their privacy. Also, we lack clarity on the division of roles of government and the private sector with respect to cybersecurity. Lastly, the US must establish credibility with other countries and their citizens. Rightly or wrongly, the Snowden revelations have damaged the reputation of the US government and US companies, resulting in activities on the part of many countries to construct barriers to cyber commerce with the US.



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