Internet Censorship Is Rampant Around the World

Source: fastcodesign – By John Pavlus

Egypt’s Internet may be back on, but that country’s weeklong web blackout was a wake-up call to the rest of the world about just how fragile the intertubes really are. Ars Technica has a detailed technical breakdown of how Internet “kill switches” work— in Egypt’s case, it was basically just a matter of cracking down on the country’s four major ISPs — but for an at-a-glance visual distillation of the who/what/why of web censorship, it’s hard to beat this sobering set of infographics.

 

First, who’s doing it? The above map, based on data from the press-freedom watchdogs at Reporters Without Borders, paints a grim picture: Almost all of the industrialized “first world” Internet is moderately to pervasively censored by government authorities. There are obvious and practical reasons for having some online surveillance, but the fact that only countries like Mongolia and Madagascar have a completely open web is rather shocking to see illustrated so starkly.

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Tagged with: All Articles, Ars Technica, censorship, Egypt, First Amendment, Free Speech Internet, General Censorship, Government, Internet, Internet censorship, Internet service provider, Madagascar, Mongolia, Newsworthy, Reporters Without Borders
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