‘The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating a dramatic decline in global internet freedom. For the 10th consecutive year, users have experienced an overall deterioration in their rights, and the phenomenon is contributing to a broader crisis for democracy worldwide. Three notable trends punctuated an especially dismal year for internet freedom... First, political leaders used the pandemic as a pretext to limit access to information... Second, authorities cited COVID-19 to justify expanded surveillance powers and the deployment of new technologies that were once seen as too intrusive... The third trend has been the transformation of a slow-motion “splintering” of the internet into an all-out race toward “cyber sovereignty,” with each government imposing its own internet regulations in a manner that restricts the flow of information across national borders...
‘Global internet freedom has declined for the 10th consecutive year: 26 countries’ scores worsened during this year’s coverage period, while 22 countries registered net gains. The largest declines occurred in Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan, followed by India, Ecuador, and Nigeria. A record number of countries featured deliberate disruptions to internet service. On the positive side, Sudan and Ukraine experienced the largest improvements, followed by Zimbabwe. A raft of court rulings shored up human rights online in countries ranked Free, Partly Free, and Not Free alike. The United States ranked seventh overall, while Iceland was once again the top performer. For the sixth consecutive year, China was found to have the worst conditions for internet freedom.
‘Freedom on the Net assesses internet freedom in 65 countries around the globe, accounting for 87 percent of the world’s internet users. This report, the 10th in its series, covers developments between June 2019 and May 2020. More than 70 analysts contributed to this year’s report, using a standard methodology to determine each country’s internet freedom score on a 100-point scale, based on 21 indicators pertaining to obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. Freedom on the Net also identifies global trends related to the impact of information and communication technologies on democracy. The data underpinning this year’s trends, in-depth reports on each of the countries surveyed, and the full methodology can be found here.’
Read here (Freedom House, October 2020)
