The annual survey assesses freedom in 65 countries, or 87% of the world’s users.
The 2020 Freedom on the Net [PDF] report found that this is the tenth consecutive year in which Internet freedom has generally declined. China finished last on the Internet for the sixth consecutive year and the biggest declines occurred in Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, India, Ecuador and Nigeria. Sudan, Ukraine and Zimbabwe have noticed the maximum significant improvements.
According to Freedom House, many governments have used the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to assert virtual authoritarianism through surveillance and information limitation.
“The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating a dramatic decline in global Internet freedom,” the report says. “State and non-state actors in many countries are now exploiting the opportunities created through the pandemic for online narratives, censoring critical discourse, and building new technological systems of social control. “
Political leaders have taken advantage of the Covid-19 crisis to restrict data, for example by arresting Americans for “false accusations” of spreading false data and blocking independent news sites. The government has censored independent reports on the pandemic in at least 28 countries and has arrested online reviews in at least forty-five countries.
They also cited Covid-19 as justification for expanding surveillance powers and deploying technologies that were once too intrusive, such as biometric surveillance without transparency or oversight. In particular, a variety of Covid-19 quarantine and monitoring programmes have been incorporated with at least 54 countries with minimum protections against abuse; The developers of these programs have largely ignored the principles of confidentiality from the beginning. The Indian app Aarogya Setu, for example, which tracks users via GPS and Bluetooth, is closed source, centralized and required by law in some parts of the country. .
“These practices raise the perspective of a long dystopian long term in which personal companies, security agencies and cybercriminals have simple and sensitive data not only about where we stop and the parts we buy, but also about our medical, facial and vocal history. patterns, and even our genetic codes,” the report says.
Adrian Shahbaz, co-author of the report, said: “History has shown that technologies and legislation that go through a crisis have a tendency to linger. As with 9/11, we will see Covid-19 as a time when governments have acquired new powers to control their populations.
In addition, Freedom House has known the “rupture” of the Internet as more states (including some democracies) move toward e-government, where a government imposes local Internet regulations to limit data transfer across borders and isolate their country from the foreign Internet. This has given several governments the strength to take strong action against human rights, for example through Internet courts in Iran to cover up police brutality in reaction to mass protests.
The report called for regaining confidence in the legitimacy and effectiveness of the existing multisectoral model, external web governance systems (tax, festivals and external knowledge flows) that respect democratic principles.
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