The Shifting Landscape of Global Internet Censorship, released today, documents the practice of Internet censorship around the world through empirical testing in 45 countries of the availability of 2,046 of the world’s most-trafficked and influential websites, plus additional country-specific websites. The study finds evidence of filtering in 26 countries across four broad content themes: political, social, topics related to conflict and security, and Internet tools (a term that includes censorship circumvention tools as well as social media platforms). The majority of countries that censor content do so across all four themes, although the depth of the filtering varies.
Internet tax and protests in Hungary; the ‘hybrid’ Net Neutrality plan under consideration at the FCC; the Intercept publishes manual for spyware sold to governments; research group finds sophisticated Chinese cyberespionage group; and FBI’s fake news story, all in this week’s IMWeekly.
In this week's #IMWeekly: Brunei's netizens are finding their way around Sharia Law's free speech restrictions, a Cambodia-based blogger gets a heavy fine on dubious defamation charges, and Iraq starts filtering sites critical of the central government.