Web users around the world are facing increasing restrictions, largely due to government censorship and harsh crackdowns on privacy tools, according to a new report by Freedom House.iStockphoto/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Global Internet freedom – a key measure of privacy, access and free speech on the Web – has declined for the fifth year in a row.
Government censorship and an increasingly unrelenting crackdown on privacy tools have made it more difficult for Web users to speak freely and retain anonymity online, according to a sprawling new report by the non-profit advocacy group Freedom House.
"State authorities have … jailed more users for their online writings, while criminal and terrorist groups have made public examples of those who dared to expose their activities online," the report said.
Governments in many parts of the world, it added, have started demanding that offending content be taken down, rather than just blocked by filtering software – cognizant that users have become more adept at using anonymity and proxy tools to circumvent traditional blocking methods.
"Undermining online encryption and anonymity weakens the Internet for everyone, but especially for human-rights activists and independent journalists."
The increasingly sophisticated means by which users circumvent blocking software has also made governments more willing to take much broader measures.
The report's authors pointed to a case in Turkey, where the government sought to ban five websites related to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a designated terrorist entity.
However the sites are hosted on Wordpress, a global service that uses a more secure version of the traditional hypertext protocol that powers much of the Web.
Because the secure protocol made it too difficult to ban the five specific sites, the Turkish government banned the entirety of Wordpress – some 70 million websites.
Myriad technology companies have been forced into an uncomfortable position by governments' increasing appetite for censorship.
Several major tech behemoths, including Twitter and Google, have issued transparency reports detailing information about the governments that ask for content takedowns and user details (however, the companies are often restricted by law from providing too many details).
Companies have also sought a compromise by banning certain content according to the request of government authorities, but only in those countries.
In the last six months of 2014, Facebook blocked about 5,800 pieces of content in India, complying with the wishes of local law-enforcement authorities there.
This is the fifth consecutive year that global Internet freedom has declined.
The report found that more than 60 per cent of all Internet users live in countries "where criticism of the government, military or ruling family has been subject to censorship online."
Almost as many – 58 per cent – live in countries where users have been jailed for sharing political, social or religious content online.
According to the report, China was the world's worst abuser of online rights in 2015, followed by Syria and Iran.
The report cited a widespread crackdown by Chinese authorities on "rumours," a vaguely defined concept, as well as the jailing of several well-known rights activists.
In the Middle East as a whole, however, the situation was arguably more dire.
In addition to numerous government crackdowns on Internet users – ranging from censored content to jail sentences and corporal punishment for rights activists in countries such as Saudi Arabia – the rise of terror groups as a domestic force also contributed to dismal Internet freedom throughout the region.
Not only have groups such as the Islamic State sought to retaliate against those who criticize them online, that retaliation has itself had a ripple effect.
"Several democratic countries, including France and Australia, passed new measures authorizing sweeping surveillance, prompted in part by domestic terrorism concerns and the expansion of the Islamic State militant group," the report's authors write.
France joined Libya and Ukraine on the report's list of countries with the steepest decline in Internet freedom between June, 2014, and May, 2015.
Of the 65 countries assessed in the report, Iceland, Estonia and Canada were deemed the most free.