Friday, March 16, 2012

RWB: Enemies and Surveillance


On the 12th of March, Reporters Without Borders released their 2012 edition of “Enemies of the Internet.” This report covers the most internet restricted countries, considered “enemies”, and countries with an extensive use of internet blocking referred to as “surveillance” countries. For the most part the 2012 edition is almost the same as the 2011 with just a few changes. The two biggest changes are Belarus and Bahrain being upgrade (or downgraded) from Surveillance to Enemies. Other changes include India and Kazakhstan being added to the surveillance list and Libya and Venezuela being removed from it. The full lists for 2012 and its 2011 predecessor go as follows.  



2012                                        2011

Enemies                                   Enemies

Bahrain                                    Burma

Belarus                                    China

Burma                                     Cuba

China                                       Iran

Cuba                                        North Korea

Iran                                          Saudi Arabia

North Korea                            Syria

Saudi Arabia                           Turkmenistan

Syria                                        Uzbekistan

Turkmenistan                          Vietnam

Uzbekistan                             

Vietnam                                 



2012                                        2011

Surveillance                             Surveillance

Australia                                  Australia

Egypt                                      Bahrain

Eritrea                                     Belarus

France                                     Egypt

India                                        Eritrea

Kazakhstan                             France

Malaysia                                  Libya

Russia                                      Malaysia

South Korea                            Russia

Sri Lanka                                 South Korea

Thailand                                  Sri Lanka

Tunisia                                     Thailand

Turkey                                     Tunisia

United Arab Emirates             Turkey

                                                United Arab Emirates

                                                Venezuela



The change of Belarus and Bahrain were fairly predictable. For those who don’t know Bahrain is an archipelago country off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Uprisings began back in February of last year, around the same time as the Arab spring. What started as a peaceful protest for political freedom and human rights lead to an uprising against the Monarchy after the police started to open fire on citizens. Of course this caused the government to tighten the reins on the internet. They were scared of the possibilities of an open internet with a country in revolt. This is pretty much the same reason that the other countries are on the list.



Belarus, for any readers who were unaware, is good friends with Russia, such good friends that back in the 90’s they formed the Union of Russia and Belarus. Russia is considered “surveillance” and with the Belarusian Government being the weaker of the two it makes sense that it would have to censor more.



India was added to the 2012 surveillance list. As far as I am aware the Indian censorship falls more along the lines of Australian censorship compared to Tunisian or South Korean censorship. It’s mostly censorship of nudity, sexual activities, religious things, and violence rather than governmental. There is also the infamous Kashmir.



Libya was upgraded and taken off the surveillance list of 2012. Had the Libyan Revolution not been a success and if Gaddafi had not been overthrown, Libya could be in the Enemies list rather than off the list entirely. But because of the big changes in Libya this makes a lot of sense.



So I don’t think there were any real surprises in this year’s list. What do you think? For more information you can go to Reports Without Borders’ own website at http://en.rsf.org/. I was able to locate a 2011 pdf version of RWB whole report at http://viewsdesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Internet-Enemies_2011.pdf. I’ll keep my eye out for the full 2012 pdf to tweet out and post when it comes around.



Thanks for reading,

Mike

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