

The Internet is less free than last year. Thanks a bunch, Snowden - jeffbarson
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/06/the_internet_is_less_free_than_last_year/

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tete
Looking at the the numbers I don't really understand why especially UK and US
rank so high.

[https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net-2014/freedom-
net...](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net-2014/freedom-
net-2014-graphics)

For UK: They seem to censor the biggest and most recognized association of
hackers of the world. They are somewhat politically active, educating people
about new technologies and their dangers.

[https://twitter.com/afpc/status/540863877601587200/photo/1](https://twitter.com/afpc/status/540863877601587200/photo/1)

As for the US: Censorship isn't really a thing there as far as I know. However
traffic interception for business reasons certainly is. From all I know it is
really hard to get "normal" internet access (without DPI, companies even
modifying packages for whatever reason, QOS, ...).

But again, I understand the rating for the US rating is okay, just for UK it
seems strange to have a much better rating than Russia, which seems way too
far off in that least. Things might have changed drastically there, but so
far.. at least for the people I know they can visit various websites that for
example are being censored for copyright infringement, which in many cases
actually is debatable, especially when it is communities with less such data
than tumblr or Facebook for example.

Again, just my perspective from what I hear from people I tend to talk to.
It's really subjective, but maybe someone here, maybe someone living in the
mentioned countries can add something.

Where I live (a country without data on the list) there has also been a lot of
new censorship coming up, but all those cases are completely unrelated to
Snowden, but mainly based on lobbyists by the content industry. Sometimes
there are weird situations where companies have different opinions than the
actual authors or videos get removed from YouTube by request of a company,
even though the original author uploaded it based on their rights of it.

Okay, that is one "reason" for censorship and while I am still not happy with
that I worry more about all kinds of associations, news websites or NGOs or
political opposition being blocked even when some government somewhere in the
world calls them terrorists or radical. The same was true when pro-democratic
movements first appeared in most countries.

------
ElectronCharge
Snowden did the citizens of the US a huge favor by bringing to light pervasive
government snooping. In the long run, it will be good for freedom* !

* That is, unless the citizens get too distracted by Honey Boo Boo, the Kardashians and so on...

~~~
hackerjam
here, here. if snowden didn't exist, russia and turkey would have found
another excuse to repress the internet.

