Freedom on the Net 2015: How Free is Your Internet?

The Freedom on the Net 2015 report was recently released! This report shows how countries around the world rank in terms of their Internet freedoms, on a scale that includes “free,” “partly free” and “not free.” 65 countries were examined in the 2015 report.

Of the 65 countries ranked, 18 were Free, 28 were Partly Free and 19 were Not Free.

Key findings from the 2015 report include:

• Content removals increased: This year, 42 countries were required to remove content. These requests came from governments, and the content to be removed was political, religious and related to social issues.
• Surveillance laws and technologies multiplied: 14 countries passed new laws to increase surveillance. Additionally, some updated the surveillance equipment they use. We certainly saw an great deal of surveillance legislation being proposed and enacted, including in Russia, France, UK and even in the USA with the Senate’s passage of CISA.
• Governments undermined encryption, anonymity: There were many countries that have tried to limit encryption technologies or ban encryption from being used altogether. Encryption was also repeatedly “stigmatized” as a negative tool that aides criminals. Here at Golden Frog, we closely followed and spoke out against the United States’ fight for encryption backdoors, continue to advocate for encryption and also joined forces with other groups to save crypto.
• Arrests and intimidation escalated: Arrests and intimidation was in response to people sharing information over social networks that was political, religious, or societal. In many instances, this information was communications surrounding public unrest.

To learn more about Internet freedom in 2015, read the full report. Detailed reports for all 65 countries examined are also available, so you can see how your country fared.

All data in this post comes from Freedom on the Net 2015.