Freedom House Releases Key Findings on Internet Freedom

By: Jillian C. York on 1 April 2009
Posted in Political filtering, Social filtering, IP blocking

Freedom House has released a report of its key findings on Internet freedom. The report, which focuses primarily on filtering and surveillance, ranked a number of countries from "free" to "not free" based on accessibility, filtering, and surveillance practices.

Estonia ranked as the country with the most Internet freedom, while Cuba received the lowest score. Fifteen countries were studied.

Along with Estonia, Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom were all ranked free. ONI has not completed studies on Brazil or South Africa to date, but we expect to release our United Kingdom research this summer. The UK made headlines earlier this year for blocking access to a Wikipedia entry on a Scorpions album entitled "Virgin Killer," the cover of which contained potentially illegal material. ONI blogged about the subject here; the site was made available less than 24 hours after its initial blocking.

The complete findings will be released today in Berlin, Germany.