Nov 19, 2020 21:00:00

He pointed out that 'Internet censorship' has spread to countries that should be free, what about Japan?

It is well known that freedom of the Internet is severely restricted in China and Russia, such as the

sudden removal of popular censorship avoidance apps and the government's test to disconnect domestic networks from the Internet. However, the results of a survey conducted by a unique tool developed by the University of Michigan in the United States revealed that censorship has spread to countries that were previously considered 'free.'

Censored Planet: An Internet-wide, Longitudinal Censorship Observatory --3372297.3417883
(PDF file) https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3372297.3417883

'Extremely aggressive' internet censorship spreads in the world's democracies | University of Michigan News
https://news.umich.edu/extremely-aggressive-internet-censorship-spreads-in-the-worlds-democracies/

A report released in October 2020 by Freedom House , an international NGO on democracy and human rights, revealed that 'the degree of freedom of the Internet' is declining globally. Freedom House cites 'pandemic tightening of regulations' as a cause of increasing censorship worldwide.

'Internet freedom' is declining worldwide, and some governments are taking advantage of pandemics to strengthen Internet surveillance-GIGAZINE

Following these studies, a research team led by Ramaklishnan Sundara Raman, who is studying engineering at the University of Michigan, will analyze the increase and decrease of censorship from 2018 to 2020 with the proprietary censorship tracking system 'Censored Planet'. I conducted a study.

As a result, it was found that censorship is on the rise in 103 of the 221 countries targeted by Censored Planet. Among the countries with increased censorship were Norway, Japan, Italy, India, Israel and Poland, which were identified as 'the countries with the highest degree of freedom' in the Freedom House survey. That is.

Below is a summary of the findings from the Censored Planet on an interactive map. You can use the Full screen button at the bottom right to display it in full screen, or you can directly access and browse the public page on Sketchfab from this link .

Portugal was by far the number one censorship growth rate in the Censored Planet survey. On the other hand, Portugal is positioned as a group with an extremely high degree of freedom, with the Freedom House rating of 96 points out of 100 points.

In second place is

Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, with a Freedom House rating of 89 points.

Denmark , which ranked third, was ranked 8th in the world ranking with a Freedom House rating of 97 points, making it one of the world's leading countries with a high degree of freedom on the Internet.

Japan , which received a 96-point rating from Freedom House, along with Portugal, was not selected in the Censored Planet ranking. However, in a report, the research team said, 'When the G20 Osaka Summit was held in Osaka in June 2019, news sites such as the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal were actively blocked in Japan. I am reporting.

'What we've seen from our research is that not every country is completely free. In many countries, child pornography and pirated content are clearly bad,' Raman said of the Censored Planet findings. Laws have been enacted to block things to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) , but once the groundwork to block something is in place, the government can block any website, and the process is very high. It's opaque. '