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<\/a>U.S. non-governmental organization again ranked China as the \u201cworst abuser of internet freedom\u201d in an annual survey that found 32 of 65 countries assessed moving on a \u201cnegative trajectory\u201d in the year since June 2014.<\/p>\nThe Washington-based said global internet freedom has declined for the fifth consecutive year, \u201cwith more governments censoring information of public interest and placing greater demands on the private sector to take down offending content.\u201d<\/p>\n
China, which scored 88 on a scale on which 100 was the worst, saw an erosion of its previous year\u2019s score of 87, as President Xi Jinping deepened his stress on \u201ccyber sovereignty\u201d as a priority for sustaining Communist Party rule over the nation of 1.3 billion people.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the past year, the renewed emphasis on information controlled to acts of unconcealed aggression against internet freedom,\u201d said the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cInternet users endured crackdowns on \u201crumors,\u201d greater enforcement of rules against anonymity, and disruptions to the circumvention tools that are commonly used to bypass censorship,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThough not entirely new, these measures were implemented with unprecedented intensity,\u201d the report added.<\/p>\n
Freedom House said the Xi administration\u2019s quest for control meant tough policies for foreign Internet companies, including Google, as well as \u201cundermining of digital security protocols, and its ongoing erosion of user rights, including through extralegal detentions and the imposition of prison sentences for online speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
“50 cent” commenters<\/p>\n
The report highlighted China\u2019s monitoring, censorship and manipulation of content \u2013 tasks it said were carried out by thousands of people employed by party propaganda department, government agencies, and private companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cA range of issues are systematically censored, including independent evaluations of China\u2019s human rights record, critiques of government policy, and the authorities\u2019 treatment of ethnic minorities,\u201d said Freedom House.<\/p>\n
The report noted that in addition to at least tens of thousands of so-called \u201c50 cent\u201d commenters \u2013 those paid to post pro-government comments or derail critical discussions of China on-line \u2013 deployed in China, Chinese authorities also use paid commenters abroad, including on social media platforms that are banned in China, like Twitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cApproximately 2,500 \u201850 Cent\u2019 users on Twitter follow and retweet one another in order to create confusion and mislead the public,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The only countries where the internet was deemed less free than China were Syria and Iran, while the Middle East saw the sharpest deterioration in the year covered in the survey.<\/p>\n
Vietnam \u2013 which like China is a one-party state led by Communists \u2013 scored a 76 and \u201cwith 29 netizens imprisoned \u2026 continues to be one of the worst jailers of bloggers in the world,\u201d said the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith fewer resources devoted to online content control than in China, the Vietnamese authorities have nevertheless established an effective content filtering system,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlocking in Vietnam primarily targets topics with the potential to threaten the Vietnam Communist Party\u2019s (VCP) political power, including political dissent, human rights and democracy, as well as websites criticizing the government\u2019s reaction to border and sea disputes between China and Vietnam,\u201d said the report.<\/p>\n
Old habits in Myanmar<\/p>\n
Also rated \u201cnot free\u201d by Freedom House was the internet of slowly democratizing Myanmar, which scored 63 on the scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cInternet freedom in Myanmar declined during the coverage period of this report in comparison with the progress made since the country undertook liberalization in 2011,\u201d said the report.<\/p>\n
In the country formerly called Burma that has emerged from nearly 50 years of hard-line army rule, \u201cgovernment and security forces stepped up intimidation of internet users during social protests, intensifying conflict in ethnic minority regions, and during preparation for the 2015 national elections,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Freedom House noted that while former military leader President Thein Sein officially ended media censorship in 2012, and allowed internet freedom to improve in 2013 \u201cthe situation began to deteriorate in late 2014 as the practices of the old regime were revived.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cambodia was rated \u201cpartly free\u201d by Freedom House, which gave it a score of 48 and noted that the Internet remains the freest medium in the Southeast Asian country.<\/p>\n
\u201cA potentially repressive cybercrime law, leaked in draft form in early 2014, remains pending\u201d in Phnom Penh, the report warned.<\/p>\n
\u201cA separate draft telecommunications law that threatens the privacy and anonymity of internet users through increased surveillance was leaked to the public in June 2014,\u201d said Freedom House.<\/p>\n
The 968-page report on 65 countries is published at https:\/\/freedomhouse.org\/report\/freedom-net\/freedom-net-2015 By Paul Eckert 2015-10-28 U.S. non-gover … Continue reading
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