Freedom House, which claims to be an independent watchdog organization that monitors and supports the expansion of free speech around the world, has released its latest 2011 Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media Freedom (PDF) and heavily criticised the growing threat from Internet Censorship in the United Kingdom (UK).

However, of the 37 countries examined, the UK actually doesn't fair too poorly and is still considered to be a 'green' ("free") country that "has high levels of internet penetration, and online free expression is generally respected." Estonia, USA, Germany, Australia, Italy, South Africa and Brazil were also considered to be "free".


Sadly it's not all good news. The report points out that the UK's situation has actually gotten worse since 2009 when it's Freedom on the Net score stood at 23 (lower is better), which has now risen to 25 in 2011. Part of this is down to last year's passing of the highly controversial Digital Economy Act (DEA), although the Internet Watch Foundation ( IWF ) is also criticised.




Overall the governments of 15 countries were found to engage in substantial blocking of politically relevant content; Bahrain, Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and Vietnam.

Many make it national policy to restrict users’ access to often thousands of websites, including those of independent and opposition news outlets, international and local human rights groups, individual blogs, online videos and social-networking groups. Of course all of this is easily circumvented by using tools such as TOR.

Meanwhile users in the United Kingdom continue to enjoy wide access to free or low-cost blogging services, allowing them to express their views on the internet. So far the government hasn't directly clamped down on free speech but the price of freedom is always eternal vigilance.

UPDATE 28th April 2011

The following is an update from the IWF.