Report shows censorship of Internet on the rise

WASHINGTON – Internet censorship around the world is becoming more pervasive and sophisticated, with government-directed content filtering documented in at least 25 countries, according to a comprehensive report to be released today.

Political, social and cultural content are the primary targets of censorship, along with applications such as Google Maps and the Internet phone program Skype, according to the OpenNet Initiative, a partnership of more than 50 researchers who conducted tests on Internet access in 41 countries.

The research, conducted in 2006 and early this year, identified six countries with “pervasive” filtering of political content: Burma, China, Iran, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam.

“Online censorship is growing in scale, scope and sophistication around the world, which is not surprising, given the importance of the medium,” said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

The report was conducted by groups at four universities – Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Toronto – and covered thousands of Web sites and 120 Internet service providers.

To the surprise of some researchers, no filtering was found in Russia, Egypt, Algeria, Israel, or the West Bank and Gaza, even for information that might be seen as a threat to security.

The most active countries censoring social content, ranging from satire to religious debate to pornography, were in the Middle East: Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

South Korea’s filtering system heavily censors information about one subject: North Korea.

Researchers chose the 41 countries based on reports of filtering and surveillance.