Report: Pandemic Accelerates Global Crackdown on Internet Freedom

LOS ANGELES—Nearly 40 million people worldwide have contracted coronavirus infections, and more than 1 million have died, according to the latest data posted by Worldometers. But there has been another type of victim in the global pandemic that has dominated 2020 — internet freedom. In the new, 2020 edition of its annual Freedom On The Net report, the human rights watchdog group Freedom House finds that countries around the globe have taken advantage of the deadly pandemic to crack down on digital rights and privacy, and step up surveillance of their own citizens. The annual study examined digital rights in 65 countries, covering 87 percent of the world’s internet users. While dozens of governments have curtailed digital rights during the pandemic, none has been a worse offender than China, which topped the Freedom House list of online rights offenders for the sixth year in a row. In the name of enforcing quarantines, Chinese citizens in regions across China have been required to install internet-connected webcams in their homes, according to the report. Surveillance software, initially used for contact tracing of infected persons, has now been installed on cell phones throughout China, and is capable of extracting data from phones and channeling it straight to the government. Russia has also abused contact tracing software, using it to monitor cell phone users call logs, and requiring users to upload selfies to help keep track of their whereabouts. Russians who refuse to provide pictures of themselves have been subject to heavy fines. The government of Pakistan repurposed surveillance software used to track terrorists, and put it to use contact tracing. But the information gathered by the app still goes into intelligence agency databases.  Overall, Freedom House found that online freedoms have been restricted in 26 of the 65 countries in the report, while only 22 saw expansion of freedoms during the pandemic. The study also estimates that only one in every five internet users in the world lives in a country with an internet that Freedom House evaluates as “free.” "The pandemic is accelerating society's reliance on digital technologies at a time when the Internet is becoming less and less free," Freedom House President Michael Abramowitz wrote. "Without adequate safeguards for privacy and the rule of law, these technologies can be easily repurposed for political repression." In addition to China and Russia, internet in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and Iran is classified as “not free" by the report. Freedom House also details censorship of reporting on the coronavirus pandemic, finding that 28 governments have engaged in online censorship to control information about the virus, in some cases forcing journalists to delete information about the pandemic, while online critics of government pandemic policies in 45 countries have been arrested. At least 20 countries, including Thailand and the Philippines, have also used the online spread of false and misleading information about the pandemic as a pretext to impose new, sweeping restrictions on speech online, according to the report. Photo By Gerd Altmann / Pixabay