Usually when you think about countries constricting internet freedom and freedom of speech, you go to China or Iran. However, Freedom House’s annual report on Freedom on the Net raises cause for concern in other places as well:
Brazil has an electoral law that would be unthinkable for a typical American election season: It bans any campaign ads or videos that “offend the dignity or decorum” of a candidate—including satire. When one Brazilian published a YouTube video calling a local mayoral candidate an “idiot,” in September of last year Brazilian courts ordered the arrests of Google’s top two executives in the country for not removing the clip from YouTube.
Following the PRISM affair with NSA tapping in on all kinds of data, the US has also dropped in the rankings.
Related articles
- Censorship and surveillance: Cameron’s internet (wired.co.uk)
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