Freedom House, a Washington-based international human rights organization, recently released its 2020 Internet Freedom Report, saying the new crown Epidemic has accelerated the decline in global Internet freedom. The report says China ranks at the bottom of the 65 countries surveyed.
The Freedom House report noted that no place has stricter and more systematic censorship than China, and no country has more comprehensive and strict controls to deal with the new crown virus than China.
Outbreak Affects Internet Freedom
Freedom House reports that during the New Coronavirus pandemic, the Internet is no longer a convenience but a necessity, and human commerce, Education, health care, politics and social activities appear to have moved online, but the digital world poses new challenges to human rights and democracy, and many countries are using the opportunities created by the epidemic to reshape online narratives, censor critical speech, and create new technological systems to achieve social control.
The report notes three notable trends this year: First, political leaders are using the epidemic as an excuse to restrict access to information. Some governments routinely blocked independent news sites and arrested people on charges of fake news. In many places, it is the regime and its supporters who are spreading false and misleading information with the aim of obscuring what is really going on.
The second trend is that there are governments that have expanded surveillance and deployed new technologies on the grounds of new crown epidemics. Public health crises create opportunities to collect and analyze people’s most private data, but these private data of people are not adequately protected.
“Governments and private entities are increasing their use of artificial intelligence, biometric surveillance and big data tools to make decisions that affect individuals’ economic, social and political rights. Importantly, the processes involved often lack transparency, independent oversight and access to remedy.” The report says.
A third trend is the emergence of an all-out race for cyber sovereignty, with each government enforcing its own Internet regulations in ways that restrict the flow of information across borders.
Beijingers need to scan QR codes in order to show a green Health Code to enter Sanlitun
“The health crisis is setting the stage for the surveillance state of the future,” said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, “and we need to act together to prevent a world where governments can use big data tools and biometric surveillance to suppress democratic movements and peaceful protests.”
China at the bottom of the list
This report by Freedom House assesses Internet freedom in 65 countries around the world, representing 87 percent of global Internet users. The top-ranked country surveyed was Iceland, while the United States ranked seventh.
For the sixth consecutive year, China ranked at the bottom of the report, behind Russia, Cuba, Iran and Syria.
The Freedom House report notes that nowhere is censorship more stringent and systematic than in China.
In mainland China, many places, from the neighborhoods where people live to the company buildings where they work, require people to show a green code representing their health before they are allowed to enter or leave.
In mainland China, from the neighborhoods where they live to the company buildings where they work, many places require people to show a green code representing their health before they are allowed to enter or leave.
The report says the Chinese Communist authorities are eager to control the global narrative regarding the initial reluctance and inability to control the Wuhan outbreak. Censors censored millions of pieces of content containing more than 2,000 outbreak keywords on platforms such as WeChat and YY Live, and Communist authorities issued strict orders to the news media on how to report: no unofficial news, no “independent reporting,” and no “over-the-top” coverage of a range of topics. The report also noted that no country should be held accountable for the death of the “whistleblower” doctor Li Wenliang in Wuhan, whose death sparked national calls for freedom of expression.
The report also noted that no country has more comprehensive and stringent controls on the new coronavirus than China.
The report said that after the outbreak, Communist authorities worked with Chinese technology companies Alibaba and Tencent to launch health codes, which surveys have shown to be a threat to people’s privacy, and forced state-owned telecommunications and private technology companies to share data with public security authorities.
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