Romania has not been included in Reporters Without Borders' “Internet Enemies” list, or among countries under “Under Surveillance", where the freedom of speech online is considered under threat, in the recent report 'Enemies of the Internet' . Released yesterday to coincide with World Anti-Censorship day ( March 12 ), the 'Enemies of the Internet' report highlights the suppression of information around the world, with the worst offenders listed as “Internet Enemies”.  It places the spotlight on anti-piracy legislation, on the attempt to censor social networks, on practices such as content filtering or removal.

New additions to the Internet Enemies list this year are Bahrain and Belarus. The increasingly repressive regime in Belarus has not overlooked control of the internet and the two countries join Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. These countries are characterized by “drastic content filtering with access restrictions, tracking of cyber-dissidents and online propaganda.” According to the report “Iran and China, in particular, reinforced their technical capacity in 2011.” New to the Under Surveillance list are India and Kazakhstan. The list includes France and Australia, which are seen to be legislating against internet freedom. This year Venezuela and Libya have been taken off the lists.

So called 'free' countries are slammed for the rising tide of heavy handed anti-piracy legislation, such as the recent proposals in the US, and the increasing pressure on technical service providers to police the internet. Users have responded and, “More than ever before, online freedom of expression is now a major foreign and domestic policy issue,” according to Reporters Without Borders. Also detailed are the more oppressive regimes around the world that actively censor, or in some cases stop, all internet access. However, even in the most repressive places on the planet, such as North Korea, Reporters Without Borders has found people, in many cases at great personal risk, making herculean efforts to share information.

Social networks and the internet had been, “conclusively established as tools for protest, campaigning and circulating information, and as vehicles for freedom.” Governments have responded with tough measures and information blackouts. Indeed, there is a palpable sense of online war, authorities finding new ways to limit and censor data and 'hacktavists' striking back.

Social networks are making it more difficult for governments to censor and control the dissemination of information.  Several examples are given, such as civilians in Syria getting footage out to the international news. Content filtering is commonplace and many regimes responded to the Arab Spring of 2011 by immediately quashing online discussion.

China blocked the words 'jasmine' and 'occupy' when followed by the name of a Chinese city, in response to the worldwide occupy movements. Content removal is on the up, and technical service providers have been under pressure to aid attempts to preview and remove content. Another freedom threat, the 'right to be forgotten' could, according to Reporters Without Borders, be nigh on impossible to enforce and may be adequately protected by existing data protection legislation and the law courts.

“The security services no longer interrogate and torture a prisoner for the names of his accomplices. Now they want his Facebook, Skype and Vkontakte passwords,” reads the report.  Surveillance is getting "more effective and more intrusive," and in exactly the same way that Western arms manufacturers supply tyrannies with weapons, Western hi tech companies supply them with the surveillance 'weaponry' to spy on their citizens.

The enormous potential for web based propaganda is already being exploited, China is a world leader for this dubious honor, and pays what have become known as “50 cents bloggers” to post pro-government messages.

“Besides a regular army, every country now has a cyber army, which may or may not be official,” says Reporters Without Borders. Cyber attacks are made both by and against governments. “On the eve of the parliamentary election in Russia, a series of coordinated cyber attacks and arrests of journalists and bloggers took place with the aim of stifling political discussion,” adds the report.

2011 was hailed as the deadliest so far for netizen dissidents, with deaths reported in Bahrain, Mexico, Syria and India. Perhaps the most shocking example came from Mexico, where the headless body of the moderator of a blog criticizing drug cartels was found with a note saying “This happened to me for not understanding that I shouldn’t report things on social networks.” There were further Borgia-esque warning murders in Mexico last year.

Detention and torture of online dissidents is common in the countries that have no scruples over human rights, but, in what Reporters Without Borders paints consistently as a global cyber conflict, protestors have developed their own support structures to protect themselves and counter attack in the war on information.

Western democracies attack freedom of speech with more subtlety, censorship being brought in under the guise of anti-piracy law. In Russia, sites critical of the Kremlin are labeled 'extremist' and shut down with this justification. Generally, the threat of terrorism is a popular excuse for repressive actions and laws, and the online world is no different. Pornography and stopping paedophilia are also popular angles for attacks on online freedom of speech. But netizens responded, campaigning on the streets and online, for example with the 24 hour closure of sites, such as Wikipedia in protest against the US SOPA draft law.  Read the full report here.

Romania  is currently rated 50th out of 178 countries on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. In Romania, “the legacy of the former communist era has not yet completely disappeared from among some circles of the ruling class that persist in viewing the press as a means of transmitting official information,” says Reporters Without Borders.

Liam Lever, liam@romania-insider.com