Democracies US, UK and India Listed Among Enemies of Internet Freedom

Internet censorship and monitoring are prevalent in authoritarian countries such as North Korea, China and Russia, and these countries are still regarded as the biggest enemies of internet freedom.

Now, a few democratic countries have been added to the list of nations that monitor citizen's activities online and pose a threat to internet freedom. Advocates of internet freedom are worried as democratic nations are heading towards a more authoritarian internet.

Documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the massive schemes employed by the US and Britain to spy on their citizen's online activities.

The NSA is reportedly weakening online privacy by inserting vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems.

It is allegedly monitoring citizens under the PRISM surveillance programme that spies on electronic exchanges among users of Google, Facebook and Skype among others. It is also capable of accessing data from smartphones.

The NSA's UK counterpart Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) is reportedly more harmful to internet freedom. With the help of telecom service providers, it is said to have placed data interceptors on fibre-optic cables that carry internet data in and out of the UK. It has special programmes to break encryption used by internet companies and virtual private networks.

India, the world's largest democracy, is also notorious for its moves to spy on people's internet activities. It created a special act to punish anyone who refuses to decrypt private information upon official request, and has a central monitoring system to automatically monitor all online communication and hardware devices to track internet calls and messages.

Given below is an infographic produced by NeoMam studios, detailing nations and their agencies that try to curtail internet freedom. The nations are assessed on a 0-100 band, with 100 being least free and 0 most free.