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As is the various idiotic ones that point out places like Australia and Germany both of which have consistently higher ratings than the US. e.g https://rsf.org/en/ranking you will note both Australia and Germany (for that matter 42 other countries) rank higher than the US.

Yeah, I'm quite skeptical of how open the internet will be or how much they'll crack down on citizens who access information that they don't like.

Reporters Without Borders has Cuba ranked 172 out of 180 for press freedom in 2018.However, the U.S. is a pathetic 45th, so I don't think I can give them too much shit.

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In North Korea, China, Russia, Turkey, Syria, Sweden, Iran, Germany what could go wrong?!

Sweden and Germany rank substantially better at press freedoms than the US:

https://rsf.org/en/ranking_tab...

It's facile to put them in the same grouping as North Korea and so on.

The irony of this story is that a decade ago some Americans argued Russia didn't have speech freedom because of Vladimir Rakhmankov story, a man fined for writing a newspaper article in which he called Putin a "Russia's phallic symbol".

Now I can respond to the allegations of the past. Where is your speech freedom, America?

"But heavily state controlled outlets like RT and Sputnik said...."

An old statement about ICANN says that the ideas people were coming up with for international governance would lead to more censorship. I don't see a newer statement directly on the topic.

You should read what Reporters Without Borders have to say on the matter: http://12mars.rsf.org/2014-en/ .

Wild conspiracy theories aside, the U.S. and the UK are democracies that guarantee freedom of speech and the press. [...]

Reporters Without Borders rank them between Tonga and Burkina Faso. And in Germany you should have registered the incredibly lopsided reporting on the Ukraine conflict. Or, until a couple of months ago, on the trade treaties. Putin is a right bastard, I have no illusions about him being anything but a cold-blooded fascist. But you have to be more than naive to think our Western governments champions of freedom. Our very own minister of the interior has been pushing for a new crypto war in Germany, for vastly extended powers for the intelligence services, warrantless data retention, the state trojan and quite a few other pieces of nastiness. And some of his colleagues are embroiled in the #nohatespeech train wreck which outsources suppression of legal speech to a questionable bunch of radicals with basically no oversight or way of legal appeal. If there is a champion of freedom here in the German state system it is the Federal Constitutional Court that undoes at least the worst damage our government .

The difference between governments is not black and white. It is a sliding scale of shittiness. And they all seem to cluster quite closely.

2016 freedom of the press, the USA is 41 according to https://rsf.org/en/ranking
Democracy Ranking put the USA 16th (The top 5 were all EU countries)

The main reason for this ranking is America's lack of a journalist shield law that gives reporters special privileges and protections. In America, ALL citizens have a right to say and write what they want, not just the elite, so it is silly to penalize America for that.

Hmmm... 2016 freedom of the press, the USA is 41 according to https://rsf.org/en/ranking Democracy Ranking put the USA 16th (The top 5 were all EU countries) Legal system is ranked 19th Corruption the US is 16th. And then we have "The Donald" and his racist xenophobic world view. I am sorry, but I think others could do better.

Worse yet - there are people who honestly believe that the western countries and corporations aren't doing the exact same thing.

Yes, and they'd be more right than wrong. Does the west engage in propaganda? Does the west engage in marketing? Does the west try to suppress news and thinking that isn't to their liking? Yes, to all the above.

And that's not what we're talking about. What Putin is doing is an a whole other scale and akin to brain washing (if you spoke with an "average" Russian, like I have, and learned what they're told and what they actually believe, your head would explode...), where the people aren't allowed to freely discus matters that Putin decides shouldn't be discussed and aren't even allowed the very tools (access to facts, analysis and opinions) to do so. Dissent is met with a bullet to the head. And that's not an anomaly. Check out the world press freedom index. With Finland taking first place, the US still a respectable 41:st, and mother Russia at 148, out of a 180. If that doesn't summarise what we're talking about I don't know what.

So, like the Finn said. You're playing exactly their game; as they're quick to point out "so what, you're not perfect either". No, we're not, but we're so much better that we're not talking about the same thing any more. Only in the black and white world of absolutist Russia and their ilk, does "no one is perfect" translate to "so that means we're all equally bad, and mine is as good as yours". Nope. Not true.

Look, while I have problems with the state of many things in the USA, and I'm sometimes very vocal in my criticism, it is at least a system that can be criticised. As is eminently illustrated by the relative success of politicians like Bernie Sanders. In Russia he would have been forced to shut up, have gone into exile, or dealt with. These are not two systems and states of affairs that should be compared, and demed "equal". They're worlds apart.

At the Correos de Cuba and the hotels, you have access to practically all news websites such as lemonde.fr, bbc.com, El Nuevo Herald (a Miami-based Spanish-language daily) and even to dissident sites. This is also the case for government employees with a computer and Internet access.

“I haven’t opened Granma for years,” says Luis, who works for the culture ministry. “I get my news from Google and the BBC website and I have never had any problem getting to websites operated by government opponents.
In fact, of all the news stories I wanted to read on the Internet, only one has been blocked.

North Korea:
I don't know what really happens in N. Korea. All I know that I hate Kim Jr Il hair style, his chubby face the same as I hate gangnam-style. But, while some N. Korea stories seem to be a propaganda's productions, the horrible stories about S. Korea are real: they covered mass killings, abuse, for "preparation for Olympic 1988", or disable-slaves in salt farms, which:

Although 50 island farm owners and regional job brokers were indicted, national police say no local police or officials will face punishment, despite multiple interviews showing some knew about the slaves and even stopped escape attempts.

Vietnam:
this country just got out of wars in 1991.

Dear Anonymous Coward,

My only political comment in the past here at /. was a report about the reaction in Brazil against Rede Globo. Globo is kowingly a long-time supporter of authoritarianism and corruption. They even attempted to apologize for supporting the dictatorship that ousted President João Goulatr, in 1964. Brazil has a so terrible media landscape that Reporters Without Borders called it “the country of 30 Berlusconis”. The fact that Globo and Brazilian media are attempting to oust President Dilma Rouseff and prevent Lula from running for president in 2018 is blatantly clear. The irony in this story is that while Lula is being accused of hiding property the Marinho family, owners of Globo attempts to conceal the luxury house that they illegally built in a natural preserve in Paraty, state of Rio de Janeiro.

The modern christian church does a lot of good in society.

Lots of good they do: they promote the spread of AIDS by discouraging people from using condoms, prevent people who love each other from marrying because they are homosexual, are just starting not to reject divorced people, try to stiffle free speech by banning caricatures of religious symbols, reject evolution, global warming (for their evangelist branch), try to ban abortion even in cases of rape or when the mother's life is in danger (see Ireland among others) etc.

I haven't seen many 'society of atheists' running soup kitchens, or micro finance banks, or free surgery ships, or child sponsorship programs, or crisis counseling centers, or refugee support programs.

You really did not look far: Medecins Sans Frontière, Reporters sans Frontière, Greenpeace, Les Restaurants du Coeur, Le Refuge (helping young homosexuals rejected by their family), etc.

Uhm, it is a 'democracy' where eligibility is limited by a religious council, ultimate power is held by a not-popular-elected (not even indirectly) individual with potentially dictatorial authority, suspicion of massive voting fraud exists, where independent polling organisations are closed down to hide this, and where the press is severely limited ("one of the world’s most repressive in 2014" ; Last but 7 in 2015).

Please remember: "Voting not a democracy make."

And I am supposed to accept your verdict based on what evidence? Your say-so?

Based on the facts that
- Russia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists

- Russia has one of the lowest press freedom indices in the world

- There is a clampdown taking place in Russia on all independent media
- there are confirmed "Troll Factories" in Russia spreading lies and propaganda on social media across the world

Really, I could provide 500 other sources on all that's wrong with Russian media, but frankly I'm getting tired of fiddling with the A HREF's.

But let me guess, you're Russian (or from a Russian-friendly nation, such as Serbia) and you consume your news mainly from Russian sources?

And I am supposed to accept your verdict based on what evidence? Your say-so?

Based on the facts that
- Russia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists

- Russia has one of the lowest press freedom indices in the world

- There is a clampdown taking place in Russia on all independent media
- there are confirmed "Troll Factories" in Russia spreading lies and propaganda on social media across the world

Really, I could provide 500 other sources on all that's wrong with Russian media, but frankly I'm getting tired of fiddling with the A HREF's.

But let me guess, you're Russian (or from a Russian-friendly nation, such as Serbia) and you consume your news mainly from Russian sources?

The Rada voted Yanukovich out - even including a majority of his own party. Russia claims that "proper parliamentary procedure" was not followed, but they're not the arbiter of that, the Ukrainian constitutional court is. And yeah, clearly the US is so into meddling in Ukraine that they won't even give them anti-tank missiles or counter-fire radar systems with a meaningful range. And it took a year of begging to even start go get anything more significant than blankets and sleeping bags. Yeah, the US is clearly so into helping Ukraine out! And look at all those US missiles in Ukraine, whooee! Meanwhile, Russia has been pouring some of its most advanced military hardware into Donbas, and when that wasn't enough, regular rotations of its army. But hey, Ukraine's got sleeping bags, so that's something, right?

There's long since been new elections in Ukraine. There were indeed two "nazi" candidates running. Combined they got barely more than 1% of the vote. The old "Ukraine is run by Nazis!" yarn is getting old.

Lastly: might want to check where you get your information from.

Reporters Without Borders maintains a nice ranking here of countries based on their histories of[...snip...]

Don't care. The question is not, "which countries can I safely embarrass?" It was not, "after offending governments, to which countries should I avoid traveling?"

The question was, "where should I locate a server to avoid mass surveillance?" It has nothing to do with the Reporters Without Borders list because nobody is worried his server will be arrested any more now that everyone is renting them instead of buying them like we did in the 90s.

The question is absurd. We already know that mass surveillance occurs (1) on the Internet, to packets in transit between server and user, or (2) through malware implanted on the server, the client, or an intermediate router. To avoid (1), you need to stop your packets passing through any country where a mass surveillance agency has influence, yet also one where their lack of influence didn't encourage them to apply more resources. Does such a place even exist? To avoid (2), you need to stop your server from getting hacked, and also stop intermediate routers and clients over which you have no control from getting hacked. It is totally unclear to me how to do this, and you offer no advice.

Choosing a country for the server's location is irrelevant to (1) and (2). While it appears to have some relevance to (1), it doesn't because of the distribution of clients and the concentration of Internet corridors.

(2) is closer to targeted, so we could toss it out of scope since OP said he wasn't worried about targeted surveillance. I don't think that's fair because there were plans to massively ramp up the implanting program, "turbine," millions of hosts, which may be executed by now. but if you just want to un-wedge your thought experiment to feel less impotent by fapping, fine, toss it out.

For (1) running servers close to clients helps, so you could set up lots of servers. Serving Russians from Russia and Chinese from China might help. Maybe there is some way to do this with a CDN, like cloudflare or Google Cloud's L7 load balancing. This stuff is sort of like tor without the inconvenience, if you assume Google and Amazon's WANs are not hacked. It is sorta hard to tell whether you're stepping into the whale's mouth or out of it, though.

Most countries fall into one of four categories here: Five Eyes (shares surveillance data with U.S.), 'The West' (same, probably with implicit economic threats involved), Laizzes-faire governments (trivially bribed in order to share surveillance data with U.S.), and totalitarian (keeps the info to themselves but surveils everything openly).

Reporters Without Borders maintains a nice ranking here of countries based on their histories of surveillance and censorship; however, sometimes it turns out that a country high on the list will be revealed to have been engaged in a mass-surveillance scheme all along or has major corruption problems that weren't factored in.

In practical terms, it has always been advised that anything unencrypted sent over the Internet should be assumed to be snooped upon, and now we merely know how true that assumption always was. Your efforts should be put into ensuring everything is encrypted and hashed using secure algorithms that haven't been broken. Even if your server is physically located in Utopia, whose government never does any surveillance, censorship or takedowns, hackers (government or otherwise) from other countries can compromise your server and take all the data or install backdoors to your encryption efforts, so security is more important than location. Of course, a country that doesn't have a history of raiding datacenters hosting certain materials is still a good idea, but don't forget that your upstream hosting providers are one bribe/threat away from pulling your plug unilaterally, so choose them well too.

you cannot make a remark in public that glorifies or approves of the Nazis

This isn't just about the restrictions about Nazi-related speech; Germany also makes it illegal to insult people and insult religions, among other things.

then don't think of the Nazis. Think of the Klu Klux Klan.

Germany 1920's - no free speech - the Nazis take over the government.

US 1920's - free speech - there is a strong public backlash against the Klan, and by 1930 it had dwindled from millions of members to political insignificance

So, what did you want me to think about?

They are a different country, and frankly, I don't see why you expect that your view of free speech should be enforced everywhere.

It's not "my view", it's the classical liberal view. And I frankly don't care whether Germany enforces it or not. For all I care, Germany can go back to being a Catholic monarchy if it makes the Germans happy. I'm just pointing out that such laws (1) are a politically bad idea and don't work, and (2) are incompatible with the statement that a country has "free speech".

If you truly are American (as I presume you are), then you should be very familiar with them.

My family emigrated from Germany and I've lived and worked there.

I daresay Germany is far more accepting of free speech than the US on a cultural level

I daresay you're wrong.

See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire: It's illegal in the US as well to say hate speech. At absolute best, the waters in that department are murky and it appears as though the government itself is split on the issue. I see an attempt at taking the moral ant hill, so to speak, without any justification that it prevents free speech. If you would like an impartial third party outside of the two of us to look at it, take a look at the Press Freedom Index. Germany ranks #12 and the USA ranks #49. So please, if either country here ranks as an indemocratic one, it'd probably be the one that also ranked as an oligarchy outside of this study, in another one (also independent of either one of us).

Also, I find it quite interesting that you've actually come from Germany. When you say you did, do you mean you and your immediate family did, or do you mean your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's father did? I am a citizen by both from my parents (one American and one German), and I've lived in both before. You clearly think me to not know what I'm talking about, and you can think what you wish, but I do believe that at the very least I have a fairly informed opinion here, however it may vary from yours.

They are obviously not thinking this through. I admit that I have only been to Cuba twice but, well, I suspect that is more than most but it does not make me an expert.

First, there are lots of remote people - comparatively. Second, some of them live in some rather extreme terrain. Look at how long Castro was able to hide from Batista's army... Those mountains and jungles are still there. There are still people there.

Cuba is around 42,400 square miles; technically, that'd fit in 205x205 miles, if it was actually square. Kentucky is sitting at 40,409 square miles. Both places are about half the size of Utah, and about a quarter of the size of California.

Could a Google do it? Yes. And they could afford to. A Facebook could do the same, if they wanted to do so; they've been annoying people in India already, and India is 1.27M square miles, which is just over 1100 miles on an edge, were it square. So it's definitely doable.

However... I don't believe the government there would allow it. They're still a relatively oppressive regime, for all that the U.S. appears to be thawing on the normalization of relations, and oppressive regimes require control of communications to survive; they can't tolerate free and open communications, and retain government authority in its present incarnation.

Reporters Without Borders is already reporting that Cuba, Zimbabwe and Belarus have been buying "Golden Shield" technology from China (what China calls what we call "The Great Firewall of China". Here's the article: http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/rap...

So it's unlikely that, even 9 years later, that they would take the boot off the neck of their own people (see Cuba's Decree-Law 209 for details on that boot; they must also obtain accreditation from ETEC SA by providing a "valid reason").

I know that it won't fit into your binary viewpoint, but they both still scores better than the USA according to Reporters Without Borders: https://index.rsf.org/

Keep getting your news from Russian media.

Except in this case the entire country is already censored, so blocking it won't be censoring anyone except those few who do have Internet access, like the despicable people in charge and the hackers. If it were just about any other country I'd agree with you.NK is second to last for the most censored country according to reporters without borders, second only to Eritrae.

Avoiding extradition to the US has everything to do with Assange hiding in the Ecuador embassy.

Ok before you go any further, consider that both Swedish AND international law have both long established that in order for Sweden to extradite him to the US, the UK government at this point also has to approve of it.

Not once Assange is in Swedish custody.

Also consider this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Do you even read what you cite???

Lindskog then says he doesn’t know what crimes Assange could be charged with in the USA for leaking US secrets and hypothesises unlawful communication of secret material will be the basis of any charge. Sweden does have such an offence on its books, but “it can be debated” leaking American documents is not a crime under Swedish Law.

That doesn't mean Assange is safe from extradition; it means a single, politically connected Swedish judge can hand over Assange to the US. Good luck fighting the interpretation, or appealing after Assange is flying to Gitmo.

And furthermore, if this is all about freedom of the press, then why the fuck is he seeking assylum from a country that has a terrible track record of it?

http://en.rsf.org/ecuador.html

Simple. Assange is no exemplar of free speech. He's a political anarchist with delusions of relevance who wanted to kick the US power establishment in the nads, and then get away with it.

Avoiding extradition to the US has everything to do with Assange hiding in the Ecuador embassy.

Ok before you go any further, consider that both Swedish AND international law have both long established that in order for Sweden to extradite him to the US, the UK government at this point also has to approve of it.

Also consider this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

And furthermore, if this is all about freedom of the press, then why the fuck is he seeking assylum from a country that has a terrible track record of it?

http://en.rsf.org/ecuador.html

As it happens, Russia is crafting whistleblower protections right now:

Hahahaha!
Stop it, you're killing me!
All too funny.

Russia hardly even tries any more to pretend that their media isn't a bunch of scripted reports with paid actors or that they're remotely a free, fair democracy. Heck, in the last election, Chechnya had 99.59% turnout with 99.82% voting for the "Butcher of Grozny". Some precincts were apparently so eager to vote for him that they had 107% turnout. Really impressive on Putin's part! ;) It's amazing that they can still find useful idiots like you to defend them.

And did you hear, rvz.ru/~vladimir/bullshit.html is reporting that Ukraine is now working with ALIENS and THE ILLUMINATI to force Russian mothers in the Donbass to eat their own babies! It's TRUE!

Freedom House on press freedom in Russia. Reporters Without Borders's take.

It's one thing if you're dumb enough to take state propaganda outlets of a country that takes #148th place on the press freedom ranking, where even blogs are forced to register with government censors if they get too many readers and where it's standard practice to hire actors to play parts in the news. But it's even more ridiculous when you do so in regards to an event where said propaganda outlets have put forth literally more than a dozen different, completely contradictory reasons why it's not Russia's fault, including but not limited to "we have proof Ukraine shot it down with a surface-to-air missle", "we have proof Ukraine shot it down with an air-to-air missile", "we have proof that Ukraine gunned it down with a fighter cannon", "we have proof that Ukraine rammed it", "we have proof that Ukraine loaded a plane full of dead bodies, disguised it as a civilian airliner and tricked the rebels into shooting it down", "we have proof that Ukraine deliberately tricked the rebels into shooting down an actual civilian airliner", and my favorite - the original reported in the Russian press, before it became clear that it was a civilian aircraft - "we've confirmed that the heroic rebels of the Donbas just successfully shot down a Ukranian military jet!"

"So how about the overwhelming majority of the citizens choosing independence in a referendum? Is it any more valid than a poll?"

Well both referendums were verifiably rigged, the Crimea one where the real results were accidentally posted publicly coupled with impossible numbers (120%+ turnout in one area relative to the actual amount of people living there) and the local Donetsk one where we have video evidence of people voting multiple times. As we have evidence that neither is trustworthy then no they're not more valid than polls where we have actual data available (as in the original City.am mentioned poll etc.).

"There are many thousands rebels now fighting the Ukrainian army. And winning. I think it's your sense of proportion that is off."

No, there were a bunch of Russian irregulars fighting the Ukrainian army with a bunch of actual genuine Ukrainian-Russians who want independence from Ukraine, and they were losing. Now there is a full batallion of Russian regulars and the Russians are winning. Who'd have thought? a full blown Russian invasion can defeat the Ukrainian military? There's a reason the Russians are having secret ceremonies for their military dead back home, and why tanks only operated by the Russian military are in Ukraine - because the actual full blown Russian military is now in Ukraine.

"Do you claim to know situation any better?"

Yes, absolutely, because the anecdote of a pro-Russian individual does still not somehow override the thoughts and opinions of the majority that are widely publicised. You seem to feel that as someone who lived in the Ukraine you have authority, okay, if that's so, then why does the City.am poll which was also carried out by Ukrainians not have authority over you given that it was a more widespread study in neutral times? Just because you claim to be Ukrainian, why should I listen to you when you show a demonstrable inability for objectivity other other Ukrainians and Russians who tell a more well evidenced story?

"There is no plurality in Ukrainian media. It's all controlled by Kiev. All the opposition channels are blocked. But that's OK, censorship is fine if it's pro-European. Right?"

I don't know what opposition you're referring to? I know that a wide range of Ukrainian voices have their say in Ukraine whether it's the old pro-Yanukovych channels, whether it's those who are pro-Tymoschenko, or whether it's the numerous miner's associations, or whether it's the far-right. You seem to think opposition = Russia Today, Moscow's propaganda outlet, but that's false. What you're actually saying is that Ukraine should fight the propaganda war with one hand tied behind it's back - it should broadcast Russia Today to it's citizens, but in Russia it's okay for Moscow to deny all opposition, whether external (as RT is to Ukraine) or internal. Long story short, the only censorship you hate and the only censorship that matters is censorship of Putin's propaganda. Do I support censorship, even of propaganda? Not really, but to pretend the Ukrainian media is somehow more biased than the Russian is insanely comical. Even journalists agree putting Ukraine at 127 and Russia at 148 and this was tainted by the Yanukovych era censorship so Ukraine will likely be even higher now!:

http://rsf.org/index2014/en-in...

"And except the EU. And China. And the US. Well, on the plus side, Nigeria probably did leave Ukraine the fuck alone."

Ah, so you share Putin's paranoia that the Ukrainian revolution happened because of the West, rather than the actual fact of the matter than for the third fucking time the Ukrainians tried to make it clear to Russia that they do not want to be part of Russia because it's simply a fucking shithole and their neighbours have grown more prosperous since fleeing it's grasp and so they want part of that too. Good one, I mean, obviously most people would choose end up living in a corrupt shithole over a prosperous future wouldn't they? Actually, don't answer that, because you're obviously the type of idiot that would.

Out of interest, you said you lived in Ukraine until June this year, where do you live now? Russia by any chance?

The State of Israel is ignored on this map despite its low 96th spot on the World Freedom Press Index of 2014 which would suggest a high degree of censorship! http://rsf.org/index2014/en-in...

TFA says he was arrested in Guam (a US territory). The "kidnapped in the Maldives" thing seems to be coming from the Russian media, which isn't exactly the most trustworthy source on the planet (but at least it's a lot better than North Korea! ;) )

Russia (148th) might have been lower in the index had it not been for the stubbornness and resistance shown by its civil society. But the authorities keep on intensifying the crackdown begun when Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012 and are exporting their model throughout the former Soviet Union. From Ukraine (127th, unchanged) and Azerbaijan (160th, -3) to Central Asia, Russia’s repressive legislation and communications surveillance methods are happily copied. Moscow also uses UN bodies and regional alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its efforts to undermine international standards on freedom of information.

Criticism of the regime is common since the major demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 but media selfcensorship is far from disappearing. The federal TV stations continue to be controlled and, in response to the “return of politics in Russia,” the authorities have chose repression. Ever since Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in May 2012, more and more draconian laws have been adopted. Activists, news media and bloggers have all been targeted. Defamation has been criminalized again, websites are being blacklisted and the range of activities that can be construed as “high treason” is now much broader. “Traditional values” are used to justify new restrictions on freedom of information, including the criminalization of “homosexual propaganda” and “insulting the feelings of believers.”

Not like the US is a bed of roses - its #46 standing puts it below countries like Botswana and Papua New Guinea, only one place above Haiti. But compared to Russia....

I agree with this distinction, and free speech and democracy are certainly not the same. Democracy in its most basal form is majority rule, e.g. distribution of power via some sort of election system. In a sense this is more than a "form of government", since it entails the rights to elect and to be elected.

However, political scientists generally agree that for democracy to have meaning there is a cluster of other rights that are needed to make sure that people can actually elect someone based on their preferences or interests, and these rights include freedom of speech, of organization/congregation, rule of law, some form of minority protection, etc. Of course, these rights are generally not seen as absolute, and no democratic society that I know allows you to falsely accuse someone in public of being a child molester or yell "fire" in a cinema without fear of persecution.

Moreover, history has shown us that free speech is most under threat in the less democratic countries. The first thing a modern dictator does is grab control over the "old" centralized media, and controlling new media is a logical next step for the more tech-savvy dictators. If you compare the "freedom of the press" and "freedom house" reports, it is hard not to see the correlation (e.g. http://imgs.ntd.tv/content/201... vs http://rsf.org/index2014/data/...)

In other words: yes democracy and freedom of speech are separate concepts, but they are very strongly related.

(also, the importance to democracy of platforms such as twitter is *vastly* overblown, but that is a different discussion :))

(note that geeks often have difficulty understanding non-absolute rights. There is a big difference between free speech in Russia and in Britain, even if Britain curbs free speech with strong libel laws. Interpreting and upholding the non-absolute rights requires strong institutions including independent judiciary, responsive politics, and critical media. No country has a fully independent judiciary, fully responsive politics, or fully critical media, but for the love of god go visit Russia (or Algeria, or Uzbekistan, or China) and tell me how much you appreciate the US/European judiciary, politics, and media. "Our" institutions go out of line sometimes, but there are strong mechanisms for keeping them in check if they wander too far from what is deemed acceptable)

If you even knew how to read, you would see that the Oxford map was made using the conclusions from Reporters Without Borders; it was that organization that labeled the US with an "imprisonment badge." Their reasoning for such a conclusion on the US is in part due to the seven uses of the 1917 Espionage Act by the Obama Administration (compared to only 3 uses ever prior to the Obama Administration).

Here is a prime example:
On 12 September 2012, the journalist Barrett Brown was arrested by the FBI and held in a federal prison. The charges against him could add up to 105 years in prison if he was convicted. The journalist was investigating the contents of over five million internal emails released through a hack on the private intelligence company, Stratfor. Brown was charged with 12 offences after he posted a link to the site that had published the emails.

Note that he didn't post the data, just a link, which is the purpose of HTTP.

Here is the section on the US from the Reporters Without Borders report.

And here is the full Enemies of the Internet 2014 report.

The imprisonment badge isn't just based on imprisonment for political views, but imprisonment and the threat thereof, for being a journalist and/or whistleblower. Of which the US has a number of people jailed or has open charges against. It is about whether people are being jailed over freedom of information. We would have had another with Aaron Swartz had he not tragically committed suicide in the face of unethical persecution by the state.

If you even knew how to read, you would see that the Oxford map was made using the conclusions from Reporters Without Borders; it was that organization that labeled the US with an "imprisonment badge." Their reasoning for such a conclusion on the US is in part due to the seven uses of the 1917 Espionage Act by the Obama Administration (compared to only 3 uses ever prior to the Obama Administration).

Here is a prime example:
On 12 September 2012, the journalist Barrett Brown was arrested by the FBI and held in a federal prison. The charges against him could add up to 105 years in prison if he was convicted. The journalist was investigating the contents of over five million internal emails released through a hack on the private intelligence company, Stratfor. Brown was charged with 12 offences after he posted a link to the site that had published the emails.

Note that he didn't post the data, just a link, which is the purpose of HTTP.

Here is the section on the US from the Reporters Without Borders report.

And here is the full Enemies of the Internet 2014 report.

The imprisonment badge isn't just based on imprisonment for political views, but imprisonment and the threat thereof, for being a journalist and/or whistleblower. Of which the US has a number of people jailed or has open charges against. It is about whether people are being jailed over freedom of information. We would have had another with Aaron Swartz had he not tragically committed suicide in the face of unethical persecution by the state.

Get off the soapbox. We have no moral superiority, and we don't even rank that high in freedom of the press. We're below the UK FFS.

http://en.rsf.org/press-freedo...

The other party tries to the be adults in the room

Both of America's major parties would say this about themselves — and the other guys.

But also willing to match crazy statement with crazy statement.

But if you happen to represent the party in power currently, then it must be the "crazy" stage right now — and for the last 6 years at least. America has rapidly slipped in both — economic freedom and in press freedom during the period. The Party — and the President — calling themselves "Liberal" presided over the liberties slipping away. Crazy indeed.

I'm not as convinced as many people are that the sky is falling, so I suspect the economy will eventually improve.

The thing that all the knee jerk poster here seemed to miss is that this is the first year on a totally different survey methodology.

Reporters Sans Borders (RSF) totally tossed out their prior methodology and went with a new questionnaire: http://rsf.org/index/qEN.html
Since this isn't the only source of input, you have to read also their methodology
which includes things never before even considered. It turns out that most of the qualitative measurements are done by RSF people themselves, rather than from input from these people in the field.

Quantitative questions about the number of violations of different kinds are
handled by our staff. They include the number of journalists, media assistants and netizens who
were jailed or killed in the connection with their activities,

So "netizens" are who exactly?
And why does that matter? Well, since they don't define it, we have to assume that anyone releasing information
over the internet counts as a netizen. So one Bradley Manning (35 year sentence) can account for 90% of the "Violence against reporters/netizens) score.
North Korea, not having any Netizens, presumably gets a perfect score in this regard. I suggest the whole thing is hopelessly biased.

As with any newly invented scale, you have to give it a few years for the truth (and the bias) to come out.

I'm not as convinced as many people are that the sky is falling, so I suspect the economy will eventually improve.

The thing that all the knee jerk poster here seemed to miss is that this is the first year on a totally different survey methodology.

Reporters Sans Borders (RSF) totally tossed out their prior methodology and went with a new questionnaire: http://rsf.org/index/qEN.html
Since this isn't the only source of input, you have to read also their methodology
which includes things never before even considered. It turns out that most of the qualitative measurements are done by RSF people themselves, rather than from input from these people in the field.

Quantitative questions about the number of violations of different kinds are
handled by our staff. They include the number of journalists, media assistants and netizens who
were jailed or killed in the connection with their activities,

So "netizens" are who exactly?
And why does that matter? Well, since they don't define it, we have to assume that anyone releasing information
over the internet counts as a netizen. So one Bradley Manning (35 year sentence) can account for 90% of the "Violence against reporters/netizens) score.
North Korea, not having any Netizens, presumably gets a perfect score in this regard. I suggest the whole thing is hopelessly biased.

As with any newly invented scale, you have to give it a few years for the truth (and the bias) to come out.

wget https://rsf.org/index2014/data...
cat index2.csv|awk -F ";" '{print $3" "$2}'|sort -n

Venezuela is just about the safest place for dissidents in Latin America, not the worst. For a start, consider "reporters without borders", they're a US-funded "freedom" lobby group. Very anti-communist.

Read their headlines about Colombia:
https://en.rsf.org/colombia.ht...

Now read their headlines for Venezuela:
https://en.rsf.org/venezuela.h...

The Colombian journalists problems are all murder, threats, intimidation by pro-government fascist death-squads.

The Venezuelan journalists problems are more along the lines of politics and bureaucratic red tape. And those are the WORST abuses that Reporters without Borders can highlight about Venezuela.

I don't know much about the threats on Colombia's journalism but I can tell you a few things about Venezuela. Trust me or call me a liar at your discretion:

* There are laws regarding "truthful and opportune information" and making "disquieting" and "destabilizing" speech a felony. Of course, no definitions for these fuzzy adjectives.
* Detention and/or beatings by military and govt-friendly gangs; it is not unusual for both to confiscate the memory cards and tapes. There's some mention of this in the RSF link you posted.
* One columnist was fined heavily for writing one of his pieces as a letter to Chavez's young daughter. Mind you, he didn't attack her in any way - he sympathized with the burden of being Chavez's daughter.
* The main opposition TV station, Globovisión, was accosted with fines (a recent amount was 10% of their gross revenue) for everything from donating airtime to broadcasting "disquieting" spots by NGOs. Eventually the station claimed being financially inviable and was sold to friendlier investors with a new editorial line, which has caused most reporters, interviewers and anchors to resign over the last year.
* In the months after the telecom regulator discretionarily revoked the broadcast license to another station, the gov't summoned the owners of two other stations with a milder but also critical stance. One became neutral-favorable, and the other came just short of a lap-dog.
* I hope you're aware about the tight controls on currency exchange. Well, every newspaper is facing a heavy shortage of currency for importing newsprint except state-sponsored and friendly ones. Maduro himself has yelled in public "not a single dollar more for the bourgeoisie!".

Now, ask yourself since Colombia is so much WORSE than Venezuela in protecting journalists, why do you never hear a peep in the media about how bad it is? Perhaps because there is no oil there?

*Ahem*

Oil - production: 588,000 bbl/d (93,500 m3/d) (2008 est.)
Oil - consumption: 267,000 bbl/d (42,400 m3/d) (2007 est.)
Oil - exports: 294,000 bbl/d (46,700 m3/d) (2008 est.)
Oil - imports: 12,480 bbl/d (1,984 m3/d) (2005)
Oil - proved reserves: 1,323,000,000 bbl (210,300,000 m3) (1 January 2008 est.)

Economy of Colombia

And oil shipments from Venezuela have been always on time, in spite of all the rhetoric.

Venezuela is just about the safest place for dissidents in Latin America, not the worst. For a start, consider "reporters without borders", they're a US-funded "freedom" lobby group. Very anti-communist.

Read their headlines about Colombia:
https://en.rsf.org/colombia.ht...

Now read their headlines for Venezuela:
https://en.rsf.org/venezuela.h...

The Colombian journalists problems are all murder, threats, intimidation by pro-government fascist death-squads.

The Venezuelan journalists problems are more along the lines of politics and bureaucratic red tape. And those are the WORST abuses that Reporters without Borders can highlight about Venezuela.

I don't know much about the threats on Colombia's journalism but I can tell you a few things about Venezuela. Trust me or call me a liar at your discretion:

* There are laws regarding "truthful and opportune information" and making "disquieting" and "destabilizing" speech a felony. Of course, no definitions for these fuzzy adjectives.
* Detention and/or beatings by military and govt-friendly gangs; it is not unusual for both to confiscate the memory cards and tapes. There's some mention of this in the RSF link you posted.
* One columnist was fined heavily for writing one of his pieces as a letter to Chavez's young daughter. Mind you, he didn't attack her in any way - he sympathized with the burden of being Chavez's daughter.
* The main opposition TV station, Globovisión, was accosted with fines (a recent amount was 10% of their gross revenue) for everything from donating airtime to broadcasting "disquieting" spots by NGOs. Eventually the station claimed being financially inviable and was sold to friendlier investors with a new editorial line, which has caused most reporters, interviewers and anchors to resign over the last year.
* In the months after the telecom regulator discretionarily revoked the broadcast license to another station, the gov't summoned the owners of two other stations with a milder but also critical stance. One became neutral-favorable, and the other came just short of a lap-dog.
* I hope you're aware about the tight controls on currency exchange. Well, every newspaper is facing a heavy shortage of currency for importing newsprint except state-sponsored and friendly ones. Maduro himself has yelled in public "not a single dollar more for the bourgeoisie!".

Now, ask yourself since Colombia is so much WORSE than Venezuela in protecting journalists, why do you never hear a peep in the media about how bad it is? Perhaps because there is no oil there?

*Ahem*

Oil - production: 588,000 bbl/d (93,500 m3/d) (2008 est.)
Oil - consumption: 267,000 bbl/d (42,400 m3/d) (2007 est.)
Oil - exports: 294,000 bbl/d (46,700 m3/d) (2008 est.)
Oil - imports: 12,480 bbl/d (1,984 m3/d) (2005)
Oil - proved reserves: 1,323,000,000 bbl (210,300,000 m3) (1 January 2008 est.)

Economy of Colombia

And oil shipments from Venezuela have been always on time, in spite of all the rhetoric.

Except that isn't true. Various jurisdictions in Europe have problematical laws and positions regarding free speech on the internet that you haven't touched on.

World press freedom index 2014 (17 European countries in the top 20, USA is at 46th)

Some examples include abusive libel laws, especially in GB, and lese-majesty laws still in force in Norway, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands.

I'm and in the Netherlands and IANAL, but you can say just about everything here about the Royal family. For example, in this clip you see a Dutch comedian make jokes about how he fucked the Queen in her ass and ordered her to get some beer afterwards. This show has been shown in theaters around the country and was broad casted on national tax-paid tv.

US is not perfect and it's not getting better: Biggest rises and falls in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index.

On press freedom there are 31 countries more free: http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html

But,...journalists are the new terrorists -right! Also they also put their family to risk by publishing material that the government doesn't approve. And think about their potential children, which they endanger by not obeying the rules. If all the journalists could be regularly waterboarded, maybe they would then reveal the evil secrets they know? Journalists are also often following funerals and weddings, maybe those unmanned drones could double tap some of those know gatherings of terrorist-journalists?

Reporters without borders sure sounds like a global network of these terrorist-journalists - "douple tap" that too!

You seem to be confusing things that sometimes happen in the US with things that always happen in the US.

1. I've seen a dui roadblock once in the US (another one in Canada). The officer asked a couple questions ("had I been drinking?" "no") then let me on my way. It's not like the Iraqi style checkpoints where the whole vehicle gets searched over.
2. That's a generalization. Some airports just have metal detectors. If you're flying on a private plane you won't see any of that. Pretty much the same in other countries.
3. That may be true for some police officers (the ones you see on youtube), but you're not going to read about the millions of friendly interactions that happen. I bet you could find similar bad apple officers in other countries.
4. There are very few cases of this. The Swartz case was terrible, there are others like it that shouldn't have happened either, but lots of countries prosecute computer crimes.

We do have problems with our drug laws and sentencing, but that doesn't make us a Police state like Syria.

As for an American freedom most countries don't have - out first amendment rights are a great example. Now I know you're going to say "OMG but Bush's freedom of speech zones and that time a police officer silenced someone!" but the reality is we have much more protection to say what we want than other countries in the world. Just look at the KKK and Nazi parades that are allowed.

You seem to think that there are all these perfect countries outside of the US, but failed to list a single one of them (aside from the ones with friendly police - Cuba, Laos, Columbia, and Malaysia). Is that because they're all imaginary or because you wouldn't want people to find similar counter examples for those countries?

The US is still one of the most free countries in the world by a pretty long shot; the drop-off is pretty steep once you get too far east of western Europe.

Your statement is a bit of a dodge and I guess you mean a fairly large group of countries when you say "one of" however it's still pretty misleading. It all depends what and how you try to measure, but the USA is no longer nearly at the top of most lists and it really isn't that free in practice. Look at the world press index and you will see the USA comes in 32nd this year, up from 47th (mostly because other countries did more bad things recently). Look even at the "Index of Freedom In the World" which seems pretty biased towards the kind of economic freedom the US is so famed for and you will see that the US isn't in the top five. Try sorting by "personal freedom" separately from "economic freedom" and you will see that it isn't even in the top 20.

The situation is not terrible and the fact that Americans still believe they are free and believe in freedom is actually a cause for hope, however if people don't start acting now to keep that freedom there is going to be a big problem. Most of all the fact that people just don't seem worried by giving up their freedom to big companies and their data to the government is really dangerous.

I get that the US is up there, France & Germany have a surprising amount of requests, but I'm pretty sure at least France is a firewall country. But Turkey... what? They have 11k legit internet users?

They are right up there w the states at 11k, there is no reference to Turkey anywhere in my knowledge of IT and how it applies to the world, so why would they have so many requests.

I found that curious as well. It may be related to the fact that Turkey has a lot of "laws that limit speech deemed insulting to Turkishness, and expressions of political extremism". They are fairly heavy into Internet censorship as well and even blocked all of YouTube for a long time. There are a lot of topics that aren't allowed to report about and they have ongoing legal proceedings against lots of online journalists.