State-led internet censorship is on the rise, according to a recent study by the Open Net Initiative (ONI).The research revealed that content filtering had taken place in 25 out of 41 countries, with Google Maps and Skype among the sites and services users were prevented access to.
Thousands of sites on hundreds of Internet Service Providers were reviewed in the study. John Palfrey at Harvard Law School told BBC News:
"In five years we have gone from a couple of states doing state-mandated net filtering to 25.
"What's regrettable about net filtering is that almost always this is happening in the shadows. There's no place you can get an answer as a citizen from your state about how they are filtering and what is being filtered."
Researchers from Harvard Law School, Toronto universities and Oxford and Cambridge make up the ONI team.
The survey was conducted on 41 countries, with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Burma and Pakistan among the nations carrying out the broadest filtering.
Subtler filtering techniques are predicted to be implemented in the future, such as political sites being made unavailable during election campaigns.
The report said: "In a growing number of states around the world, internet filtering has huge implications for how connected citizens will be to the events unfolding around them, to their own cultures, and to other cultures and shared knowledge around the world."
