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The Internet Your Rights Online

Internet Freedom Has Taken a Hit During the Covid-19 Pandemic (wired.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Almost 40 million people around the world have contracted Covid-19 and more than a million have died from the virus. The devastation has rippled even further, thanks to a global recession and rising political unrest. And as all of this unfolds, new research indicates that the governments around the world have exploited the pandemic to expand their domestic surveillance capabilities and curtail internet freedom and speech. From a report: The human and digital rights watchdog Freedom House today published its annual "Freedom on the Net" report, which tracks the ebb and flow of censorship laws, net neutrality protections, internet shutdowns, and more around the world. This year's report, which covers the period from June 2019 through May 2020, encompasses not only the Covid-19 pandemic but the trade war between the US and China, which has resulted in a dramatic acceleration of the cyber sovereignty movement. Combined with numerous other geopolitical clashes that have impacted digital rights, Freedom House found that global internet freedom has been broadly curtailed in 2020. "Political leaders used the pandemic as a pretext to crack down on free expression and limit access to information," Freedom House director for democracy and technology Adrian Shahbaz told reporters ahead of the report's release. "We traced three commonly used tactics. First in at least 45 countries, activists, journalists, and other members of the public were arrested or charged with criminal offenses for online speech related to the pandemic. Second in at least 20 countries governments cited the pandemic emergency to impose vague or overly broad speech restrictions. Third, governments in at least 28 countries censored websites and social media posts to censor unfavorable health statistics, corruption allegations, and other Covid-19-related content."
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Internet Freedom Has Taken a Hit During the Covid-19 Pandemic More

Internet Freedom Has Taken a Hit During the Covid-19 Pandemic

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  • This is the kind of rights-over-responsibility that is so easily misplaced.

    Yes, governments have boosted surveillance these days. Yes, rights and freedoms have been diminished these days.

    That's not a surprise. In fact, it's a good thing -- these days. I don't leave my house. It's voluntary. It's the responsible choice.

    The question isn't whether or not those freedoms and rights have been disturbed. No question they have. The fight must not be to stop it from happening.

    The fight needs to be "when".

    When

    • "Our rights were taken, and the crowd cheered and encouraged it."

    • This is the kind of rights-over-responsibility that is so easily misplaced.

      This is the kind of "but it's for our own good" that is so easily misplaced.

      The bill of rights doesn't say "but only if we don't get sick" anywhere in it.

      Freedom isn't free. This is the cost-- You don't get to tell me to spend 8 months unemployed, trapped in my apartment, with nothing to do and no legal recourse, regardless of whether or not this benefits your or someone else's health. Oh, wait... I guess you do get to tell m

      • This is the kind of "but it's for our own good" that is so easily misplaced.

        Then we can presume you drive at 100 mph everywhere you go because of your liberty, right? You don't stop at stop signs or red lights. You cut across traffic whenever you feel like it. When you change your oil, you pour it down the gutter because of liberty.

        You are the spitting example of the meme which says if this was London during the Blitz, you'd be whining you shouldn't have to put up blackout curtains because it go

        • Then we can presume you drive at 100 mph everywhere you go because of your liberty, right?

          Allow me to turn your attempted civics lesson on it's head: If no one has the "right" to drive ("it's a privilege!"), no one has the right to be safe while driving.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SirSlud ( 67381 )

        There is no nuance

        If the question of where my freedom ends and yours begins isn't nuance to you, I have to conclude you've settled on a simple mental model of the subject because you're either too intellectually or emotionally stunted to deal with anything more complicated. And the adults are going to run your world for you if you insist on such a fundamentally flawed view of freedom.

      • If you'd like me to point to the laws that say exactly "but only if we don't get sick", I can.

        In my country, we have a whole set of laws called "emergency measures". They do exactly that. We have one for medical emergencies, another for unrest, and another for economic emergencies.

        I presume you're in the USA. Ever heard of martial law? Isn't that exactly the perfect of example of "except when..."?

        The entire concept of law enforcement of any kind, is to inhibit freedoms. You might be forgetting that law

        • My culture has this concept baked into our laws "you have the right to do anything you want, until it infringes on someone else's right to do whatever they want.

          that concept is called "liberty". My country used to have that.

          The problem with your thinking is that you think laws can tell me put put a piece of cloth over my face to protect your right to not die. I have the right to wear or not wear whatever I want on my face, but you don't have the right to not die. In fact, death is mandatory, and you

          • I'm quite certain that you've managed to rephrase my rights to make your point, but that's not valid.

            My right, in your example, isn't to "not die". Just like speeding in your car, my right has something to do with an acceptable level of risk, or death threats, or feeling safe in public areas.

            That you don't "want to give up any freedoms" is the very reason that we have laws, and law enforcement with the power to stop you. To stop you from speeding, from drinking, from harming your children, from killing yo

            • Liberty is being free to do whatever you want, so long as you don't harm anyone else. We seem to be having a disagreement about what is harmful to you. If you think that me walking down the street, sans mask, increases your risk, that is an uninformed medical opinion you are having. Maybe someone should write some laws to cover this, but instead we have mayors and governors exceeding their authority, and screeching children demanding 100% safety.

              You are free to live in a plastic bubble, if you think th

              • "uninformed medical opinion"?

                Every day, at 1pm, my country's top medical doctors are on television, giving advice to the public, and to the governments. My household chooses to follow that medical advice when it's given by the doctors -- even though the government tends to need another week to make it law.

                That counts as informed medical recommendations, thanks.

                If you want to ignore medical professionals, then yes, my "more resources" were sanitized.

                As for putting you in a plastic bubble, I don't need to do

                • Yes, uninformed medical opinion. There is a wide variety of medical advice and opinion about Covid19. (For example, much of the silly shit we are doing is not supported by WHO or CDC guidelines, and those aren't even the only opinions). If you want to feel like you have the moral high ground because you're listening to the people on TV, you are never EVER again allowed to call Americans stupid.

                  Perhaps you don't understand what a metaphor is. I'm not saying you LITERALLY want to put me in a bubble, bu

                  • The CDC and the WHO are giant jokes. Those are political groups. Your politicians are not mine. I don't listen to TV. I listen to the medical staff in all of the hospitals around here. They don't disagree, not even a little bit. Not the minister of health, not my GP, not my head-of-surgery friend-of-twenty-years, not my head-nurse friend-of-three-years, and not the local heads of health and medicine.

                    The different opinions come from priorities about health vs other health, or health vs economy. When p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GlennC ( 96879 )

        So what you're saying is "Fuck everyone else, I want what I want."

        Is that what you're saying?

        • So, what you're saying is "my 0.04% chance of dying is more important than your freedom."

          Is that what you're saying? No freedom for me when you're unreasonably afraid of something? Christ, why should I be surprised after the PATRIOT act...?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            Do you feel the same way about being forced to wear pants?

            • Unironically, yes.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dryeo ( 100693 )

                Well, you're consistent, it does raise the question of how many times you've walked around without pants, including undergarments, Something I did do when I was young and rebellious.
                Now, I'm quite happy my government hasn't mandated masks but I do wear one in stores and such, even those stores that don't mandate them (lately most do here), out of respect for others.

  • Taking away someone's right... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fatwilbur ( 1098563 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @11:49AM (#60606630)
    ..requires very, very exceptional circumstances. I think the vast majority would agree with there being certain situations where a restriction on basic human rights is justified. Wartime would be a good example, although it's likely only our parents/grandparents have ever lived through an actual such situation.

    Far scarier than the coronavirus itself this year, is how willing and without question so many people have been willing to throw away their hard-earned rights and freedoms, and even worse, advocate for giving up more and harsh punishment for those who don't fall in line. There may have been some validity to this argument eight months ago when there was still some uncertainty in the data (and the morons were still talking about 'exponential growth'), however now the data and conclusions [ourworldindata.org] are beyond debate: worldwide (so controlling for every type of government policy and approach) cases are growing exponentially, while the number of deaths is growing linearly. This clearly indicates there are specific highly-vulnerable populations, however we have been protecting them from infection for many months while the virus circulates among those not at risk.

    Long story short, this is nowhere near severe enough to argue that freedoms need to be restricted: we need to see those as sacred and very strong, fact-based arguments are needed to abrogate them in any way. I expect to still see some arguing restrictions are necessary "just in case", which is ludicrous.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      ..requires very, very exceptional circumstances. I think the vast majority would agree with there being certain situations where a restriction on basic human rights is justified. Wartime would be a good example, although it's likely only our parents/grandparents have ever lived through an actual such situation.

      Very exceptional circumstances? Are you joking? No, taking away the rights of one person to protect another person actually happens continuously. Your rights end where exercising them would deprive me of my rights. Government exists to balance your rights against my rights. Your right not to swing your fist ends when it hits my face. Similarly, your right to exhale without wearing a mask ends when your decision costs other people their lives. And so on. It most certainly does not require exceptiona

      • It is more likely that the combination of distancing, mask wearing

        This is absurd - if those played a significant role, we would see a lower number of infections, not increased infections with a constant death rate. Those things prevent spread, not death if one acquires an infection.

        A large percentage of Americans have one or more of the predispositions to dying from COVID-19. The vulnerable population is absolutely huge

        Well, I suppose this depends on your personal definitions of "large" and "huge", however I would not classify a sub-1% at-risk population as a large percentage. The point of the data as well is to demonstrate the number of infections will continue to rise but the number of deaths will not - at

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          It is more likely that the combination of distancing, mask wearing

          This is absurd - if those played a significant role, we would see a lower number of infections, not increased infections with a constant death rate. Those things prevent spread, not death if one acquires an infection.

          Time to bone up on your recent medical research. Studies show that the severity of COVID-19 disease is proportional to the viral load, which is, in turn, dose-proportional. This has been observed in a lot of other diseases, too, and indeed, the first vaccines (variolation) actually worked on that principle (which science seems to have forgotten for a few hundred years). That's why medical personnel exposed without masks die at a much higher rate than the population as a whole. That's also why masks and

  • FFS humans, *evolve* already! (Score:3)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @12:57PM (#60606840) Journal
    Pretty much all the problems we're having with our entire civilization right now can be traced back to one thing: the evolution of our species stalled out at some point. Too many people alive right now are still cavepeople, primitives. Worse: there's some who seem to want to regress, de-evolve -- and drag the rest of our species with them.
    I'm really beginning to think our so-called 'civilzation', and our 'technology' has all grown up too fast, many orders of magnitude faster than our own species' evolution; we apparently can't handle it, don't have the wisdom and restraint to be responsible and thoughtful about it all.

    • Long term survival for a species requires multiple strategies. Some individuals/groups will embrace change, despite the risks, and sometimes make important advancements, or escape impending doom. Sometimes they will get the "Darwin Award". Others will "hold the fort", resist change, and still be around when trailblazers have failed. Or they will perish in place. And then are those who further themselves by taking advantage of others, and so on. Diversity is important to long term evolution. The day w

    • Wow. Racist much?

    • At some point when sociology is a genuine science, this will be well stated as a law but for now we can only make general statements regarding this phenomenon .

      In general in computing laws like "Moore's Law" or "Accelerating Returns" are accepted though the former has bounding limits which lead to the universal nature of the latter, as the bounds are averted through shifts in paradigm. However, if we parallel this exponential growth in science (noosphere) as a function of collected knowledge, then we should

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • While I would agree that this is valid example of what the article is concerned with, I would also agree with others here that in the big picture it is not that worrying. Reddit, like others, is acting from a "health department" perspective, which aligns with popular media and expectations. They look into the Barrington story, and see (pandemic-management-oriented) health officials criticizing it, and then block it to avoid undermining official health directives. Very gray area behavior, at best, but und

  • Most, though not all, human psychological traits were well established before the migration out of Africa. Among those traits are a tendency to go to war when there is a resource crisis. This worked to solve the problem of (typically) not enough to eat.

    The big problem is that very few people can deal with knowing about human psychological traits. If you want to try, here is one of the less complicated traits. https://en.citizendium.org/wik... [citizendium.org]

    The evolution of traits that lead to war is rather strange. I

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