Russia follows Syria and Iran in tightening Internet censorship

Authorities of many eastern countries are trying to introduce a very tough censorship and block Internet sites as soon as they publish opposition content. The last country in this list is Russia. The authorities of this country introduce a law that allows government to block certain pages in the Internet.

Russia is the last country that joined the list of countries that block access to sites. This “campaign” is seemingly aimed at protection of under ages. Earlier Russian parliament approved the law concerning with the Internet. It allows government to block websites that contain prohibited in the country information. In addition, there is a "blacklist" of sites that can be harmful for under ages.

Now this law is in the force and started to be used in practice. As a result, some of the social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, have been forced to delete from their pages all the material that is concerned as illegal. While YouTube is still continue to oppose this decision, referring to the Russian court with a counter suit against the government.

Before Russia, some countries have introduced Internet censorship supposedly for fighting with Internet crimes. These countries are Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Authorities of these countries try to limit the freedom of expression.

Iran takes the second place in the world after North Korea in the ranking of countries with the most severe censorship on the Internet. The Islamic Republic censor all western and anti-Islamic contents in the Internet.

As for Syria, earlier the country took the sixth place in the world among countries with the most tough Internet control. However, that was before the Syrian revolution. Recently, the Assad regime aims at introducing even more severe censorship and closing more and more sites, the goal is to prevent the spread of news about the actions of the rebels and the Free Syrian Army.


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North Korea blocked the access to the Internet for tourists

Despite the fact that about a month ago the authorities of North have allowed foreigners to use Skype and send photos on the Instagram they made a decision to prohibit mobile Internet for tourists once again.


According to the words of one of local tour operators the access to the 3G for the Korea visitors is now unavailable. It is still possible to buy SIM-card for making international calls but still it is prohibited to connect the Internet from the smartphone.

We remind that leaders of North Korea where the Internet is strongly controlled by the government, several weeks ago have made these restrictions easier for foreigners and have opened the access to the 3G-nets.

According to the North Korea Tech it was strongly prohibited and tourists had to leave their electronic devices on the state frontier.

It should be noted that even citizens of Korea can use only simple services like MMS messages or the subscription on the state newspaper Rodong Sinmun.

Experts think that North Korean authorities are likely decided to block access because they do not like the increased interest concerning the inner life of the country. Besides it became known about 3G blocking at the same day when North Korea declared about the provocation of the United States and brought their artillery and missile units to full readiness.



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