Internet
24,344GB data transferred per second.
2,400,000 emails sent every second.
There are 3 billion internet users in the world – 8 times more than in 20001
Users of large internet services and technologies3
Percentage of population that have internet coverage (internet penetration rates)
Total internet economy2
$8 trillion in 2011 Growing by 10% a year.
Bigger than the economy of Spain or Canada – includes online purchases, advertising, investment in servers, software, communications systems.
Laws and conventions
Protection:
- Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says – Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom... to receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
In 2012 an extension to include online media was adopted by 47 countries including China and Russia.
Threats:
- Australia’s proposed Data Retention Bill would compel telecommunication companies to retain for a minimum of 2 years the metadata of every subscriber in Australia.15
- New counterterrorism laws going through the Australian parliament mean that journalists could face 10 years’ jail for exposing security agency bungles.16
- In Britain the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill, rushed through parliament without proper scrutiny in July 2014, will violate the privacy of citizens and compromise journalistic duty to protect confidential sources.17
- Russia has passed a series of new laws which compel bloggers with 3,000 or more daily readers to register with the government, and make retweeting of ‘extremist’ views punishable by 5 years in jail.18
Mass surveillance
$120 billion – estimated total annual surveillance budget for the ‘Five Eyes’ (alliance of intelligence operations of Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand/Aotearoa, US)6
$54 billion – annual surveillance budget of the US Director of National Intelligence6
$0.13 per person per day – surveillance cost per internet user6
20% UP – year-on-year increase in Australian state access to private data, without warrant7
36% of all raw information intercepted by Britain’s GCHQ was passed on to the US’s NSA8
24 – US mass surveillance programmes currently running (including Prism)9
2 million – the reported size of China’s internet police force in 201310
$110,000 – the bounty Russian authorities are offering for anyone able to crack the Tor anonymity network.11
Media freedom
What happens to media practitioners is one way of measuring what’s happening to press freedom.
Journalists in prison:12
81 in 2000
211 in 2013
Countries with most imprisoned journalists in 2013:13
- 40 Turkey
- 35 Iran
- 32 China
- 22 Eritrea
- 18 Vietnam
- 12 Syria
Under attack 201414
- 59 journalists killed
- 176 journalists imprisoned
- 12 media assistants killed
- 13 media assistants imprisoned
- 21 netizens and citizen journalists killed
- 174 netizens imprisoned
Censorship
Top 10 internet censored countries (2014)4
- North Korea
- Burma
- Cuba
- Saudi Arabia
- Iran
- China
- Syria
- Tunisia
- Vietnam
- Turkmenistan
Golden Shield
China has the most sophisticated content-filtering internet regime in the world. Golden Shield blocks destination IP addresses and domain names and also inspects the data being sent or received.5
- Internet World Stats.com nin.tl/1vRGGaU
- The Atlantic.com nin.tl/1HKZiN0
- Statistica.com nin.tl/1zzF9na
- Committee to Protect Journalists report nin.tl/12aT6N7
- Wikipedia nin.tl/1HL2qIE
- Smarí McCarthy nin.tl/12b5pJp
- nin.tl/1HL6zwm
- Privacy International nin.tl/12b5PPO accessed 1/11/2014
- Wikipedia nin.tl/1HL6NUd
- BBC, ‘China employs two million microblog monitors state media say,’ nin.tl/12b6Qrh
- Russia Today nin.tl/12b7k0B
- Global Voices nin.tl/1HL7ixl
- Committee for Protection of Journalists nin.tl/12b83ie
- Reporters Without Borders nin.tl/12b8IAr Figures are for Jan-Nov
- Green Left Weekly 15 Nov 2014 nin.tl/12b9f59
- ABC nin.tl/1HL81yy
- International Federation of Journalists nin.tl/12b9VaR
- Global Voices nin.tl/1HL8h0x
