of the data are intended to provide some, though by no means all, of the relevant context. A
shrewd observer might well make a case that the extensive regulatory regimes for speech in
Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom—from which states the majority of our
researchers hail—result in a more constrained information environment than a state with technical filtering but little else by way of law, norms, or markets to constrain an Internet user. We
map out filtering practices, and the law and regulation behind them, so that they may take
their place within a larger mosaic of assessing and judging the flow of information within and
across the world’s jurisdictions.
The states that practice state-mandated filtering are predominantly clustered in three
regions of the world: east Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and central Asia. A handful
of states outside these regions also encourage or mandate certain forms of filtering. Someone
in the United States, for instance, may encounter state-mandated Internet filtering on some
computers in libraries and schools. A citizen in northern Europe might find child pornography
blocked online. In France and Germany, content that includes imagery related to Nazism or
Holocaust denial is blocked in various ways and at various levels. The emerging trend points
to more filtering in more places, using more sophisticated techniques over time. This trend
runs parallel to the trajectory of more people in more places using the Internet for more important functions in their lives.
We find that filtering implementations, and their respective scopes and levels of effectiveness, vary widely among the states that filter. China institutes by far the most extensive filtering
regime in the world, with blocking occurring at multiple levels of the network and spanning a
wide range of topics. Singapore, by contrast, despite a widely publicized filtering program, in
fact blocks access to only a handful of sites. Each of the sites blocked in Singapore is pornographic in nature. Several states, including some in central Asia, filter only temporarily when
elections or other key moments make the control of the information environment most important to the state. Most states implement filtering regimes that fall between the poles of China
and Singapore, with significant variation from one to the next. Each of these state-mandated
filtering regimes can be understood only in the political, legal, religious, and social context in
which they arise. It is just this context that we seek to provide in the chapters that follow our
presentation of the data.
Our aim in this volume is to document, with the greatest degree of precision possible, technical Internet filtering wherever we have been able to find it, and to set it in a context that
acknowledges the nuances and complexity of this matter. We have relied upon an extensive
network of researchers in each of the regions of the world that we have studied, as well as
area-studies experts based outside those regions. We chose to study and report on the states
covered in this volume, as well as other states that appear not to be filtering but are on
our ‘‘watch list,’’ because our researchers, members of the press, or others in this field—
Reporters Sans Frontie `res or Human Rights Watch, for instance—have identified these states
as potentially carrying out state-level filtering. The lists used in the testing that forms the core
Introduction
3
shrewd observer might well make a case that the extensive regulatory regimes for speech in
Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom—from which states the majority of our
researchers hail—result in a more constrained information environment than a state with technical filtering but little else by way of law, norms, or markets to constrain an Internet user. We
map out filtering practices, and the law and regulation behind them, so that they may take
their place within a larger mosaic of assessing and judging the flow of information within and
across the world’s jurisdictions.
The states that practice state-mandated filtering are predominantly clustered in three
regions of the world: east Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and central Asia. A handful
of states outside these regions also encourage or mandate certain forms of filtering. Someone
in the United States, for instance, may encounter state-mandated Internet filtering on some
computers in libraries and schools. A citizen in northern Europe might find child pornography
blocked online. In France and Germany, content that includes imagery related to Nazism or
Holocaust denial is blocked in various ways and at various levels. The emerging trend points
to more filtering in more places, using more sophisticated techniques over time. This trend
runs parallel to the trajectory of more people in more places using the Internet for more important functions in their lives.
We find that filtering implementations, and their respective scopes and levels of effectiveness, vary widely among the states that filter. China institutes by far the most extensive filtering
regime in the world, with blocking occurring at multiple levels of the network and spanning a
wide range of topics. Singapore, by contrast, despite a widely publicized filtering program, in
fact blocks access to only a handful of sites. Each of the sites blocked in Singapore is pornographic in nature. Several states, including some in central Asia, filter only temporarily when
elections or other key moments make the control of the information environment most important to the state. Most states implement filtering regimes that fall between the poles of China
and Singapore, with significant variation from one to the next. Each of these state-mandated
filtering regimes can be understood only in the political, legal, religious, and social context in
which they arise. It is just this context that we seek to provide in the chapters that follow our
presentation of the data.
Our aim in this volume is to document, with the greatest degree of precision possible, technical Internet filtering wherever we have been able to find it, and to set it in a context that
acknowledges the nuances and complexity of this matter. We have relied upon an extensive
network of researchers in each of the regions of the world that we have studied, as well as
area-studies experts based outside those regions. We chose to study and report on the states
covered in this volume, as well as other states that appear not to be filtering but are on
our ‘‘watch list,’’ because our researchers, members of the press, or others in this field—
Reporters Sans Frontie `res or Human Rights Watch, for instance—have identified these states
as potentially carrying out state-level filtering. The lists used in the testing that forms the core
Introduction
3