This weekend, the travel blog Gadling posted a terrific story describing how the Ethiopian government has blocked access to Skype across the country.
This isn't the first time Ethiopia has cracked down on internet access and imposed online censorship; we've been tracking the issue for years across a range of countries around the world, including the controversial Horn of Africa nation. Given the hue and cry over the Ethiopian government's move, we wondered how Ethiopia stacks up against other countries when it comes to limiting access to online information sources and communication portals.
Data from the Global Integrity Report: 2011 shed some light. For many years, our in-country contributors have scored indicators assessing whether their national government imposes limits on the public's ability to access certain websites and/or online resources. In 2011, we found some of the "usual suspects" (China, Vietnam, Tajikistan) on our list of countries that impose online censorship, but also some mild surprises such as India and Uganda.
You can browse the interactive table below to read examples of how other governments do and don't limit their citizens' ability to reach the internet.
— Nathaniel Heller
