Posted Commented out. To jail.

I found on the Internet a rather sad, but still interesting statistics. It turns out that in recent years the number of criminal prosecutions for network activities, in particular, for blogging, has greatly increased in the world. For most habra people, for sure, will not be the news of Terentyev's case , which caused quite a strong response in RU-nete.
Now let's take a look at the world statistics of persecutions for public statements on blogs and comments on them.


According to the WIAP (World Information Access Project at the University of Washington), the purpose of which is to collect, analyze and publish the most significant global trends, over the past 5 years (from 2003 to 2008) the number of punishments for statements undesirable to the authorities or certain social groups The worldwide network has increased several times. Using a search on the sites, project participants find information about the arrest of a blogger, investigate the reasons for the arrest and group the data. For example, it was revealed that the majority of arrested bloggers are men aged from 21 to 45 years, and the most dangerous for dissatisfied public online statements by countries for this period are Egypt, China and Iran.
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In the diagram, which I, as I could, tried to localize for clarity (an enlarged version is available on click), the dynamics of harassment of bloggers by years and countries is clearly visible. As can be seen from the data, in addition to countries with censorship at the level of state. The apparatus, among the countries, includes Russia, in which Article 29 of Chapter 2 of the Constitution states the following in the first and fifth paragraphs:
1. Everyone is guaranteed freedom of thought and speech.
5. Guaranteed freedom of the media. Censorship is prohibited.


Certainly, on the scale of countries, these figures (the number of arrests) look insignificant, but the dynamics of their growth makes, nevertheless, reflect on the causes and consequences. By the way, this diagram captures only independent bloggers who are not associated with the media, i.e. people expressing a personal opinion, not relying on the authority of any publication.

According to WIAP, usually the increase in arrests is caused by political instability. In Egypt, for example, out of 14 arrests, 9 occurred in 2007, the election year. At the same time, arrest does not always mean long years in prison. Sometimes the detainees are released after a few hours, explaining to them the essence of the claims and warning for the future (or fining), although there are known cases of conviction for up to 8 years for calling for the overthrow of the existing regime and the formation of a discussion group on this issue (China).

In general, I would just like to say: be careful in expressing your thoughts. The Internet has long been unsafe.

PS honestly, this is my first post on Habré. If something is wrong, please explain.