Human rights groups around the world continue to report on governments that control and monitor their citizens' access to the Internet. Although people are very creative and continue to work around these "information blockades," the limits on the exchange of information have serious consequences for geopolitics and future prospects for peace. In addition, the information barriers prevent scientific advances, cultural dialog and the exchange of art, literature and music among different peoples.

Groups like Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and the Free Speech Coalition have all issued reports -- some annual, others even more frequent -- about countries that impose barriers to access, control or censor content, and therefore violate "basic human rights." It is no surprise that the top 10 offenders as regards Internet access are also the most restrictive of the press, public speech and freedom of association.

The 10 worst offenders

North Korea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Myanmar (Burma), China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Uzbekistan and Vietnam are the worst offenders, exercising near total control over Internet access. Syria, Libya, Belarus, Tunisia and the Maldives are not far behind, and the top 10 list from year to year includes various combinations of (mostly) these 15 nations.

The Freedom House report, in particular, considers the problem to be worsening, not improving. It asserts that the freedom to access information has been declining in many parts of the world even as technology advances apace. As more countries censor political content, arrest bloggers, send computer technicians to prison and otherwise restrict the use of technology, profound social and political issues are exacerbated.

The problem is spreading

The problem is not restricted to just the worst offenders listed above. Other countries interfere with Internet access despite being rated "partly free" or even "mostly free" by political watchdog groups. These nations include India, Georgia, Egypt, Russia, Kenya, Malaysia and Turkey. Nations with unelected theocratic regimes, mostly Muslim, also censor the Web and restrict the sale and use of computers and other "networking devices."

These countries, like the others that outright ban Internet access, use sophisticated technologies to filter out material that government authorities find offensive, inflammatory, socially unacceptable -- and, of course, politically independent. Nations like China and Iran have centralized the network "backbone" so that they can completely control what enters the countries' communications infrastructure.

Bright spots?

Freedom House did have a "bright spot" in its most recent report, mentioning a growing "civic activism" in some of these censorious countries. Savvy users are developing entire "underground vocabularies" -- code words, acronyms, "text talk," and so forth -- to camouflage their discussions of sensitive or censored topics. Others are organizing at the various social networking Web sites and disguising their conversations by salting them with buzzwords and the digital equivalents of "winks and nods."

Bloggers and writers associated with the Reporters Without Borders organization note that this nascent activism is creating new, different coalitions of "change advocates." Some are focused on achieving religious freedom, others on civil rights, but all are interested in learning as much from their countries' hackers and "netizens" as possible to keep the momentum going in the right direction.

Freedom entails risk

A prominent opponent of the government in Myanmar (Burma), Ko Htike is a political blogger now living in London. Myanmar has a very oppressive military regime that closely monitors its citizens, in both high- and low-tech ways. Htike reports some 2,000 hits every day, from countries all around the world, and notes that he even sees some visitors coming from inside Burma, where his Web site is officially blocked. Burmese Internet users risk jail by going to his blog, but they are starving for information not censored and rewritten by the government-controlled press -- or appearing at the official government Web sites.

Like Burma, the other nations on the "black hole list" are not known for their commitment to liberty or justice. Instead, they seek to maintain rigid control over what their citizens think, read, see and do. By controlling information, oppressive governments can manipulate the opinions, judgments and even the emotional responses of its citizens, keeping them confused and disorganized in the face of strong penalties for what the West would term "thought crimes."

Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders, as well as many other civil and political rights organizations, would like the more enlightened countries on the planet be more supportive of people living in the "Internet black holes." A concerted and strategic effort to support and encourage these ordinary online citizens could hasten the day when the information superhighway is allowed into their dark, dank corners of the world.